OPENINGS:  There was nothing supernatural about the blah $17M opening for CARRIE (Screen Gems/Sony/MGM), on the low end of Halloween horror openings, and with Bad Grandpa targeting a similar audience next weekend, there’s little chance for recovery.  Even though the reviews were never going to be good, Sony’s strategy of keeping the movie under […]

  OPENINGS:  Jordan Peele’s NOPE (Universal) premiered on the lower end of expectations at $44M.  That’s a significant number for a project that isn’t based on preexisting IP, but down 38% from Peele’s US, and Nope reportedly cost about $40-50M more than US to produce.  Add the fact that Peele’s films haven’t performed particularly well […]

Snow White and the Huntsman now looks like a $56.255 million weekend, according to the studio estimate this morning (up a touch from yesterday’s early estimate and exceeding our forecast in Wednesday’s ShowBuzzDaily Weekend Predictions by a wide margin).         The box office volume for the top 12 films is looking like $135.5 million for […]

Based on Friday’s and Saturday’s grosses, weekend #20 of 2015 now looks like $178 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, a little better than yesterday’s estimate ($172 million) and now solidly above the norm for this weekend. Opening at 3,473 theaters Friday, Pitch Perfect 2 from Universal is now on track for a $70.3 million opening three-day weekend (well […]

  OPENINGS:  IRON MAN 3 (Disney) was exactly where it was expected to be, its $68.3M US opening day (the 8th largest ever) considerably higher than Iron Man 2‘s $51.2M, but not quite in a league with The Avengers’ $80.8M.  That should mean a $170M-ish weekend.  Meanwhile, Iron 3 has made a spectacular $388.3M internationally […]

  The Martin Luther King Day holiday tends to be a day off more for schoolchildren than for adult employees, meaning that at the boxoffice, it benefits family movies–of which there’s a distinct shortage right now.  For adult-oriented films, the Friday gross is often around 25-30% of the 4-day weekend total (with new openings at […]

  It’s not going to be close, and it doesn’t deserve to be.  Based on preliminary numbers at Deadline and elsewhere, the much-better-than-you’d-expect NEIGHBORS (Universal) trounced THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2 (Sony) on Friday, $18M to $10M, and although Spider-Man will recoup some of that with stronger Saturday and Sunday matinees, Neighbors should hold on with […]

> DreamWorks/Disney’s decision to open the lengthy, serious THE HELP on a Wednesday in mid-August looked like a questionable strategy, but so far it’s paying off:  Deadline reports that its opening day gross is headed for $5.5M, very solid for a mid-week debut.  By way of comparison, Eat Pray Love, also based on a bestseller […]