Based on Friday’s grosses, Weekend #44 of 2013 looks like $123 million for the top 12 films, now up 3% from the same weekend’s average in recent years. Opening at 3,407 theaters Friday, Ender’s Game from Lionsgate/Summit grossed $9.8 million Friday and $10.8 million Saturday, still on track for a $28.0 million opening weekend (very close to the $28.5 […]

Based on Friday’s and Saturday’s grosses, weekend #40 of 2014 looks like $142 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, even better than yesterday’s estimate ($129 million) and now 37% above the norm for this weekend ($104 million).  A great start for the fall movie season with two new films opening to different demographics and […]

>Green Lantern stumbled on Saturday and the opening weekend now looks like $52.7 million.  Overall, the weekend is down 24% from last year.    The ShowbuzzDaily Domestic Final estimates now show that Green Lantern will should finish its domestic run with $146 million, while Mr Popper’s Penguins is headed for $64 million.  Super 8 has […]

  OPENINGS:  ANGEL HAS FALLEN (Millenium/Lionsgate) smartly picked a weekend to open that was far enough away from Hobbs & Shaw with its larger and overlapping audience, and near enough to the end of summer to keep the competition sparse  The result was a solid $21.3M opening, almost the equal of the last franchise installment […]

  OPENINGS:  After last week’s Fall Guy stumble, KINGDOM OF THE PLANET OF THE APES (20th/Disney) arrived at the high end of projections with $56.5M.   That was roughly on par with the starts for 2011’s Rise ($54.8M) and 2017’s War ($56.3M), although a bit lower than 2014’s Dawn ($72.6M).  The franchise has reliably done better […]

  OPENINGS:  HALLOWEEN ENDS (Universal, also on Peacock) underperformed badly with $41.3M, about 25% below pre-release expectations, and 17% under the $49.4M start for last year’s Halloween Kills, despite a stronger Thursday night start than Kills ($5.4M vs $4.9M).  The excuse de jour is the Peacock release, which would be dubious in any case considering […]

Before next weekend’s arrival of a bona fide hit, The Dark Knight Rises, this weekend was highlighted by a bit of a summer movie poser: Ice Age: Continental Drift (an estimated $46.0 million opening weekend, missing our forecast in Wednesday’s ShowbuzzDaily Weekend Predictions), looking less like a summer movie that should be given a weekend […]

The weekend looks like a decent $125 million for the top 12 films, a little better than it looked yesterday (now slightly beating the multi-year average for this weekend).  Each of the three openers had good Saturday grosses and are exceeding the predictions in Wednesday’s  ShowbuzzDaily Weekend Forecast. The ShowbuzzDaily Domestic Final estimates for films opening wide this […]