OPENINGS:  LYLE LYLE CROCODILE (Columbia/Sony) arrived below expectations at $11.5M (it might reach $13.4M with the Monday holiday), unable to take advantage of the 11-week gap since the last major family movie opened.  It has more than a month until Strange World claims that audience, but even with strong holds, it still may not […]

  OPENINGS:  For a movie aimed at children that isn’t a frontloaded franchise installment, WONDER PARK (Nickelodeon/Paramount) had an unimpressive 19% Saturday bump, and it emerged with a $16M weekend that won’t do it much good against production/marketing costs in the neighborhood of $200M–especially with Disney’s Dumbo just 2 weeks away.  The initial overseas results […]

Weekend #35 of 2014 is looking like $95 million for the top 12 films this weekend, up 11% from the norm for this weekend and on track to be the fifth up weekend in a row after six straight down weekends. Opening at around 2,500 theaters Friday (below the 2,886 average theater count for opening […]

Weekend #45 of 2014 is looking like $167 million for the top 12 films this weekend, up 19% from the norm for this weekend.   Opening at 3,500 theaters Friday (well above the 2,886 average theater count for opening weekends the last two years), Interstellar from Paramount should average a terrific $18,500 per theater for the […]

  Seasonal Note:  Good Friday is traditionally a strong day for moviegoing, which explains the generally solid Friday-to-Friday holds below.  Easter Sunday, though, is less of a movie day, potentially bringing down weekend multiples. OPENINGS:  HEAVEN IS FOR REAL (TriStar/Sony) is impressively overperforming, its $7.9M Friday added to $7M from Wednesday and Thursday for a […]

  FIFTY SHADES OF GREY (Universal/Focus) had the giant box office start that’s been anticipated since the movie was announced.  According to preliminary numbers at Deadline, it earned $31M on Friday (that includes $8.6M from Thursday evening shows), and if that number holds up, it would be the 2d biggest one-day February gross (and the […]

  THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY (Warners/MGM) will shatter all the December records it was expected to shatter, but based on preliminary numbers at Deadline, its projected $85M weekend is somewhat soft, considering that it had $37.5M on Friday alone.  That’s about a 2.25 weekend multiple, considerably lower than The Avengers (2.57) or Skyfall (2.77) […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  Updated look at 2016 by studio. YEAR TO DATE BOX OFFICE. Looking at North American box office, 2016 to date is now only marginally above last year and still +3% above the average for this point the past four years ($9.818 billion).  Over the same period, Hollywood films have grossed $25.4 billion worldwide when […]