UPDATE:  The release of THE INTERVIEW continues to be improvisational, and contrary to regular practice–as well as Sony’s previously expressed plans–the studio announced on Sunday that in addition to its $2.8M take from independent theatres, the film earned $15M from online viewing in the Wed-Sat period.  However, Sony didn’t specify how that amount was […]

  OPENINGS:  As we noted on Friday, the 3-day weekend studio estimates are lower than they’d otherwise be, due to lower pre-holiday moviegoing on Saturday and especially Sunday.  That will all change on Christmas Day, which will usher in the biggest 8 days of the box office year. JUMANJI: WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE (Columbia/Sony) is […]

>Through Sunday, Team Metcalf is holding on to a $39 million lead over Team Salem in the ShowBuzzDaily Summer Movie Draft.  The terrific opening of Harry Potter was balanced somewhat by decent holds for Transformers 3, Horrible Bosses and to some extent Zookeeper.  We expected Salem to pull ahead by Sunday, but that should happen sometime […]

Weekend #36 of 2014 is looking like $54 million for the top 12 films this weekend, down 13% from the norm for this weekend, which is usually the weakest weekend of the year.  In the last two years, this weekend has produced Riddick, The Words and The Cold Light of Day.  But those look like […]

Like last week, Saturday was somewhat stronger than anticipated yesterday — the weekend now looks like $84 million instead of $81 million for the top 12 films.   The Possession and Lawless both look like they will be about one million dollars higher for the Friday-Sunday portion of the long weekend.  Oogieloves and the BIG […]

  OPENINGS:  Considering that it’s based on a series of novels, GOOSEBUMPS (Columbia/Sony) was certainly intended to be the launch of a new franchise for Sony.  It took the weekend in the US with $23.5M and should hold well next week with no new family competition (things get tougher after that with Halloween and The […]

> Deadline has early figures for Friday, and they indicate that Open Road’s THE GREY will, as expected, win the day and weekend.  If the early estimate of $6.2M for Friday holds, it could gross around $15M for the weekend.  That’s less than previous Liam Neeson vehicles Taken ($25M) and Unknown ($22M), but still impressive […]

> The past week (seven days ending Sunday) is flat versus last year’s comparable week.  Year-to-date box office is now down 4.0% versus last year.  The Debt opened on Wednesday and is currently on track for $38 million final in North America, with some upside possible depending on the second week.  The other two new films this […]