OPENINGS:  The Good Friday/Easter weekend was solid for the most part, but it lacked a major holiday opening because Avengers: Endgame is just a few days away and set to engulf box offices worldwide.  Instead, the studios offered films aimed at niches or short runs.  They were led by THE CURSE OF LA LLORONA […]

  OPENINGS:  LITTLE (Legendary/Universal) led the weekend’s weak crop of newcomers with $15.5M, buoyed by a 15% Saturday bump.  That’s about 15% below the recent opening of What Men Want, which was aimed at a somewhat older audience, and suggests an OK $45M US total.  It had a limited overseas opening in 11 markets, where […]

  SHAZAM (DC/New Line/Warners) is going to win a bleak weekend at the box office, and even it doesn’t have much to boast about.  Preliminary numbers at Deadline have it dropping 68% from last Friday to $6.6M, worse than the Friday-to-Friday drops for Wonder Woman (-59%) and Justice League (-57%).  A $23M weekend would put […]

  OPENINGS:  At $53.5M, SHAZAM (DC/New Line/Warners) had the lowest opening weekend of the current DC run of superhero movies (it was also below all the Marvel openings), but it was produced to be a lower-budget companion piece to the megabusters, and with that in mind, its opening was fine.  Overseas was bigger at $102M, but […]

  By superhero movie standards, SHAZAM (DC/New Line/Warners) was moderately priced, with around $225M in production/marketing costs.  Preliminary numbers at Deadline put its opening day at $20M (including $5.9M from Thursday), and although that’s a cut below comic book blockbusters like Captain Marvel ($61.7M), Spider-Man: Homecoming ($50.8M) or Wonder Woman ($38.2M), it’s solidly in line with […]

  OPENINGS:  DUMBO (Disney) had a 14% Saturday bump that was merely OK considering its underwhelming first day, and that brought it to a $45M weekend.  Even if it reaches $150M in the US, it would need help to get out of red ink with $300M+ in production/marketing costs, and so far it doesn’t seen […]

  The Disney machine is hitting an atypical pothole with DUMBO (Disney), which according to preliminary numbers at Deadline had a $14.8M Friday ($2.6M of that from Thursday night).  That’s very much on the low end of the studio’s live-action remakes of its own animated classics, behind the opening days for Beauty & The Beast […]

  OPENINGS:  US (Blumhouse/Perfect World/Universal) slipped 12% on Saturday, and while that doesn’t compare to Get Out‘s amazing 17% increase on its 2nd day of release, it’s in the range of the 11% drop for It, and better than the 18% for both The Conjuring and the 2018 Halloween.  That pushed Us to a $70.3M […]