In the bygone movie palace days Quentin Tarantino worships, exclusive “roadshow” engagements of major Hollywood releases sometimes ran for months before the films spread nationwide.  The super-hyped 70mm release of his THE HATEFUL EIGHT (Weinstein) was originally scheduled for a 2-week run, but that was swiftly cut down by half, and then to 6 […]

  OPENINGS:  The $35.4M weekend result for SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE (Sony Animation/Columbia/Sony) was in keeping with its Friday projections, and the expectation is that it will thrive through the holidays.  Its 3% Saturday bump, though, which is low for a family animated movie (The Grinch jumped 47% on its 2nd day of release) but […]

The 29th weekend of the year is looking like $178 million for the top 12 films, about normal for this weekend on average the past few years but down significantly from last year, which was dominated by the opening of The Dark Knight Rises and the madness of the theater shooting in suburban Denver. Opening at […]

Iron Man 3 will push the 18th weekend of the year to well over $210 million for the top 12 films, fully 19% better than the average for the comparable weekends recently but still 15% below the same weekend last year, when The Avengers exploded. Opening at over 4,000 theaters Friday (a very high theater […]

  OPENINGS:  ONE PIECE FILM: RED (Crunchyroll/Sony) opened at $9.5M, on the low end of recent national anime releases compared to Jujutsu Kaisen‘s $18M and Dragon Ball Super‘s $21.1M.  As is typical for the genre, it was extremely frontloaded, earning more than 50% of its weekend total by the end of Friday.  However, its US […]

  OPENINGS:  There’s some inconsistency in the way the weekend numbers for JUJUTSU KEISEN 0 (Crunchyroll) are being reported, with some outlets using the $17.7M figure that includes pre-Friday shows, and others using the $14.8M that begins the count on Friday itself.  For better or worse, the convention these days is to roll what are […]

  OPENINGS:  There’s no way to spin the $10.5M US opening of  Steven Spielberg’s WEST SIDE STORY (20th/Disney), and its even worse $4.4M start in 37 overseas territories (with $2.8M of that from France and the UK), as anything but flat-out bad.  Unlike other 2021 musicals like In the Heights ($11.5M opening even with a […]

  OPENINGS:  ANT-MAN & THE WASP (Marvel/Disney) turned out to be rather front-loaded, with a 30% Saturday drop (compared to 14% for the 2nd day of Ant-Man).  That pushed the studio weekend estimate down to $76M, which is still 33% better than Ant-Man‘s debut, but at the low end for Marvel, ahead of only the […]