The complete Friday Box Office report will be posted at its usual time Saturday morning, but in the meantime we have one big over-performer in Despicable Me 2, one opener slightly above forecast (Kevin Hart) and one flat-out, embarrassing bomb (Lone Ranger), doing even worse than our bearish expectations. With $34.3 million Wednesday and $24.5 million […]

  Early numbers at Deadline have the opening day (including Thursday night) of THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE (Lionsgate) at $67.5M, $200K above the launch of the original Hunger Games.  That makes it slightly puzzling that the weekend estimates, at Deadline and elsewhere, peg the weekend at around $145M, $7M or so less than Hunger […]

  We’re just days away from the launch of the summer movie season, the most important part of the year for all of the major studios.  Literally billions of dollars will be on the line over the next several months, with almost every weekend bringing a high-stakes bet to the table from one or more […]

Weekend #44 of 2014 is looking like $73 million for the top 12 films this weekend, down 40% from the norm for this weekend.  This weekend though is really an afterthought, as the calendar trashed it as it does every seven years by placing Halloween on a Friday.  Some half-hearted openings this odd weekend, and […]

Weekend #22 of 2015 is looking like $123 million for the top 12 films this weekend, significantly below the norm for this weekend. San Andreas from Warner Brothers should open with a $36.0 million three-day weekend. Early reviews at RottenTomatoes are barely tilting negative: 45% positive overall. San Andreas is on track for around $104 million domestic. Overseas the film could bring […]

Weekend #33 of 2015 is looking like $124 million for the top 12 films this weekend, very close to the norm for this weekend (see comparisons below). Straight Outta Compton from Universal should open with a $45.5 million three-day weekend. Early reviews at RottenTomatoes are widely supportive: 82% positive overall so far. Straight Outta Conpton is on track for […]

  The last time Halloween fell on a Saturday, in 2009, Hollywood mostly stayed away.  (The concert movie This Is It opened the previous Wednesday.)  This year, two studios tried to counterprogram the holiday with problematic star vehicles, and based on preliminary numbers at Deadline, the results weren’t pretty. BURNT (Weinstein) has been conspicuous for […]

  OPENINGS:  The east coast blizzard seems to have had less effect on the weekend box office than one might have assumed, considering that all the newcomers went up from Friday to Saturday, even though they were in typically front-loaded genres.  Their studio estimates have them bunched within a narrow $825K range for the weekend, […]