There were no new wide releases on this pre-holiday, pre-Last Jedi weekend, so all the action was in holdovers and limited releases.  According to preliminary numbers at Deadline, COCO (Pixar/Disney) easily retained its crown with a $6.3M Friday.  That was down 67% from last week’s holiday Friday, better than the drops for Moana (70%) […]

  OPENINGS:  NO HARD FEELINGS (Columbia/Sony) slightly exceeded tracking expectations with $15.1M, but those expectations were themselves quite low.  With production and worldwide marketing costs in the neighborhood of $100M, the film will need to hold strongly for the next several weeks to reach any profit, and while it has the hard-R comedy field to […]

The 24th weekend of the year is looking like a very good $201 million for the top 12 films, well above the same weekend the last few years.   Opening at over 4,200 theaters Friday (well into the top 10% of theater counts), Man of Steel from Warner Brothers should average $26,400 per theater for the […]

  OPENINGS:  The biggest noise of the weekend by far was made outside the US, where CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR (Marvel/Disney) began its global campaign, and earned $200.2M in 63 territories comprising about two-thirds of the international terrain (not including China and Russia, among others).  Disney has made it clear that that this is an […]

  We’re in the 2-week void between Thanksgiving and the Awakening of the Force, and the low-budget KRAMPUS (Legendary/Universal) is the weekend’s only major studio arrival.  According to preliminary numbers at Deadline, it’s performing a tad beyond expectations with $6.25M on Friday.  Given the quick burn-out for horror movies, that should mean a $13-15M weekend, […]

Iron Man 3 will push the 18th weekend of the year to well over $210 million for the top 12 films, fully 19% better than the average for the comparable weekends recently but still 15% below the same weekend last year, when The Avengers exploded. Opening at over 4,000 theaters Friday (a very high theater […]

  OPENINGS:  The surprise isn’t so much that COCAINE BEAR (Universal) “overdelivered,” but that expectations were so low for a picture that had been the subject of pop culture fascination for months.  The $23.1M weekend seems like a realistic reflection of that fact, and although business is likely to drop quickly now that audiences have […]

Weekend #7 of 2015 is looking like $179 million for the top 12 films this weekend (Friday-Sunday), well above the normal volume for this weekend and above last year, which was also a strong Presidents Day Weekend (see track below). Opening at 3,645 theaters Friday (well above the 2,886 average theater count for opening weekends the […]