ONCE UPON A TIME… IN HOLLYWOOD (Columbia/Sony), the summer’s great adult-oriented, non-franchise, auteur/movie star hope, had a solid start per preliminary numbers at Deadline with a $16.7M opening day (including $5.8M from Thursday night).  That’s the biggest opening of Quentin Tarantino’s career, higher than the $14.4M for Inglourious Basterds and the $15M for Django […]

  OPENINGS:  The theatrical box office continued to pick itself up off the floor this weekend with two high-performing R-rated action movies, which thrived despite an overlapping target audience and the availability of one on a streaming service.  MORTAL KOMBAT (Warners, also on HBO Max) emerged the victor with $22.5M for the weekend, and could […]

  OPENINGS:  After an interruption for The Batman, the MCU resumed its place at the top of popular culture with the arrival of DOCTOR STRANGE IN THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS (Marvel/Disney), which launched within the industry’s very high expectations at $185M in the US.  That’s roughly the same as Avengers: Age of Ultron ($191.3M), and […]

  OPENINGS:  MAGIC MIKE’S LAST DANCE (Warners) was produced as an HBO Max original, and then the new Warners ownership decided to give it a mid-level theatrical release in 1500 theaters.  The result was an $8.2M weekend, considerably below the $12.9M launch of Magic Mike XXL in 2015 (at 3355 theaters).  XXL had a leggy […]

  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:  IT ENDS WITH US (Wayfarer/Columbia/Sony) roared past expectations with a remarkable $50M.  That studio estimate comes with a couple of asterisks–it includes an unspecified amount from wide Wednesday screenings, and assumes an extremely strong Sunday hold–but even so, it’s a great start for a drama that may not even have $75M in production/worldwide […]

> $59.99 for home VOD — Genius! Box office normally starts to pick up when the calendar turns to November, moving from $90-100 million per weekend through most of October to $120 million or more per weekend in early November (building toward $185 million or more for the Friday-Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend).  Last year’s first […]

> Another up weekend at the box office is on store, led by an eclectic assortment of films.  It should be an up weekend, led by Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Big Happy Family and a forecast $31 million opening.  Playing at over 2,100 theaters, Madea should average over $14,000 per theater, a very good number.  Water […]