The 7th weekend of 2013 looks like it will be down from prior years but not at the excessive rates we have seen the past few weekends.  We expect $121 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, 6% to 15% below the normal pace for this weekend.   Opening in 3,552 theaters Thursday, A Good […]

Based on Friday’s grosses, Weekend #11 of 2013 is the second weekend in a row up somewhat from prior years: $103 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday (up 6% from the same weekend last year).  Oz continues to carry Hollywood on its back.  Opening this weekend, Steve Carrell and Jim Carrey flopped in The […]

  OPENINGS:  Here’s the really remarkable thing about this weekend’s haul for IRON MAN 3 (Disney).  It’s not the $175.3M opening in the US, even though that’s the 2d highest start in US history–that was pretty much where it was expected to be, well above Iron Man 2 but not quite equal to the combined […]

  There’s so much product in the marketplace right now that overall numbers for the summer movie season seem fairly robust–but looked at title by title, we see two blockbusters (Iron Man 3 and Fast & Furious 6) and then a lot of films that will be happy to hit breakeven. OPENINGS:  Expectations were low […]

  Preliminary box office numbers at Deadline have THE HEAT (20th) overperforming with a $15M Friday, which could give it a $40M opening weekend, almost as much as the movie cost to produce.  That means the first 3 days for the Sandra Bullock/Melissa McCarthy pairing may nearly match the first 4 days of The Hangover […]

  Our parade of studio summers continues. We’ve reviewed Disney, Warner Bros, Paramount, and Sony, and today’s focus is on 20th Century Fox. Fox has had a distinct strategy this summer, counterprogramming with comedy and animation while all the other studios were duking it out with massive action movies, and holding its own spectacles for […]

  ELYSIUM (Sony) got off to a very moderate start with $1.7M from 10PM Thursday night shows.  That’s better than the Thursday nights for 2 Guns ($1.2M) and White House Down ($1.35M), but nowhere near the $3.6M for Pacific Rim, suggesting that Elysium may skew older than the usual sci-fi epic–or that there’s limited audience […]

  Even though Labor Day Weekend is historically slow at the multiplex, the Monday holiday still boosted the Sunday takings for most titles. OPENINGS:  Frontloading 101:  on Thursday night/Friday, ONE DIRECTION: THIS IS US (Sony) made a robust $8.9M… then the bottom fell out on Saturday, when the fans had been sated, and the concert […]