OPENINGS:  The first Sonic the Hedgehog had the final pre-pandemic smash opening in 2020 before theaters started to close, with $58M for its 3-day weekend ($70M for the full Presidents Day holiday).  Now SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 2 (Paramount) has gotten off to an even bigger start with $71M for 3 days.  Although the success […]

  OPENINGS:  The MCU-adjacent MORBIUS (Marvel/Columbia/Sony) was unable to pull off Venom‘s feat of opening big despite lousy reviews.  Its $39.1M weekend was less than half of Venom‘s $80.3M, and negative word of mouth was evident in the 24% Friday-to-Saturday drop.  It’s never a good sign when the best spin a studio can put on […]

  OPENINGS:  THE LOST CITY (Paramount) opened at the high end of expectations at $31M, a particularly solid result these days for a movie that skews both female and older (the latter crowd evident in the 2% Friday-to-Saturday rise).  Lost City faces little challenge in its target demo for the next month, so it could […]

  OPENINGS:  There’s some inconsistency in the way the weekend numbers for JUJUTSU KEISEN 0 (Crunchyroll) are being reported, with some outlets using the $17.7M figure that includes pre-Friday shows, and others using the $14.8M that begins the count on Friday itself.  For better or worse, the convention these days is to roll what are […]

  OPENINGS:  Despite being limited to 2 Saturday shows at 803 theaters, the (tape-delayed) live concert movie BTS: PERMISSION TO DANCE (Trafalgar) earned $6.8M at the US box office.  Even with an average $35 ticket price, that’s an impressive achievement, and the international result was even more remarkable at $25.8M.  This was the highest-grossing movie […]

  OPENINGS:  THE BATMAN (DC/Warners) was the first event movie to open in 3 months, and the market responded with a $128.5M weekend, the 2nd-highest of the pandemic era (although not close to Spider-Man: No Way Home‘s $260.1M start).  About $4M of that number is attributable to AMC’s new “variable pricing” policy, hiking the ticket […]

  OPENINGS:  The major studios took the weekend off in anticipation of next week’s The Batman overwhelming the market.  STUDIO 666 (Open Road) didn’t find much of a crowd for its Foo Fighters horror with a $1.6M weekend, and it probably won’t reach $10M in the US. CYRANO (UA/MGM) may have outsmarted itself, scheduled for […]

  OPENINGS:  UNCHARTED (Columbia/Sony) had a strong start with $44.2M ($51M with the holiday Monday), once again largely due to the M18-34 demo, but also suggesting that Tom Holland may be emerging as an action star even without webs to spin.  (Of course it didn’t hurt that Uncharted followed his mega-smash Spider-Man so closely that […]