In the bygone movie palace days Quentin Tarantino worships, exclusive “roadshow” engagements of major Hollywood releases sometimes ran for months before the films spread nationwide.  The super-hyped 70mm release of his THE HATEFUL EIGHT (Weinstein) was originally scheduled for a 2-week run, but that was swiftly cut down by half, and then to 6 […]

  OPENINGS:  Despite being the only high-profile arrival of the week, and having a pedigree and visual style that guaranteed it media attention, Robert Zemeckis’s HERE (Miramax/TriStar/Sony) bombed with $5M.  It’s been a tough decade for Zemeckis, once a maker of blockbuster hits, whose most recent moderate success was 2012’s Flight.  Here hasn’t opened overseas, […]

  OPENINGS:  ALADDIN (Disney) will probably be in the top half-dozen Memorial Day openings when Monday brings it to $105M or so (the 3-day total is $86.1M).  Compared to other Disney live-action reboots of animated hits, though, it had a subpar 5% drop on Saturday (The Jungle Book gained 28% on its 2nd day of […]

  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 […]

Bridesmaids and Priest to open at decent levels, but Thor will continue to lead the box office this weekend.  Fast Five will continue to hang around the Top 3. Opening at over 2,700 theaters, Bridesmaids should average a decent $7,300 per theater (for almost $20 million total).  Priest should average $6,100 at around 2,800 theaters […]

Weekend #11 of 2014 is looking like $115 million for the top 12 films, down from last weekend but actually 10% above the average for the comparable weekend the past several years. Opening at around 3,000 theaters Friday (slightly above the 2,886 average theater count for opening weekends the last two years), Need for Speed from Disney should […]

  In our week-long look at the box office prospects of the nearly-here summer movie season on a studio by studio basis, we’ve examined Sony and Universal.  Today our eye is on Warner Bros, typically one of the busiest of the studios. LAST SUMMER:  Overall a success, although not quite to the extent Warners was […]

  OPENINGS:  THE POST (DreamWorks/Reliance/Participant/20th) expanded to wide release with $18.6M over 3 days (which should become $22M with Monday).  That’s a bit better than the $15.4M 3-day start for Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies, which didn’t have the benefit of a holiday weekend opening.  Bridge got to $72.3M in the US, and The Post […]