> It’s always to the advantage of the new opening to own first place at the boxoffice, so if Paramount thought FOOTLOOSE could pull it out over REAL STEEL, they would have staked their claim today.  (Both pictures are reporting a 39% Saturday-to-Sunday drop.) The Hollywood Reporter says Real Steel also made $23M overseas, which […]

  And now we know which was more front-loaded. OPENINGS:  According to preliminary numbers at Deadline, TED (Universal) fell 10-15% from Friday to Saturday, which is about the same way the original Hangover played.  The weekend should still get to at least $50M, ahead of Hangover, making it potentially the highest-opening original R-rated comedy ever. MAGIC MIKE […]

  OPENINGS:  TEXAS CHAINSAW (Lionsgate) did what most horror movies do, dropping 23% on Saturday for a lousy 2.3x weekend multiple of its Friday gross.  It was actually in 2d place on both Saturday and Sunday, but that frontloaded Friday was enough to give it a comfortable $23M win for the weekend.  With a $20M […]

STUDIO SCORECARD. With the strong domestic and international opening of Despicable Me 2, Universal had a very good week (up $311 million from last week and almost catching Warner Brothers in terms of worldwide box office for the year).  Warner Brothers, thanks to Man of Steel, still brought in $157 million this week.  Next week the studio […]

Thor: The Dark World has pushed Disney back into first place in the worldwide box office race, pushing Warner Brothers back into second place and Universal into third. For a complete ranking of 2013 films by worldwide performance click here. TOTAL NORTH AMERICAN BOX OFFICE. Looking at wide-release films in North America (those that play on […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  Year to date, Warner Brothers has moved well ahead of its competing studios, thanks to two bona fide hits to balance two strikeouts.  Sony and Universal, the next level down each with around $450 million worldwide to date, has a similar hit and miss ratio to Warner Brothers, but the hits are […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  Big Hero 6 has pushed Disney into a solid second place, giving it some distance from #3 Warner Brothers.  Interstellar has allowed Paramount to pull into 4th place, passing Sony and drawing fairly close to Warner Brothers (with Paramount boasting a much higher hit-to-miss ration than Warner Brothers has).   Scroll down for domestic and […]

  OPENINGS:  When studios trot out “bad weather” as their excuse for an underwhelming opening, it’s the industry equivalent of citing a homework-eating dog–and this week, it’s particularly clear that the inclement conditions that supposedly affected FOCUS (RatPac Dune/Warners) didn’t interfere at all with the holdovers that performed very strongly over the past 3 days.  […]