Spidey is in the books… so we’re officially on the clock for The Dark Knight Rises. OPENINGS:  In addition to its $140M 6-day US opening, THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN (Sony) is reporting $129M for the weekend from 74 international territories (it had already earned $72M from territories where it opened last week, for an overseas […]

  Note:  due to last week’s low-grossing Super Bowl Sunday, all weekend-to-weekend comparisons appear unusually strong this week. OPENINGS:  THE SPONGEBOB MOVIE:  SPONGE OUT OF WATER (Nickelodeon/Paramount) notched the #5 February opening ever with $56M (although not quite in a league with last year’s The LEGO Movie, which was #2 with $69.1M).  The studios seem […]

  OPENINGS:  After Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, 21 Jump Street, and now THE LEGO MOVIE (Warners), writer/directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller will be able to do just about anything they want:  all 3 of their projects have not only been smash hits, but they’ve greatly overperformed expectations, spawning 3 new franchises in […]

  OPENINGS:  $17.1M for THE CALL (TriStar/Sony) is more than the movie cost to produce (although it won’t pay for the marketing), and sets the Halle Berry vehicle up to be a modest hit.  However, there’s no spinning the $10.3M for THE INCREDIBLE BURT WONDERSTONE (Warners), which will lose much more than its $35M production budget […]

  OPENINGS:  With a dreadful $5.3M weekend, OUT OF THE FURNACE (Relativity) emerged burnt to a crisp.  The only useful thing it could do at this point is boost Christian Bale’s chance for an Oscar nomination–not for Furnace, but for American Hustle, where he’s so visually and tempermentally different than he is in Furnace that it […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  Here is an updated look at the 2018 film slates by studio. The studio totals also include 2018 dollars for films released in late 2017. YEAR TO DATE BOX OFFICE. Looking at North American box office, 2018 to date is now +9% above last year and still +11% above the average for this point […]

> There’s not much to add about the weekend grosses that hasn’t been said (see Mitch Metcalf’s round-up report here), so let’s take a look at who, apart from the studios themselves, did and didn’t have a fun weekend: WINNERS Women of THE HELP:  Emma Stone isn’t likely to get Oscar consideration for her performance, […]

  OPENINGS:  The box office for TWISTERS (Warners/Universal) was paradoxical.  In the US, the movie strongly outperformed expectations with $80.5M.  However, it showed much less appeal overseas, with $27.1M in 76 territories this weekend ($42.7M to date including some revenue from markets that opened last week).  Twisters is also about to lose virtually all its […]