Weekend #2 of 2014 is looking like $100 million for the top 12 films, a pretty shabby total for a weekend that normal totals $125 million or more. Opening at around 2,700 theaters Friday (slightly below the 2,886 average theater count for opening weekends the last two years), Lone Survivor from Universal should average about $8,200 per […]

  OPENINGS:  Following several months of strong showings from the horror genre, PREY FOR THE DEVIL (Lionsgate) arrived at $7M to mop up the Halloween weekend remainder.  That was around the expected result, and considering that Prey was a low-budget effort with little national marketing, it might be enough to set a pace for minimal […]

  OPENINGS:  ELVIS (Warners) opened at the higher end of low expectations with $30.5M.  That technically put it into a dead heat with Top Gun: Maverick for the weekend crown, although that’s misleading because like virtually all big-studio openings, Elvis essentially had a 4-day opening, while Maverick‘s weekend didn’t get to count any of its […]

  OPENINGS:  HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA 3: SUMMER VACATION (Sony Animation/Columbia/Sony) clocked in with a reliable $44.1M weekend, just about midway between the first Transylvania‘s $42.5M and the second’s $48.5M.  (Sticklers might note that this the first of the franchise to feature Thursday night screenings, giving it a slightly longer “weekend”.)  There are some other family movies […]

  OPENINGS:  The stated $101M weekend start for THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY PART 2 (Lionsgate) means that we won’t really know whether it went over $100M until final numbers are released tomorrow.  But even if that number holds, it will be down 17% from last year’s Mockingjay 1.  More seriously, the international opening was $146M, […]

  After several painful weekends burdened by one high-profile flop after another, Hollywood was bailed out by two of its most venerable franchises. SPECTRE (MGM/Columbia/Sony) will be, based on preliminary numbers at Deadline, the 2d biggest opener of the Bond series.  Its $28.1M first day (which includes $5.25M from Thursday night) puts it behind only […]

  OPENINGS:  THE GREAT WALL (Legendary/Universal) scraped its way to $18.1M in the US, and should add another $3M or so on Monday.  The $50M it will hope to reach here will barely pay for its US marketing campaign, so the spectacle lives or dies overseas.  Right now it’s at $244.6M in the rest of […]

Weekend #34 of 2012 looks like a typically bad fourth weekend of August.  Three shitty new films open and a political documentary goes semi-wide, and each should be well under $10 million for the weekend.  The top 12 films this weekend should total $89 million, about the same pace for the comparable weekend the last […]