The weekend looks a little softer than it did yesterday ($131 million for the top 12 films rather than $142 million).  The Hobbit is looking like an $85 million opening weekend instead of almost $99 million.   Still a record December opening weekend (beating I Am Legend’s $77.2 million opening weekend December 14-16, 2007) but not at […]

  (Almost) everything shot up at the boxoffice on New Year’s Day, but one zoomed more than the rest:  DJANGO UNCHAINED (Weinstein/Sony) challenged THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY (Warners/MGM) for the daily lead–falling short by only $227K–and rose a mighty 79% from Monday to $9.2M, for a total to date of $77.8M.  That bodes well […]

  Melissa McCarthy is a movie star. OPENINGS:  She co-stars with Jason Bateman (who is also a producer of the movie), but there’s no doubt that IDENTITY THIEF (Universal) is being sold on McCarthy’s back, and the movie is off to a great $11.2M opening day.  Frontloading and East Coast weather may hold it back […]

Based on Saturday’s grosses, Weekend #10 of 2013 is looking even stronger than it did yesterday: now $129 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, up from the $122 million estimate yesterday and now up 5% from last year.  Oz the Great and Powerful is now looking like an $80 million opening weekend (now ahead […]

  Early Saturday boxoffice numbers at Deadline show no great surprises for the weekend’s offerings.  Any hope that EVIL DEAD (TriStar/Sony/FilmDistrict) would have the staying power of a Mama faded with the demon-filled gorefest’s 24% Saturday drop (although it should be noted that Saturdays in general will start looking lower with studios now treating “Friday” […]

  With $345M already in the bank from its giant overseas openings (that includes an all-time opening day record in China), IRON MAN 3 (Disney) turned its metallic gaze to the US last night, and had a huge $15.6M in evening/midnight screenings.  That was a bit below than the $18.7M Thursday night for The Avengers […]

Scattered overseas results are in for the past week, mostly for the recent openers.Fast & Furious 6 is off to an impressive start outside of North America, as well as domestically.  In contrast, Epic is already slightly outshining The Hangover Part III worldwide (an early lead in overseas box office for Epic more than makes up for a slight estimated domestic advantage […]

  OPENINGS:  Allowing for the usual studio practice of predicting lower-than-typical Sunday drops to boost the numbers a bit, MONSTERS UNIVERSITY (Disney/Pixar) opened in line with expectations at what may be slightly less than the $82M number announced today.  That puts it only behind 3 other big-ticket animated sequels (the last Toy Story and 2 […]