Based on Friday’s and Saturday’s grosses, weekend #8 of 2014 looks now like $98 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, slightly below this weekend’s average the past several years but well above last year’s weak showing this weekend.  Two new films misfired this weekend, while Lego Movie continues to reign supreme (although now looking […]

Based on Friday’s and Saturday’s grosses, weekend #50 of 2014 now looks like $78 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, a touch better than yesterday’s estimate ($76 million) but still down sharply from the norm for this weekend (down 39% from $127 million) and down 45% from the same weekend last year.   Opening […]

  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 […]

  OPENINGS:  In what Hollywood hopes will be the last weekend of drought for a while, the TV episodes packaged as DEMON SLAYER:  KIMETSU NO YAIBA – TO THE HASHIRA TRAINING (Crunchyroll/Sony) led the newcomers with $11.6M, a bit better than the $10.1M for last year’s Demon Slayer episodes.  In addition, the film earned $13.7M […]

  OPENINGS:  ABIGAIL (Universal) launched at the low end of expectations with $10.2M, lower than the $11.8M for Night Swim and virtually the same as the $9.9M for Imaginary.  Those films are respectively at $32.5M and $28M in the US, which is the likely range for Abigail.  However, the new film reportedly cost $28M before […]

  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 […]

> As expected, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides opens at #1, but Bridesmaids steals the show with an impressive second weekend. The ShowbuzzDaily Domestic Final estimates now show that Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides should finish its domestic run with $254 million.  Bridesmaids has been upgraded to $122 million domestic (with […]

  On Sunday mornings, the devout go to church, and movie studios lie.  (There’s not much overlap between the two groups.)  The studios lie (or fudge, if you’re sensitive about the L Word), fundamentally, because they can get away with it:  when “estimated” box office returns are announced on Sunday mornings, they’re simply repeated–one might […]