OPENINGS:  GHOSTBUSTERS: FROZEN EMPIRE (Columbia/Sony) played as a family movie, with a Saturday afternoon bump, and that enabled it to match projections at $45.2M, slightly higher than the $44M start for 2021’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife.  However, Frozen Empire cost $25M more than Afterlife, so a 3% increase at the box office may not cover the […]

Weekend #35 of 2012 looks fairly similar to the Labor Day weekends over the past few years.  Only about $81 million for the top 12 films this weekend (defined as the three-day Friday-Sunday portion we always concentrate on), and very little chance of any new film breaking out on what is traditionally a very rough […]

The 7th weekend of 2013 looks like it will be down from prior years but not at the excessive rates we have seen the past few weekends.  We expect $121 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, 6% to 15% below the normal pace for this weekend.   Opening in 3,552 theaters Thursday, A Good […]

Weekend #18 of 2012 (the first weekend of May and the unofficial start of the summer movie season) looks like it will be about $214 million for the top 12 films, up 38% from last year’s comparable weekend and up 46% from the four-year average for this weekend.  It’s all about Marvel’s The Avengers.   […]

  OPENINGS:  ANGEL HAS FALLEN (Millenium/Lionsgate) smartly picked a weekend to open that was far enough away from Hobbs & Shaw with its larger and overlapping audience, and near enough to the end of summer to keep the competition sparse  The result was a solid $21.3M opening, almost the equal of the last franchise installment […]

  OPENINGS:  The box office was boosted in general by Veterans Day, which gave many Americans a 3-day weekend, but ARRIVAL (FilmNation/Sony/Paramount) was still notably impressive with a $24M weekend at a mid-wide 2317 theatres.  Its word of mouth remains to be seen (it dropped 4% on Saturday), but it seems to be in good […]

  OPENINGS:  GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL 3 (Marvel/Disney) launched with $114M in the US, within tracking expectations but 22% lower than 2017’s Guardians 2, despite marketing that emphasized the end of a beloved (sub-)franchise.  Guardians 2 ended with a 2.66 multiple to its opening, and if Guardians 3 performs the same way, its US total […]

  Even with a new horror movie in the market, A QUIET PLACE (Paramount) continued to over-perform, down just 46% from last Friday according to preliminary numbers at Deadline to $10.2M, putting it on track for a $35M 2nd weekend.  That’s the same hold as last year’s Split, and with higher numbers, suggesting that Quiet […]