OPENINGS:  Hiyao Miyazaki’s THE BOY AND THE HERON (GKids) exceeded expectations and set a high-water mark for its filmmaker and for non-franchise Japanese animation with a $12.8M launch.  The film will lose its Imax screens next week and faces challenges from other family-oriented films, but if word of mouth is strong and it can […]

Updated international box office chart:

Saturday’s $57.4 million for the top 10 films and Sunday’s estimated $49.6 million both slightly exceed the similar days in 2007 (when December 30 was also a Sunday). Partly because of the way the calendar is configured, 2012 is catching up to the multi-year average for December 16-30 (2012 is now only 1.8% behind the […]

> This weekend looks like it will have a very solid opener (the best since August 5, when Rise of the Planet of the Apes bowed) but the weekend as a whole should still lag behind the same weekend last year.  The third Paranormal Activity has its sights set on over $41 million this weekend, while […]

  NO GOOD DEED (Screen Gems/Sony) held better than expected on its 2d day of release and better than Obsessed did in 2009, and that guarantees the Idris Elba/Taraji P. Henson thriller the weekend win.  Based on preliminary numbers at Deadline, No Good Deed rose by about 15% on Saturday to $10M, compared to the […]

The Holiday Season at the North American box office is off to a fairly solid start in 2013.  Over the past seven days (December 16-22), the top 10 films in the North American each day have totaled $193 million, a big 32% jump over the lackluster 2012 total over the same period ($146 million) and […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  Here is an updated look at the 2019 film slates by studio. BOX OFFICE. Looking at North American box office, 2019 is still -6% below last year’s comparable span and still -1% below this point the past four years ($7.077 billion).  Over the same period, Hollywood films have grossed almost $18.8 billion […]

  OPENINGS:  INSIDE OUT 2 (Pixar/Disney) overdelivered massively compared to expectations with $155M in the US, a remarkable $65M higher than the start for 2015’s original Inside Out, and depending whether you count the “live-action” CG remake of The Lion King ($191.8M) as animated, either the #2 or #3 US opening for an animated feature […]