OPENINGS:  Cheap PG-13 horror movies are the assembly-line workers of the studios, rarely resulting in showy profits, but paying the bills between blockbusters.  OUIJA (Universal) and its $20.006M opening (we’ll see how that holds up in final numbers tomorrow) is a prime example, likely to make its way to profit thanks to a $5M […]

> Hope you like Hunger Games rip-offs, because plenty of them are on the way. OPENINGS:  The 3d biggest opening weekend of all time, the 2d best Saturday, the 4th best Sunday… and is it done?  Lionsgate is estimating a reasonable 29% Sunday drop for THE HUNGER GAMES, but considering that the movie has overperformed […]

  OPENINGS:  WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING (Columbia/Sony) launched with $17M, ahead of (low) expectations, and fueled by an audience of women in the midwest/south.  There’s no direct competition in sight, and it should be able to leg out past $50M in the US, which would be considered a win for the moderately-budgeted production.  Crawdads may […]

  OPENINGS:  Melissa McCarthy is now a genuine Hollywood player with the enormous debut of IDENTITY THIEF (Universal), beating all pre-release estimates with $36.6M.  (Take that, Rex Reed!)  Apart from Universal, the happiest studio in town is Fox, which has the McCarthy/Sandra Bullock vehicle The Heat coming up in the thick of summer movie season […]

  OPENINGS:  TRANSFORMERS: RISE OF THE BEASTS (Hasbro/Paramount) launched at the higher end of tracking expectations with $60.5M.  Beasts is a much bigger-budgeted effort than its immediate predecessor, 2018’s Bumblebee (which opened with $21.7M but had a 6x multiple thanks to word of mouth and the dynamics of the Christmas box office).  More impressively, Beasts […]

  OPENINGS:  LOGAN (TSG/20th) was in full control of the weekend at $85.3M, and the most impressive part of that may be the 5% Saturday drop, an even better hold than Deadpool‘s 10% and the 12% for The Wolverine, let alone the 22% for the last X-Men movie.  That suggests excellent word of mouth, and although […]

> 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 […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.     YEAR TO DATE BOX OFFICE. Looking at North American box office, 2015 to date is still +6% above last year and still +2% above the average for this point the past four years ($6.690 billion).  Over the same period, Hollywood films have grossed over $17.7 billion worldwide when we add overseas box office (that’s […]