Warner Bros and Peter Jackson are very, very lucky that THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG is a significantly better movie than last year’s An Unexpected Journey, which will give it strong word of mouth, because early box office indications are that audiences, burned by Journey, are initially dubious about spending 3 more hours […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  Updated look at 2016 by studio, with Fox continuing to the lap the field.  We have amended the summary categories somewhat this year with the top category now reserved for films over $500 million worldwide and the lower category for films under $150 million worldwide.   YEAR TO DATE BOX OFFICE. Looking at […]

  OPENINGS:  At $6.5M, THE POSSESSION OF HANNAH GRACE (Screen Gems/Sony) performed adequately for a low-budget horror item placed in one of the lower-grossing weekends of the year.  Possession also earned $4.1M in 17 international territories, the start of a release that will extend into early 2019.  It has around $30M in production and worldwide […]

Based on Friday’s and Saturday’s grosses, weekend #29 of 2015 looks like $185 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, a touch above the norm for this weekend and way above last year’s weak weekend. Opening at 3,856 theaters Friday, Ant-Man from Marvel and Disney is on track for a $58.0 million opening three-day weekend (slightly below our $64.5 million […]

STUDIO SCORECARD. In the worldwide studio rankings for 2013 to date, Sony moved ahead of Paramount (taking over 5th place) with $70 million of revenue this week (from continued overseas revenues from Mortal Instruments, White House Down and Smurfs 2).  Warner Brothers had an even better week ($76 million, mostly from overseas grosses for We’re the […]

Based on Friday’s and Saturday’s grosses, weekend #22 of 2015 now looks like $130 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, a little better than it looked yesterday but still significantly below the norm for this weekend.   Opening at 3,777 theaters Friday, San Andreas from Warner Brothers is now on track for a $53.2 million opening three-day weekend (well […]

  OPENINGS:  Despite the strong weekend, it’s a bit troubling that GROWN UPS 2 (Sony) fell 11% on Saturday (the original Grown Ups rose 2% on its 2d day), suggesting frontloading and less than great word of mouth.  That may place the studio’s estimated Sunday drop of 21% and $42.5M weekend total in doubt, but […]

  OPENINGS:  Despite frontloading that led to an 8% Saturday drop, 300: RISE OF AN EMPIRE (Warners/Legendary) is claiming a very low 30% decline on Sunday in order to report a $45.1M weekend.  We’ll see if that number holds up tomorrow, but even if it reduces to $43-44M, it will have been a successful start […]