A Valentine’s Day in the middle of Presidents Day weekend allowed for strong Sunday studio estimates–in one case, suspiciously so. OPENINGS:  A couple of notable sidelights to the gargantuan success of DEADPOOL (Marvel/20th), which has the #17 opening of all time at $135.1M (probably $155M with the Monday holiday), is now the highest-opening R-rated […]

> Based on Friday and Saturday box office (and estimated Sunday numbers), Real Steel is now looking like an opening weekend of over $27 million — $2 million more than projected yesterday.  Real Steel jumped 27% from Friday to Saturday (from $8.55 million to $10.85 million).  With a projected final domestic gross of $81 million, […]

  OPENINGS:  ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD (Imperative/TriStar/Sony) opened on Monday to an indifferent public that didn’t care about Kevin Spacey being replaced with Christopher Plummer, and nothing has changed over the course of the holiday week.  Its first full weekend is estimated at $5.5M, which should become $7.5M with Monday included, and it’s […]

Based on Friday’s and Saturday’s grosses, weekend #31 of 2014 looks like $173 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, well above our forecast ($150 million) and 33% above the norm for this weekend ($129 million). Opening at 4,080 theaters, Guardians of the Galaxy from Disney and Marvel grossed $37.7 million through Friday and $31.0 million Saturday, […]

  OPENINGS:  JUMANJI: THE NEXT LEVEL (Columbia/Sony) successfully rode its strategy of arriving in theatres ahead of The Rise of Skywalker to a $60.1M weekend, far ahead of the $36.2M opening weekend for the last Jumanji (although that had a different release pattern, opening on the Wednesday between that year’s Star Wars installment and Christmas […]

  OPENINGS:  BIRDS OF PREY (DC/Warners) was supposed to be the year’s first tentpole smash, but at $33.3M in the US, it was a dismal disappointment, by far the lowest start for this generation of DC movie properties.  It was also weak overseas with $48M in all major markets except Japan and China (where of […]

  OPENINGS:  THE LIGHT BETWEEN OCEANS (DreamWorks/Reliance/Participant/Disney) brings to an ignominious end the distribution relationship between DreamWorks and Disney.  Their final shared title disappointed on every level, with a $5M 3-day weekend that might become $6M on Monday, and no chance of recouping its costs.  Even though the weak reviews, length and period setting worked […]

  OPENINGS:  GHOSTBUSTERS: AFTERLIFE (Columbia/Sony) opened with $44M, which was $2M below the launch of the 2016 Ghostbusters, a result treated as such a disaster that the franchise had to be re-rebooted.  Afterlife, though, is considered a success, thanks to a lower production budget ($75M, moderate for a tentpole), pandemic box office standards, and the […]