The occasional piece of youth-oriented counterprogramming aside, the studios don’t bring out their big guns for Super Bowl Weekend, since Sunday is destined to be deflated.  Even by those standards, though, this is looking like a dim few days. The decision to hold the Coen Brothers’ star-studded HAIL, CAESAR! (Universal) out of 2015 awards […]

  OPENINGS:  It wasn’t so much that THE BYE BYE MAN (STX) overperformed at $13.4M for the 3-day weekend (that number should rise to $15M on Monday thanks to the Martin Luther King Day holiday), but that everything around it flopped, clearing the way for it to be the #1 new title at the box […]

  OPENINGS:  PACIFIC RIM: UPRISING (Legendary/Universal) pulled in a family audience on Saturday, giving it a 3% bump, while the first Pacific Rim had dropped 13% on its 2nd day of release.  That pushed Uprising‘s weekend to $28M, still down 25% from the original’s start.  The US result for Uprising, however, is almost an afterthought, […]

  OPENINGS:  READY PLAYER ONE (Village Roadshow/Warners) had a fair if unthrilling start, with $41.2M over the 3-day Good Friday/Easter weekend plus $12M on its Thursday opening day for a $53.2M 4-day total, considerably less than the $61M Kong: Skull Island earned in its first 3 days.  That points toward a $125M US ultimate, and […]

  The combined box office for John Krasinski’s first two films as director, Brief Interviews With Hideous Men and The Hollars, was barely over $1M.  But overnight, Krasinski is a bankable Hollywood director thanks to A QUIET PLACE (Par), which according to preliminary numbers at Deadline took in $19M on opening day ($4.3M from Thursday […]

  Expectations were low for the holiday weekend’s expensive new openings, and that’s proving to be accurate.  According to preliminary numbers at Deadline, it was the low-budget THE PURGE:  ELECTION YEAR (Blumhouse/Universal) that led the group on Friday with $13.4M (including $3.6M from Thursday night), better than the $13M opening day for Anarchy, the last […]

  OPENINGS:  In the world of family movies, the 33% Saturday bump for A WRINKLE IN TIME (Disney) was mediocre.  (By comparison, Peter Rabbit rose 97% on its 1st Saturday.)  That brought the weekend to a soft $33.3M.  Family movies sometimes enjoy lengthy runs and high multiples, and Wrinkle faces little direct competition in the […]

  THE DARK TOWER (MRC/Columbia/Sony) will probably win the weekend, but in unimpressive fashion.  It had a $7.7M opening day (including $1.8M from Thursday night), putting it on track for a $19M weekend.  The production budget was reportedly kept reasonable in the $60Ms, but Sony gave it an A-level marketing campaign, which will put total […]