OPENINGS:  TERMINATOR: GENISYS (Skydance/Paramount) had hoped, even with July 4th subduing Saturday business, to find a holiday spark that would allow it to earn at least a $150M total in the US, but after a $28.7M opening weekend ($44.2M including Wed-Thurs), it may be hard-pressed to get past $100M.  That puts additional pressure on […]

  OPENINGS:  STAR TREK BEYOND (Skydance/Alibaba/Huahua/Paramount) had a tepid start, claiming a $59.6M opening weekend in the US.  Even if that number holds (it includes an extremely aggressive Sunday estimate), it would be 20% below the $75..2M 2009 franchise reboot, and even below the $70.2M earned by Star Trek Into Darkness, which opened on a […]

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 (2 points better than last week) and now +2% above the average at this point the past four years ($4.304 billion).  Over the […]

  OPENINGS:  NOBODY (Universal) had a fair start at $6.7M, better than the $4.1M opening for Let Him Go and the $3.1M for The Marksman.  Following the Universal pattern it will hit premium VOD after 2 more weekends, and may hope to reach $20M in US theatres.  Overseas, it launched with $5M. The much bigger […]

  AMERICAN SNIPER (Village Roadshow/Warners):  Depending on how one characterizes Titanic, American Sniper is on track to become the #3 or #4 “serious drama” of all time, behind that film, The Passion of the Christ ($370.8M) and Forrest Gump ($330.3M).  Even if this weekend’s studio estimate of $64.4M turns out to have been tinkered with […]

  OPENINGS:  With the LA movie theatre market now open (at 25% capacity) and a general rise in vaccinations, the box office seems to be taking its first very tentative steps back to pre-pandemic life.  The one wide opening of the weekend THE COURIER (Roadside) wasn’t at all impressive at a $2M start, but the […]

  OPENINGS:  ABOMINABLE (Pearl/DreamWorks/Universal) seized a weekend on the calendar that had a dearth of new children’s movies (and with 2 weeks until The Addams Family opens), and pushed it to a fair $20.9M opening.  However, with roughly $150M in costs, it will need international help to reach profit, and since weekend results were at […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  Paramount again had the biggest week of all the major studios (up $177 million worldwide since last week) exclusively because of continued overseas grosses for Transformers: Age of Extinction.  For the year to date, Paramount is up to $1.25 billion worldwide (still in 5th place among the Hollywood studios).  Warner Brothers had the […]