OPENINGS:  ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL (20th) squeezed everything it could out of its opening 2-holiday week, with paid preview screenings on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights (totaling $2.4M) preceding its official Thursday opening.  All-in, that put it at $36.5M through Sunday, which will probably become $41M with Monday.  It has two more or less open […]

  OPENINGS:  THE LEGO MOVIE 2: THE SECOND PART (Warners Animation) had a solid 83% family matinee bump on Saturday, but its $34.4M weekend studio estimate is still down more than 50% from the opening of the original Lego Movie, and down 35% from The Lego Batman Movie.  (It’s considerably better than the relatively disastrous […]

  THE LEGO MOVIE 2: THE SECOND PART (Warners Animation) is looking like a textbook example of a studio watering down its own franchise.  Warners jumped into 2 spin-offs before even reaching its first official sequel, and the result according to early numbers at Deadline is a $8.9M opening day, down 48% from the first […]

  OPENINGS:  It’s possible to make money on Super Bowl weekend, as hits like Dear John ($30.5M), Taken ($24.7M) and Chronicle ($22M) have shown.  But MISS BALA (Columbia/Sony) didn’t have what it takes, with a sluggish $6.7M start.  The 5% Saturday bump suggests that word of mouth isn’t bad, but next weekend it will have […]

  MISS BALA (Columbia/Sony) is the only new opening this Super Bowl weekend, but it’s failing to take advantage of its status.  Deadline‘s preliminary numbers have Miss Bala‘s opening day at $2.7M ($650K of that from Thursday night), and with Sunday’s box office due to crash for everyone, it may not reach $7M for the […]

  OPENINGS:  Despite a holiday opening and a much higher (and more costly) level of hype, GLASS (Blinding Edge/Blumhouse/Buena Vista Intl/Universal) barely squeezed past Split over the 3-day weekend, $40.6M vs. $40M.  Even that number assumes a solid Sunday, although an 8% Saturday drop (Split gained 13% on its 1st Saturday), indicates that word of […]

  GLASS (Blinding Edge/Blumhouse/Buena Vista Intl/Universal) will easily win this MLK Weekend, but it’s not shaping up as the phenomenon it was envisioned to be–and we’ll see over the next few days whether it has a word of mouth problem.  According to preliminary numbers at Deadline, it had a $16.3M Friday (including $3.7M from Thursday […]

  OPENINGS:  After 4 weeks of holiday movies occupying most of the market, moviegoers were ready for something new, and the beneficiary was THE UPSIDE (STX/Lantern), which substantially beat projections with a $19.6M weekend.  A 14% Saturday bump suggested strong word of mouth, and the final weekend number could go higher than the studio projection.  […]