OPENINGS: ANGEL HAS FALLEN (Millenium/Lionsgate) smartly picked a weekend to open that was far enough away from Hobbs & Shaw with its larger and overlapping audience, and near enough to the end of summer to keep the competition sparse The result was a solid $21.3M opening, almost the equal of the last franchise installment […]
WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD. Here is an updated look at the 2019 film slates by studio. BOX OFFICE. Looking at North American box office, 2019 ends -4% below last year’s comparable 52-week span and basically even with this point the past four years ($10.656 billion). Over the same period, Hollywood films have grossed over $27.7 billion […]
OPENINGS: FREAKY (Blumhouse/Universal) led the weekend at $3.7M. It was the third consecutive weekend that a Universal-branded film opened at #1 (aided by the studio’s deal with AMC that allows its films to hit digital 3 weeks after theatrical release) and the fifth new #1 to open in the $3.1-4.1M range. Like the others, […]
OPENINGS: DUNE (Legendary/Warners, also on HBO Max) launched in US theaters at $40.1M, the highest start for a film also premiering on HBO Max. (And while Warners had previously preserved Thursday night for theatrical-only, the studio allowed Dune to hit HBO Max nationwide simultaneous with its first East Coast screenings.) The film should also […]
OPENINGS: ELVIS (Warners) opened at the higher end of low expectations with $30.5M. That technically put it into a dead heat with Top Gun: Maverick for the weekend crown, although that’s misleading because like virtually all big-studio openings, Elvis essentially had a 4-day opening, while Maverick‘s weekend didn’t get to count any of its […]
OPENINGS: JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 4 (Lionsgate) roared to a $73.5M start, more than 20% higher than its predecessor Parabellum‘s $56.8M. If it holds at that pace–and it has no direct competition until Renfield on April 14–it should become the first title in the franchise to pass $200M in the US. (Already, Lionsgate is pushing […]
OPENINGS: Hiyao Miyazaki’s THE BOY AND THE HERON (GKids) exceeded expectations and set a high-water mark for its filmmaker and for non-franchise Japanese animation with a $12.8M launch. The film will lose its Imax screens next week and faces challenges from other family-oriented films, but if word of mouth is strong and it can […]
OPENINGS: TRANSFORMERS ONE (Hasbro/Paramount) underdelivered vs projections by about 20%, and its dim $25M start didn’t even give it the weekend’s #1 ranking at the box office. Paramount was taking a calculated risk by rebooting the franchise via PG-rated animation, and it doesn’t seem to have worked out. It faces direct competition next weekend […]