The complete Friday Box Office report will be posted at its usual time Saturday morning, but in the meantime we have one big over-performer in Despicable Me 2, one opener slightly above forecast (Kevin Hart) and one flat-out, embarrassing bomb (Lone Ranger), doing even worse than our bearish expectations. With $34.3 million Wednesday and $24.5 million […]

  2018, as is often the case, is kicking off at the box office, with low-budget horror, and according to preliminary numbers at Deadline, INSIDIOUS: THE LAST KEY (Blumhouse/Universal) easily took Friday with $12.5M (including $2M from Thursday night).  That’s a very solid number, not up to the $16.8M for January 2012’s The Devil Inside, […]

  The negligible horror cheapie INCARNATE (High Top/Blumhouse/Universal) is the only new wide opening of the post-Thanksgiving weekend, and with just $800K on Friday according to preliminary numbers at Deadline and a weekend that may not break $2M, even the ultra-low budget Blumhouse division may not be able to find any shred of profit from […]

  Deadline is reporting a preliminary opening day of around $75M (including $25M from Thursday night) for CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR (Marvel/Disney), and one has to wonder:  are audiences getting the teensiest bit tired of superhero spectacles?  That $75M is a giant number, of course–it blows away the $36.9M that Captain America: Winter Soldier earned […]

  Truth be told, “weekend” box office doesn’t mean much in a week where Friday/Saturday/Sunday are no stronger than the weekdays that surround them, and virtually all the openings took place on Wednesday.  (Also, morning estimates aren’t very different from the preliminary numbers we posted last night.)  Nevertheless, a few thoughts. OPENINGS:  THE WOLF OF […]

  We’re just days away from the launch of the summer movie season, the most important part of the year for all of the major studios.  Literally billions of dollars will be on the line over the next several months, with almost every weekend bringing a high-stakes bet to the table from one or more […]

  MINIONS (Illumination/Universal) was expected to enfold the weekend box office in its little yellow fingers, and so it is.  Preliminary numbers at Deadline give it a $45M opening day, which appears to be the largest opening in the history of movie animation (the asterisk is because we now consider “Friday” to include Thursday night, […]

  OPENINGS:  It was a bleak Memorial Day weekend at the box office, the worst in decades.  FURIOSA: A MAD MAX SAGA (Warners) limped to a victory for Friday-Sunday with $25.5M, but it may well tumble to 2nd place once the Monday holiday numbers are tallied.  Tellingly, Warners refused to so much as issue a […]