OPENINGS:  The weekend multiple for HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON: THE HIDDEN WORLD (DreamWorks Animation/Universal) was 3.2x, about mid-way between the first Dragon‘s 3.6x and Dragon 2‘s 2.6x.  (Note that the studio isn’t including $2.5M in paid preview income in its weekend number–if that were added to Friday the way Thursday night revenue is, […]

  For the third consecutive weekend, BLACK PANTHER (Marvel/Disney) is having its way with the box office.  Preliminary numbers at Deadline have Panther down 43% from last Friday to $16.3M, which should give it a $62M weekend, bringing its US total close to $500M.  That will put its 17-day total well ahead of the $457.7M […]

Weekend #24 of 2014 is looking like a very sturdy $201 million for the top 12 films this weekend, 31% above the norm for this weekend and 2% above the same weekend last year. Opening at over 4,100 theaters Friday (well above the 2,886 average theater count for opening weekends the last two years), How to Train Your […]

  OPENINGS:  The big studios wanted no part of the weekend after Thanksgiving, and the only arrivals were a pair of fringe indies.  Even for a micro-budgeted horror product, INCARNATE (High Top/Blumhouse/Universal) was a flop at $2.7M. In a barely-wide release at 639 theatres, the Christian-themed BELIEVE (Freestyle) attracted no one outside the flock (and […]

  OPENINGS:  Not much changed between Friday’s results and weekend studio estimates.  THE DARK TOWER (MRC/Columbia/Sony) was unsurprisingly frontloaded between fans of the novels and bad word of mouth, and it dropped 13% on Saturday.  Sony is projecting a $19.5M weekend (the fact that the studio didn’t push the number past $20M indicates either honesty […]

  Now that we’ve looked through all the major and mini-major Hollywood studios (Disney, Warner Bros, Paramount, Sony, 20th Century Fox, Universal and Lionsgate/Summit) and examined their summers, today we’ll wrap up our summer studio survey with snapshots of some of the more prominent independent studios.  Summer isn’t their key season–the August/September film festivals will […]

  OPENINGS:  SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING (Marvel/Columbia/Sony) was considerably more front-loaded than initial enthusiasm suggested, dropping 27% on Saturday, and pushing its weekend total to $117M.  While the weekend result was still a very big number, that Saturday decline was far steeper than the 8-9% Day 2 drops for Wonder Woman and Guardians of the Galaxy 2 […]

  OPENINGS:  ARGYLLE (Apple/Universal) arrived within blah expectations at $18M.  That makes it the third consecutive wildly expensive theatrical flop for Apple (with worldwide marketing included, costs were around $300M), and while the company has a few more projects on the calendar, including a pair of Brad Pitt vehicles, one has to wonder how many […]