OPENINGS:  SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING (Marvel/Columbia/Sony) was considerably more front-loaded than initial enthusiasm suggested, dropping 27% on Saturday, and pushing its weekend total to $117M.  While the weekend result was still a very big number, that Saturday decline was far steeper than the 8-9% Day 2 drops for Wonder Woman and Guardians of the Galaxy 2 […]

  OPENINGS:  Not much changed between Friday’s results and weekend studio estimates.  THE DARK TOWER (MRC/Columbia/Sony) was unsurprisingly frontloaded between fans of the novels and bad word of mouth, and it dropped 13% on Saturday.  Sony is projecting a $19.5M weekend (the fact that the studio didn’t push the number past $20M indicates either honesty […]

  How much more humiliating can things get for Warners?  On Friday, according to preliminary numbers at Deadline, THE BOSS (Universal), which isn’t even a high-performing Melissa McCarthy vehicle, beat up both the studio’s superheroes with about $7.5M.  The Boss will likely have trouble sustaining itself over the weekend, but at about $20M+, it will […]

  OPENINGS:  ONE PIECE FILM: RED (Crunchyroll/Sony) opened at $9.5M, on the low end of recent national anime releases compared to Jujutsu Kaisen‘s $18M and Dragon Ball Super‘s $21.1M.  As is typical for the genre, it was extremely frontloaded, earning more than 50% of its weekend total by the end of Friday.  However, its US […]

  OPENINGS:  CRAWL (Paramount) may be an example of a studio outsmarting itself.  Paramount held no critics screenings, presumably because disdain was expected, and thus was unable to create any advance buzz around a response that turned out to be remarkably enthusiastic (88% on Rotten Tomatoes).  The result was a tepid $12M opening, and since […]

  OPENINGS:  READY PLAYER ONE (Village Roadshow/Warners) had a fair if unthrilling start, with $41.2M over the 3-day Good Friday/Easter weekend plus $12M on its Thursday opening day for a $53.2M 4-day total, considerably less than the $61M Kong: Skull Island earned in its first 3 days.  That points toward a $125M US ultimate, and […]

  OPENINGS:  Even among the mostly-sad legacy of Labor Day Weekend openings, OPERATION FINALE (MGM) was notably weak at $6M ($7.7M since its Wednesday launch), and that number incorporates a studio-estimated Sunday bump that would be the highest in the Top 10.  The weekend number, which may get to $7.5M with Monday added, is considerably […]

Weekend #4 of 2015 is looking like $134 million for the top 12 films this weekend, way up from both the norm for this weekend and the same weekend last year.  After missing the American Sniper opening weekend number by a mile in last week’s forecast, forgive us if we are a little gun shy.  But […]