WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  Here is an updated look at the 2019 film slates by studios (films entering wide release in the 2019 calendar year), including worldwide box office for those films during 2020. We will begin the track of the 2020 slate soon.   BOX OFFICE. Looking at North American box office, 2020 is now […]

Based on Saturday’s grosses, Weekend #7 of 2013 is looking a touch better than yesterday: now $126 million for the top 12 films during the traditional Friday-Sunday period of this holiday weekend (only 2% behind the pace for the same weekend the last few years).         A Good Day to Die Hard from […]

  Tossing IN THE HEART OF THE SEA (Village Roadshow/Warners) onto what is historically one of the weakest box office weekends of the year–and this year also just days ahead of the arrival of cinema’s Death Star–was a Hail Mary, and it’s not paying off.  Based on preliminary numbers at Deadline, it earned $4M on […]

> On its first Wednesday in release, THE HUNGER GAMES fell 22% to $8.1M, but just as Tuesday’s hold wasn’t quite as good as it looked, Wednesday’s wasn’t as bad.  For whatever reason, Wednesdays tend to be a down day in the dynamic of a typical week, particularly for the previous weekend’s new opening.  Last […]

OPENINGS:  THE LONGEST RIDE (20th) tried to counterprogram Furious 7 with a Nicholas Sparks romance, but didn’t even muss the blockbuster’s hair with a $13.5M opening.  That’s better than the lousy $10M start for last year’s Sparks adaptation The Best Of Me, and that’s the sum total of the positives in the context of other […]

  The latest underperforming franchise entry is TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: OUT OF THE SHADOWS (Nickelodeon/Movie Media Group/Alibaba/Paramount).  Preliminary numbers at Deadline have opening day at $11.6M, down 55% from the $25.6M start for the rebooted TMNT 2 years ago.  That suggests a weekend that may not hit $30M, and a US total under $100M.  […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  The release of Maleficent has put Disney in a virtual three-way tie for second place (with Warner Brothers and Sony), each with around $1.35 billion worldwide for 2014 to date.  Fox remains comfortably in first place with $1.7 billion.  The other studios remain out of the running, particularly Universal, which was not helped at […]

  OPENINGS:  DESPICABLE ME 2 (Universal) had an even better weekend overseas than it did in the US, with $88.8M (in 45 markets, with plenty more major ones to come) vs $82.5M.  (Of course, in the US it also had the benefit of a holiday week, giving it a huge $142.1M here so far.)  The […]