There’s a reason why Christopher Nolan may be, along with James Cameron, the last filmmaker who can truly demand blank checks from Hollywood.  His WWII recreation DUNKIRK (Warners), devoid of name stars (apologies to Harry Styles) but riding a tide of Oscar-level reviews, is already overperforming expectations with a $19.8M opening day (including $5.5M […]

  OPENINGS:  STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI (Lucasfilm/Disney) had an excellent Saturday for a blockbuster of its size, dropping 39% from Friday, where The Force Awakens had fallen 43%.  That cemented Last Jedi as the 2nd-highest opening in US history at $220M (down 11% from Force Awakens)–and that studio estimate may even be a tad […]

  STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI (Lucasfilm/Disney) was expected to be gigantic, but not quite as huge as 2015’s The Force Awakens, which benefited from a decade of pent-up expectations.  That’s exactly where it’s heading, as preliminary numbers at Deadline have Friday at $100.4M, of which $45M is from Thursday night.  That opening day is […]

The 52nd weekend of the year is looking like $181 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, a very healthy performance for the final weekend of the year. Opening at 2,537 theaters today (slightly below the 2,886 average theater count for opening weekends the last two years), The Wolf of Wall Street from Paramount should average a solid $9,600 per […]

  OPENINGS:  We won’t really know the order of the weekend’s closely-bunched Top 3 movies until final numbers are released tomorrow, but since the default position of any studio with a new opening is to claim victory, the fact that AMERICAN MADE (Cross Creek/Universal) is currently in 2nd place with $17M can’t be a good […]

Weekend #25 of 2012 looks like another disappointment: a soft $150 million for the top 12 films, down 12% from last year’s comparable weekend and down 14% from the four-year average for the weekend.  Pixar’s Brave should open well, but the other two openers will struggle to find any audience and there certainly won’t be […]

  OPENINGS:  THE SECRET LIFE OF PETS 2 (Illumination/Universal) had a better launch than this weekend’s other big arrival, but it was a major box office disappointment in its own right.  The $47.1M weekend was down 55% from the first Pets just 3 years ago, and although Pets 2 will likely hit profit thanks to […]

  OPENINGS:  This was the weekend of AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER (20th/Disney), and the epic’s launch was softer than widely expected at $134M in the US and $301M in all major overseas markets including China.  Box office apologists, who at this point resemble political press secretaries, have rushed in to spin that Way of […]