The weekend looks like a mediocre $82 million for the top 12 films, a little softer than it looked yesterday (now slightly lagging the multi-year average for this weekend).  Argo continues to do well, as we expected, but the four openers all did even worse than our conservative predictions in Wednesday’s ShowbuzzDaily Weekend Forecast. The ShowbuzzDaily Domestic Final estimates […]

Based on Friday’s and Saturday’s grosses, Weekend #23 of 2013 looks like an okay $152 million for the top 12 films (very similar to yesterday’s estimate), down 13% from last year but 4% above the average for this weekend the past few years.  The Purge is doing much better than forecast and is propping the […]

  OPENINGS:  THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG (Warners/MGM) had a better Saturday hold than last year’s An Unexpected Journey (-22% vs. -25%), suggesting that positive word of mouth is kicking in, and no doubt easing the minds of Warners executives.  The studio’s $73.7M weekend estimate still puts it 13% below Journey‘s start, but if […]

Based on Friday’s and Saturday’s grosses, weekend #29 of 2014 now looks like $135 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, -27% below the norm for this weekend and still below our forecast ($147 million).  This is the fifth really sub-par weekend in a row. Opening at 2,806 theaters, The Purge: Anarchy from Universal grossed $13.0 […]

Based on Friday’s and Saturday’s grosses, weekend #10 of 2015 now looks like $79 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, a little better than yesterday’s $77 million estimate but still down significantly from the norms for this weekend among the worst first weekends of March on record.   Opening at 3,201 theaters Friday, Chappie from Warner […]

  OPENINGS:  Let’s be clear:  the decision to greenlight a $100M production budget for IN THE HEART OF THE SEA (Village Roadshow/Warners)–a period whaling adventure that features about 10 minutes of a CG whale and is otherwise mostly (spoiler alert) about the cast starving and suffering–was fundamentally insane.  Even if the film had been good, […]

  OPENINGS:  The SAUSAGE PARTY (Annapurna/Columbia/Sony) audience was somewhat frontloaded, with a 16% Saturday decline, but the weekend total of $33.6M was still outstanding, the best starring debut for Seth Rogen since the original Neighbors, and higher than the $33M 5-day opening for This Is The End (which opened on a Wednesday).  There’s certainly nothing […]

  OPENINGS:  THE EQUALIZER 2 (Escape Artists/Columbia Sony) rode a relatively stable Saturday (down 5% from Friday) to a $35.8M weekend win, up about 5% from the opening for the first Equalizer in 2014.  That film had an 8% Saturday bump, suggesting that the sequel, like most sequels, will burn out faster than the original, […]