Note:  Holdover titles tended to decline less than usual because comparisons include last week’s Easter Sunday. OPENINGS:  BORN IN CHINA (Disney) was at the top of an unimpressive group of debuts this weekend with $5.1M, narrowly ahead of the $4.6M for Monkey Kingdom, the last in the studio’s “Disneynature” series of Earth Day wildlife […]

  OPENINGS:  We’ll find out tomorrow if the studio’s $100.2M US weekend estimate for THE FATE OF THE FURIOUS (Universal), which counts on an influx of post-church Easter Sunday Christians, will slip into double figures.  But even if the number holds, it’s down 32% from the Furious 7 opening.  If Universal’s hypothesis that this decline […]

  OPENINGS:  We’ll see how the numbers hold up in tomorrow’s finals, but for now at least THE BOSS BABY (DreamWorks Animation/20th) is the weekend winner with $49M, considerably better than expectations.  The only dour note on the success is that it was rather frontloaded for a family non-sequel, with a 28% Saturday bump.  That […]

  OPENINGS:  The news was good and bad for POWER RANGERS (Lionsgate).  Its US opening was very solid at $40.5M (even if that number turns out to be a bit overstated, with an ambitious Sunday estimate).  But it carries at least $200M in production/marketing costs, and to reach profit, it also needs to be strong […]

  OPENINGS:  According to published reports, Emma Watson’s deal on BEAUTY & THE BEAST (Disney) starts at a $3M base, but rises to $15M if the film reaches around $750M worldwide.  It seems like Watson can safely buy any Lamborghini that’s caught her eye, because Beauty is a global blockbuster.  In the US, Disney’s $170M […]

  OPENINGS:  KONG: SKULL ISLAND (Legendary/Tencent/Warners) is playing as a quasi-family movie, perhaps in response to the R-rated Logan and Get Out.  That gave it a much more muscular Saturday than similar big-budget monster movies, up 19% on Saturday where Godzilla fell 16% and Pacific Rim dropped 13%.  With that boost, Kong should hit its […]

  OPENINGS:  LOGAN (TSG/20th) was in full control of the weekend at $85.3M, and the most impressive part of that may be the 5% Saturday drop, an even better hold than Deadpool‘s 10% and the 12% for The Wolverine, let alone the 22% for the last X-Men movie.  That suggests excellent word of mouth, and although […]

  OPENINGS:  GET OUT (QC/Blumhouse/Universal) had a remarkable Saturday performance for a horror movie, rising 17% in a genre that usually drops sharply on its 2d day of release.  That’s better than the 13% bump for Day 2 of Split, and also better than the 14% increase for Insidious, one of the leggiest of recent horror […]