Tossing IN THE HEART OF THE SEA (Village Roadshow/Warners) onto what is historically one of the weakest box office weekends of the year–and this year also just days ahead of the arrival of cinema’s Death Star–was a Hail Mary, and it’s not paying off.  Based on preliminary numbers at Deadline, it earned $4M on […]

The 51st weekend of the year is looking like $141 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, above last year’s similar weekend but -7% below the multi-year average for this weekend. Opening at around 3,450 theaters today (well above the 2,886 average theater count for opening weekends the last two years), Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues from Paramount should average […]

The 35th weekend of the year is looking like $83 million for the top 12 films, exactly in line with the Friday-Sunday portions of recent Labor Day weekends and among the three or four weakest weekends of the entire year.  After all, this is the weekend that has spawned Oogieloves and Shark Night 3D among other […]

  OPENINGS:  Word of mouth caught up with THE EMOJI MOVIE (Columbia/Sony) on Saturday, with a 14% drop (by comparison, Captain Underpants rose 11% on its 2d day of release, and last year’s Angry Birds Movie jumped 47%), but a $25.7M weekend is still good money for a movie no one seems to like.  (The […]

  This was the weekend that the COVID-19 crisis hit the box office in earnest, and while that fact pales in importance compared to the human cost of the pandemic, it’s going to represent a multi-billion dollar hit that will reverberate through the lives of many throughout the world.  As bad as the numbers below […]

  The most interesting box office story of the weekend is WARCRAFT (Legendary/Universal).  It’s a dud in the US, with $11M on Friday according to preliminary numbers at Deadline, which with its frontloaded fan audience probably means a $25M or so weekend and a domestic total that may not reach $75M.  That’s not much on […]

>The complete WEEKEND PREDICTIONS will be posted later this morning.  Until then, an early look.  Contagion should open at #1 with $20.5 million this weekend.  Warrior should open with about $10 million, battling with The Help for second place.  Finally, in the DOA department, Bucky Larson: Born to be a Star (produced by Adam Sandler) […]

Weekend #27 of 2014 is looking like a not so hot $135 million for the top 12 films this weekend, -21% below the norm for this weekend.  It certainly doesn’t help that Independence Day and all its distractions of picnics, grilling and fireworks falls on a Friday, but there are precious few movies opening or holding […]