OPENINGS:  THE EQUALIZER 3 (Escape Artists/Columbia/Sony) performed both within expectations and at around the same level as its predecessors, with $34.5M for the 3-day weekend compared to $36M for Equalizer 2 and $34M for the first in the franchise.  (The Monday holiday is projected to bring the total to $42M.)  Also like the previous […]

  OPENINGS:  What are we to make of the $23M start for KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON (Paramount/Apple)?  As serious 3+hour historical epics go, while it’s a small fraction of Oppenheimer‘s $82.5M launch, it’s better than the $22M 5-day opening for House of Gucci, and the $18.4M for 2013’s Scorsese/DiCaprio The Wolf of Wall Street […]

  OPENINGS:  Let’s be clear:  the decision to greenlight a $100M production budget for IN THE HEART OF THE SEA (Village Roadshow/Warners)–a period whaling adventure that features about 10 minutes of a CG whale and is otherwise mostly (spoiler alert) about the cast starving and suffering–was fundamentally insane.  Even if the film had been good, […]

  As with Spectre 2 weeks ago, THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY PART 2 (Lionsgate) is making a tremendous amount of money in its opening weekend–but not as much as had been expected in light of what its franchise predecessor had earned.  According to preliminary numbers at Deadline, Mockingjay 2 will have a $47M launch, including […]

  OPENINGS:  FANTASTIC BEASTS: THE CRIMES OF GRINDELWALD (Warners) opened at $62.2M in the US, down 16% from the first Beasts.  In addition, it was more front-loaded, with a 16% Saturday drop compared to 12%.  Exit polls and reviews suggest that word of mouth won’t be as strong this time, so a $200M US total […]

>Very lame weekend ahead, as is normal for the first weekend in December.  Coming off the last two weekends, which are usually the #1 and #15 weekends of the year in terms of total dollar volume, this weekend is usually ranked 50th overall.  After the extravaganza of movie-going leading up to and through Thanksgiving weekend, […]

  OPENINGS:  3-day weekend totals were largely in line with where they were headed on Friday night.  COCO (Pixar/Disney) settled in at $49M ($71.2M since Wednesday).  On a 3-day basis, that was almost exactly the same as Tangled‘s $48.8M, suggesting that Coco should land at $200M in the US.  That would put it in the […]

  VENOM (Tencent/Columbia/Sony) easily set a new October opening record with a studio-reported $80M weekend, far ahead of Gravity‘s $55.8M.  However, Venom dropped 19% on Saturday, worse than Thor: The Dark World (1% increase), Doctor Strange (4% drop) and even Justice League (15% drop), although certainly far better than the 38%/41% plunges for Batman v. […]