> This weekend should be another good one versus last year, up around 9%.  The strongest entry looks to be Hugh Jackman and the robot boxers in Real Steel — it’s playing in a lot of theaters and we expect a very solid per screen average, giving it a forecast $26 million opening.  (Aside from The Lion […]

Weekend #23 of 2012 looks like it will total about $174 million for the top 12 films, up 32% from last year’s comparable weekend and up 19% from the four-year average for the weekend.  A pair of decently-reviewed openers aimed at very different audiences should both put some life back in the box office after […]

  After AVENGERS: ENDGAME (Marvel/Disney) torched the record books last weekend, the remaining question was whether it would have the stamina to challenge the biggest records of them all, The Force Awakens in the US ($936.7M) and Avatar worldwide ($2.79B).  It’s not clear after Friday whether this weekend will answer that in a definitive way.  […]

The 50th weekend of the year is looking like $160 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, a very good kick-off to the holiday movie season. Opening at around 3,900 theaters Friday (well above the 2,886 average theater count for opening weekends the last two years), The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug from Warner Brothers should average a very good $21,200 per […]

Weekend #33 of 2012 looks like an unusually robust third weekend of August.  Four new films open, with The Expendables 2 an atypically strong entry for this late weekend.  The top 12 films this weekend should total $143 million, up over 35% from the pace for the same weekend the last few years. Opening at […]

  OPENINGS:  There had been an expectation, or at least a hope, that MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – DEAD RECKONING PART I (Skydance/Paramount) would get a boost from the spectacular performance of Top Gun: Maverick, but that didn’t come to pass, and Mission 7 performed in line with others in the franchise.  That meant $56.2M over the […]

  OPENINGS:  INSIDE OUT (Pixar/Disney) had the largest opening for an animated non-sequel ever at $91.1M.  (Disney is claiming a slightly more abstract record as well, the largest opening for a film that isn’t based on any preexisting source material–excluding The Hunger Games, for example, because it began as a book–but the animation record will […]

  OPENINGS:  A variety of studios threw product at the Labor Day weekend wall.  None of them broke through, but REAGAN (ShowbizDirect) zeroed in on its target audience–reportedly nearly 2/3 of the audience was over 55 years old, and 3/4 were white–for $7.4M over the 3-day weekend ($9.2M with Monday).  Although films appealing to older […]