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 […]

  OPENINGS:  NO HARD FEELINGS (Columbia/Sony) slightly exceeded tracking expectations with $15.1M, but those expectations were themselves quite low.  With production and worldwide marketing costs in the neighborhood of $100M, the film will need to hold strongly for the next several weeks to reach any profit, and while it has the hard-R comedy field to […]

  OPENINGS:  CIVIL WAR (A24) marked its studio’s biggest swing to date, with costs that will approach $100M for production and worldwide marketing.  (A24 limited its risk by pre-selling some overseas territories to subdistributors.)  The early results were promising, with a studio-record $25.7M weekend, alhough tepid audience surveys and the fact that the audience was […]

  OPENINGS:  SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 3 (Sega/Paramount) was within expectations at $62M, although that was lower than the $72.2M for Sonic 2 in 2022, and while Sonic 2 had a 2% Friday-to-Saturday gain, Sonic 3 slumped by 24% on Saturday.  There’s every chance, though, that Sonic 3 will beat its predecessor’s $190.9M in the US, […]

> IMMORTALS is claiming the same drop for Sunday as it had on Saturday, so that total may come down in actuals.  Even so, as long as the final amount is over $30M (which it certainly should be), that’s a win for Relativity, no matter what the movie’s budget actually was.  Immortals also launched widely […]

  After a moratorium on official boxoffice pronouncements due to the tragic events in Colorado, Warners has officially released the weekend boxoffice figure for THE DARK KNIGHT RISES:  $160.9M.  This is where the unofficial weekend estimates had the picture, although it’s 10-20% below the pre-release expectations for the film.  That was also largely the case […]

  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 […]

STUDIO SCORECARD. 20th Century Fox vaulted ahead of Paramount into fourth place in worldwide box office for 2013 to date, mostly because of The Wolverine.  Universal and Warner Brothers remain a very close #2 and #3, respectively, with both studios grossing well over $100 million this past week (primarily from overseas grosses for Universal’s Despicable Me […]