OPENINGS:  Hiyao Miyazaki’s THE BOY AND THE HERON (GKids) exceeded expectations and set a high-water mark for its filmmaker and for non-franchise Japanese animation with a $12.8M launch.  The film will lose its Imax screens next week and faces challenges from other family-oriented films, but if word of mouth is strong and it can […]

> The Saturday drop for PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 3 turned out to be very much in line with Paranormal 2‘s.  Paramount is estimating a better Sunday hold than the second installment had; if the result is instead the same as last time, the weekend gross will dip below $54M, but to a still-giant number.  Paranormal 3 […]

  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 […]

  OPENINGS:  ZERO DARK THIRTY (Sony) was well ahead of the crowd with $24M, a number slightly depressed (as was almost everything this weekend) by the Sunday combination of NFL playoffs and the Golden Globes.  The $18.8M for A HAUNTED HOUSE (Open Road) didn’t get close to the openings for the Scary Movie franchise (most […]

  OPENINGS:  Despite the strong weekend, it’s a bit troubling that GROWN UPS 2 (Sony) fell 11% on Saturday (the original Grown Ups rose 2% on its 2d day), suggesting frontloading and less than great word of mouth.  That may place the studio’s estimated Sunday drop of 21% and $42.5M weekend total in doubt, but […]

  OPENINGS:  We noted here yesterday that if THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE (Lionsgate) could just hold on as well on its first Saturday as The Hunger Games had, a $160M weekend was within its grasp.  That’s exactly what happened, with the same 25% Saturday drop for Catching Fire that Hunger Games had and a $161.1M weekend […]

  OPENINGS:  DIVERGENT (Summit/Lionsgate) had an unusual trajectory for a YA movie, with a relatively unimpressive start but then much less of a Saturday drop than others in its genre.  The result was a $56M weekend (the number may tick down when adjusted figures are released tomorrow, considering the aggressive estimate of a 31% Sunday […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  20th Century Fox has broken away from the pack with over $2.8 billion worldwide to date for 2014, with another almost $400 million worldwide last week.  Dawn of the Planet of the Apes has enormous upside overseas and it will quickly move out of the middle $100-299 million category to the $300+ million […]