>Based on Friday and Saturday box office (and estimated Sunday numbers), The Help continues at #1 yet again, down only 2% from last week.  This is really getting to be a tired headline, but with the feeble crop of recent releases The Help is just taking full advantage of the situation.  The weekend overall is now […]

  Although it’s possible for a horror or action movie to make some money over Labor Day weekend, no studio opens a movie it cares about for the holiday that repels moviegoers.  This weekend’s openings won’t change that rule.  THE LIGHT BETWEEN OCEANS (DreamWorks/Reliant/Participant/Touchstone/Disney) was probably envisioned as an awards-worthy project when it was originally […]

  OPENINGS:  The combination of the typically low early-December box office and the approach of Avatar 2 dissuaded the studios from introducing any new product this week.  The closest thing to a wide release in the US was the expansion of SPOILER ALERT (Focus/Universal) to 783 theaters, where it fared badly with $700K, averaging $900 […]

  OPENINGS:  The $37M Friday for CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER (Disney) was the highest ever in the month of April, ahead of Fast Five‘s $34.4M.  Fast Five fell 13% on Saturday to hit a $86.2M weekend, and Winter Soldier will hope to beat that.  Depending on word of mouth, it could get as high […]

  A piece of beloved genre IP that gets rave reviews is hard to beat, and the newest iteration of HALLOWEEN (Blumhouse/Miramax/Universal) is headed toward a huge opening.  Preliminary numbers at Deadline put Friday at $33M ($7.7M from Thursday night), and even allowing for the typical front-loading of sequels and horror movies, that should mean […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  Fox had a great week worldwide last week ($167 million worldwide), partly from the domestic release of Gone Girl this weekend but also from strong overseas returns for The Maze Runner.  Fox is now over $4 billion for the year worldwide, the #1 Hollywood studio by far, and saddled with surprisingly few duds on its […]

> This weekend should be another good one versus last year, up around 9%.  The strongest entry looks to be Hugh Jackman and the robot boxers in Real Steel — it’s playing in a lot of theaters and we expect a very solid per screen average, giving it a forecast $26 million opening.  (Aside from The Lion […]

Based on Friday’s grosses, weekend #3 of 2015 looks like $172 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, way up from the norm for this weekend and setting a new record for the third weekend in January, breaking last year’s brief record (see track below for the weekend).  The box office is on fire, driven […]