After a few mild weeks, INCREDIBLES 2 (Pixar/Disney) has the summer box office back in blockbuster mode.  It’s on pace to easily break Finding Dory‘s $135.1M animation opening record.  According to preliminary numbers at Deadline, Incredibles 2 had a massive $69M Friday (including $18.5M from Thursday night), far better than Dory‘s $54.7M.  If business […]

  OPENINGS:  OCEAN’S EIGHT (Village Roadshow/Warners) had a $41.5M weekend, the highest of the Ocean’s movies by a bit (not adjusting for inflation).  The only point of concern is that it’s the first Ocean’s movie to drop on Saturday (by 4%, where the others had risen 6-17%), although that may only reflect the fact that […]

  OCEAN’S EIGHT (Village Roadshow/Warners) wasn’t expected to be a blockbuster, and its reported production budget of $70M was in keeping with that, although the A-level Warners marketing campaign will raise the price.  It’s performing at the high end of expectations with a $15.9M Friday (including $4M from Thursday night) according to preliminary numbers at […]

  OPENINGS:  ADRIFT (H Brothers/STX) was at the top of a very low hill with $11.5M (plus $350K in 9 overseas territories).  STX, which only has domestic rights, is claiming to be on the hook for only around $30M in limited production and marketing costs, but even at that number, it may not break even, […]

  There’s usually a box office hangover after a holiday weekend opening, but the Friday-to-Friday drop for SOLO (Lucasfilm/Disney) was particularly sour, down 77% to $8M in preliminary numbers at Deadline, compared to the 73% for last year’s Pirates of the Caribbean V, and 74% for X-Men: Days of Future Past.  In fact, it was […]

  OPENINGS:  With the addition of Saturday and overseas numbers, SOLO (Lucasfilm/Disney) is starting to shift from a disappointment to a potential disaster.  In the US, Solo fell 30% on Saturday (by comparison, last year’s Memorial Day opening Pirates of the Caribbean 5, a movie no one particularly loved, dropped only 14% on its Saturday, […]

  This may be a good time to pause the stories about Disney’s infalliability, and the unstoppable dominance of the Star Wars franchise.  SOLO (Lucasfilm/Disney) is underperforming in a big way, with preliminary numbers at Deadline putting its opening day at $36.5M, extremely frontloaded with $14.1M of that total from Thursday night.  That’s the lowest […]

  OPENINGS:  Although unquestionably huge, and sure to be enormously profitable against roughly $250M in production/marketing costs, DEADPOOL 2 (20th) opened on the low end of expectations, about 5% below the first Deadpool at $125M.  The sequel has the very reasonable explanation that its forebear had the advantage of a Sunday that was part of […]