A fairly sturdy set of Saturday numbers firmed up the weekend a bit, but the start of the holiday movie season is still just mediocre. OPENINGS:  JACK REACHER (Paramount) had a 13% Saturday bump and is predicting an 18% drop on Sunday, for a $15.6M weekend.  That tracks for a holiday period of about $50M, […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  20th Century Fox has pushed past $2.9 billion worldwide in 2014 to date, as Dawn of the Planet of the Apes gets rolling overseas.  Paramount is the other studio with more than $100 million this past week (thanks to continued strong overseas receipts for Transformers: Age of Extinction) now past $1.5 billion worldwide for the […]

  (Note:  Most of the studios aggressively estimated their Sunday declines as being around 10%, even though last year’s Memorial Day Weekend Sunday drops were mostly steeper than that, so there could be a number of downward adjustments in store when final numbers are released.) OPENINGS:  X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST (20th), oddly enough, was […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  Updated look at 2016 by studio. YEAR TO DATE BOX OFFICE. Looking at North American box office, 2016 to date is now only marginally above last year and still +3% above the average for this point the past four years ($9.818 billion).  Over the same period, Hollywood films have grossed $25.4 billion worldwide when […]

With the release of Thor: The Dark World Disney has reclaimed second place in the worldwide box office race, pushing Universal to third and moving to within $100 million of Warner Brothers.  Still a lot of overseas upside for the second installment of Thor so Disney should be back at #1 in the next week or two.   TOTAL […]

STUDIO SCORECARD. With the strong domestic and international opening of Despicable Me 2, Universal had a very good week (up $311 million from last week and almost catching Warner Brothers in terms of worldwide box office for the year).  Warner Brothers, thanks to Man of Steel, still brought in $157 million this week.  Next week the studio […]

  WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  Here is an updated look at the 2019 film slates by studio.   BOX OFFICE. Looking at North American box office, 2019 is now -5% below last year’s comparable span (1 point better than last week) and now basically even with this point the past four years ($7.325 billion).  Over the […]

  OPENINGS:  HALLOWEEN ENDS (Universal, also on Peacock) underperformed badly with $41.3M, about 25% below pre-release expectations, and 17% under the $49.4M start for last year’s Halloween Kills, despite a stronger Thursday night start than Kills ($5.4M vs $4.9M).  The excuse de jour is the Peacock release, which would be dubious in any case considering […]