OPENINGS:  THE EQUALIZER 3 (Escape Artists/Columbia/Sony) performed both within expectations and at around the same level as its predecessors, with $34.5M for the 3-day weekend compared to $36M for Equalizer 2 and $34M for the first in the franchise.  (The Monday holiday is projected to bring the total to $42M.)  Also like the previous […]

  Note:  Holdover titles tended to decline less than usual because comparisons include last week’s Easter Sunday. OPENINGS:  BORN IN CHINA (Disney) was at the top of an unimpressive group of debuts this weekend with $5.1M, narrowly ahead of the $4.6M for Monkey Kingdom, the last in the studio’s “Disneynature” series of Earth Day wildlife […]

STUDIO SCORECARD. No change in the year-to-date studio rankings this week, the midpoint of the year. 20th Century Fox was up $133 million from last week mainly thanks to the domestic release of The Heat. Warner Brothers had a similar $129 million weekly gain, mostly because of international gains by Man of Steel.  Disney and Paramount were […]

  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 […]

> No doubt the enormous success of THE LION KING hasn’t been lost on anyone at Disney, and we can expect to see 3D reissues of more classic animation over the next few years, leading into yet more homevideo editions. If not for Lion King being in the market, DOLPHIN TALE would almost certainly have […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  Fox rolls on, running away with 2014 worldwide with another $144 million this week (mostly from continued strong overseas grosses from Maze Runner and Gone Girl).  Fox is a huge #1 with almost $4.2 billion for the year to date worldwide.  The next best week came from lowly Universal ($134 million worldwide the past week), […]

  OPENINGS:  ONE PIECE FILM: RED (Crunchyroll/Sony) opened at $9.5M, on the low end of recent national anime releases compared to Jujutsu Kaisen‘s $18M and Dragon Ball Super‘s $21.1M.  As is typical for the genre, it was extremely frontloaded, earning more than 50% of its weekend total by the end of Friday.  However, its US […]

Warner Brothers is back on top of Disney, thanks to the second Hobbit film.  For a complete ranking of 2013 films individually by worldwide performance click here. TOTAL NORTH AMERICAN BOX OFFICE. Looking at wide-release films in North America (those that play on at least 400 screens at some point), 2013 totals almost $9.5 billion, virtually even with […]