OPENINGS:  TRAP (Blinding Edge/Warners) had the unenviable task of facing the 2nd weekend of Deadpool and Wolverine and wasn’t up to the task, emerging at the low end of expectations with $15.6M.  That’s in between the results for M. Night Shyamalan’s last 2 releases, Old ($16.9M) and Knock At the Cabin ($14.1M), but like […]

> No doubt the enormous success of THE LION KING hasn’t been lost on anyone at Disney, and we can expect to see 3D reissues of more classic animation over the next few years, leading into yet more homevideo editions. If not for Lion King being in the market, DOLPHIN TALE would almost certainly have […]

Don’t look a gift boxoffice in the mouth? OPENINGS:  Unsurprisingly, both studios pushed their estimates on MADAGASCAR 3 (DreamWorks Animation/Paramount) and PROMETHEUS (20th) to the highest round number available, meaning $60M and $50M, respectively.  In order to achieve those numbers, the 2 movies with the worst Friday-to-Saturday performance in the Top 10 will need to […]

Friday’s $52.1 million for the top 10 films is very close to the pace for the same day in 2007 (when December 28 was also a Friday). In fact, over the past three days, 2012 is performing almost identically to 2007.  The big differences between the two years are last weekend (December 21-23), which was […]

STUDIO SCORECARD. No change in the year-to-date studio rankings this week, the midpoint of the year. 20th Century Fox was up $133 million from last week mainly thanks to the domestic release of The Heat. Warner Brothers had a similar $129 million weekly gain, mostly because of international gains by Man of Steel.  Disney and Paramount were […]

Updated STUDIO SCORECARD: TOTAL NORTH AMERICAN BOX OFFICE. Looking at wide-release films in North America (those that play on at least 400 screens at some point), 2013 now totals over $8.2 billion, now basically even with last year’s pace and 3% above the prior four-year average 2009-2012 ($8.005 billion). Each year-to-date period below is defined as […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  Year to date, Sony and Universal (on the basis of sheer volume of films) is slightly ahead of Warner Brothers (the studio with the year’s only big hit so far), although three studios are very close to each other. Scroll down for domestic and overseas grosses for each film individually so far […]

  OPENINGS:  The round-number $30M weekend estimate for THINK LIKE A MAN TOO (Screen Gems/Sony) may not last past tomorrow’s final numbers, but even if it stays at that total, it’s $3.6M below the opening weekend for the first Think.  Since sequels are typically more front-loaded than the movies that precede them, that suggests $80-85M for Too, compared to […]