It wasn’t a great Saturday for either of the weekend’s big openings.  According to preliminary numbers at Deadline and elsewhere, 22 JUMP STREET (Sony/Columbia) fell more than 25% from Friday to around $19M.  That’s a much heavier Day 2 drop than Neighbors (9%) or Ted (13%), and could pull its weekend down as low […]

  HOME (DreamWorks Animation/20th) should soothe the embattled studio and its investors a bit.  According to preliminary numbers at Deadline, Home earned $15M on Friday, almost double the $8M start for DWA’s Mr. Peabody and Sherman, and almost in a league with the $18.8M first day for How To Train Your Dragon 2.  That should […]

  OPENINGS:  GHOSTBUSTERS: AFTERLIFE (Columbia/Sony) opened with $44M, which was $2M below the launch of the 2016 Ghostbusters, a result treated as such a disaster that the franchise had to be re-rebooted.  Afterlife, though, is considered a success, thanks to a lower production budget ($75M, moderate for a tentpole), pandemic box office standards, and the […]

>Keep your helmets on: the studios are about to drop three more bombs in movie theaters this weekend.  A horror movie, an action flick and an adult comedy are being released, and we expect each to gross not much more than $30 million in their entire domestic theatrical run.  Opening weekends should range between $9-12 […]

>The past week is up an amazing 57% from last year, and the year-to-date tally is now down 15% from last year (improving from down 17% last week).  This is very positive news for the industry, and especially Universal with its successful launch of Fast Five. The Past Week: Total Box Office Volume All films […]

  OPENINGS:  ALIEN: COVENANT (TSG/20th) slumped almost as badly on its 2d day of release as the unpopular Prometheus (22% vs 25%), and the result was a lackluster $36M weekend in the US–and even that number includes an aggressive estimate for Sunday.  Worse yet, with Covenant now playing in every major international market except China […]

> The 2011 box office slump continues in full force.  The top 12 films this Christmas weekend should total an anemic $112 million, down 15% from the comparable weekend last year and not even close to the previous three years.  Of course, weekend comparisons are tricky because the calendar is particularly cruel this year, putting […]

BRAVE (Pixar/Disney), of course, continued its victorious march through the weekend’s boxoffice on Saturday.  According to preliminary numbers at Deadline, the animated fantasy fell a small 4% on its 2d day of release, to $23.6M.  That’s in line with the 1st 2 days of WALL-E, and should mean a weekend around $66-68M.  It won’t be […]