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 […]

Weekend #1 of 2015 is looking like $133 million for the top 12 films this weekend, up +12% from the norm for this weekend and up +4% from the same weekend last year.   Opening at 2,602 theaters Friday (somewhat below the 2,886 average theater count for opening weekends the last two years), The Woman in Black 2 from Relativity […]

  Warner Bros and Peter Jackson are very, very lucky that THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG is a significantly better movie than last year’s An Unexpected Journey, which will give it strong word of mouth, because early box office indications are that audiences, burned by Journey, are initially dubious about spending 3 more hours […]

  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, […]

  OPENINGS:  This was supposed to be the kick-off weekend for the holiday movie season, but Dune 2 decamped for 2024 and the studios didn’t step in to replace it, so the biggest arrival of the week was the expansion of PRISCILLA (A24) from 4 theaters to 1359 with $5.1M.  That’s not a bad number […]

  OPENINGS:  EVIL DEAD RISE (Warners) modestly exceeded expectations with $23.5M, although that was still below the franchise’s last reboot in 2013 at $25.8M (which only reached a $54.2M total in the US and didn’t spawn a sequel).  Horror has become the most dependable genre in Hollywood, and Evil Dead Rise is the only one […]

>This weekend will be the first one in a while to underperform the same weekend in 2010.  One highly-anticipated film is looking like it will do well but not great, and one kid/teen movie is looking like it will come and go very quietly. Opening at about 3,200 theaters, Super 8 should average a strong […]

Weekend #38 of 2016 forecasts for films opening wide and major returning films: NEW FILMS THIS WEEKEND September 16-18, 2016 Critics Positive ($ millions) Opening Weekend Forecast Domestic Total Projection Overseas Total Projection Worldwide Total Projection Blair Witch LG R 53% 21.5 57 60 117 Bridget Jones’s Baby Uni R 83% 13.5 40 30 70 Snowden […]