>The Hollywood Reporter has preliminary Friday numbers, and while the day’s boxoffice is looking like a close finish between GHOST RIDER: SPIRIT OF VENGEANCE (Sony) and THE VOW (Screen Gems/Sony), with both at $7-7.5M for the day, the likelihood is that over the course of the weekend–considering that new openings are more frontloaded (especially genre […]

  This may be a good time to pause the stories about Disney’s infalliability, and the unstoppable dominance of the Star Wars franchise.  SOLO (Lucasfilm/Disney) is underperforming in a big way, with preliminary numbers at Deadline putting its opening day at $36.5M, extremely frontloaded with $14.1M of that total from Thursday night.  That’s the lowest […]

  OPENINGS:  THE PURGE (Universal) will be instantly profitable by the end of its high $30Ms weekend, and while a great deal of that is due to the $3M production budget, a US marketing spend of only $20M (less than half the normal big-studio amount) is a big help.  The key:  minimal expensive TV advertising.  […]

> The past week (seven days ending Sunday) is up 2% versus last year’s comparable week.  Year-to-date box office is now down 3.8% versus last year, the smallest year-to-year margin we’ve seen so far this year.  The Lion King in 3D is headed for about $118 million in additional domestic box office for Disney, while Contagion has been upgraded […]

Weekend #24 of 2015 is looking like $180 million for the top 12 films this weekend, somewhat above the norm for the same weekend the past few years. Jurassic World from Universal should open with a $117.0 million three-day weekend. Early reviews at RottenTomatoes are solid: 70% positive overall so far. Jurassic World is on track for around $295 million domestic. Overseas […]

  This weekend’s numbers will need some examination, with plenty of spin available in all directions.  Preliminary estimates at Deadline have BOO!  A MADEA HALLOWEEN (Lionsgate) a hair ahead of JACK REACHER: NEVER GO BACK (Skydance/Huahua/Shanghai Film Group/Paramount) on Friday, $9.2M vs. $9.1M.  There are several reasons why this is a bigger win than it […]

>Welcome to the big leagues, Hunger Games.  Our preliminary domestic total projection of $403 million and the overseas gross to date of $59 million instantly puts The Hunger Games in the stratosphere of worldwide revenue, already matching the big releases from the recent Christmas period.  Of course, much bigger numbers are ahead as the overseas […]

The Hobbit moved up with another $21 million overseas since last week, bringing the foreign total to $700 million and the worldwide total to just over $1 billion. The biggest mover this past week overseas was A Good Day to Die Hard, up $29 million to $162 million overseas to date and $229 million worldwide. Debuting this […]