OPENINGS:  Early January is a potent slot for horror movies, and M3GAN (Blumhouse/Universal) kicked off the year with a strong $30.2M, essentially the same as last year’s $30M for the rebooted Scream, despite all the franchise value of the latter (Scream also had the advantage of opening over the month’s holiday weekend).  M3gan has […]

  OPENINGS:  Amazingly, the 58% first weekend plunge from $96.2M for 2019’s Joker to $40M for JOKER: FOLIE A DEUX (DC/Warners) understates how much audiences hated the new film.  For that, you have to look to the respective Friday-to-Saturday drops, after word of mouth had a chance to set in:  44% compared to 18%, which […]

  OPENINGS:  DARK WATERS (Focus/Universal) expanded into wide release at 2012 theatres, and emerged with a mild $4.1M.  (By comparison, Focus’s previous release Harriet opened at 2059 with an $11.7M weekend.)  Its lack of awards traction thus far suggests that it’s going to have a hard time building any momentum for a run through the […]

Based on Friday’s grosses, weekend #17 of 2015 looks like $88 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, better than it looked yesterday ($81 million) but still below the norm for this weekend.  A solid Saturday lifted the weekend estimates for most films at least somewhat, but the weekend rankings did not change materially. Opening at […]

  OPENINGS:  Things couldn’t have gone better for M. Night Shyamalan’s SPLIT (Blumhouse/Universal).  It built on its strong Friday with a 13% bump, extremely good for a horror movie, and is estimating $40.2M for its weekend in the US against modest production/marketing costs of about $50M, which means a healthy profit is a sure thing.  […]

Based on Friday’s and Saturday’s grosses, Weekend #1 of 2013 is now on pace for $126 million, a touch stronger than it looked yesterday and still very much line with the comparable weekend in previous years.  Both Texas Chainsaw 3D and Django Unchained are also looking a little stronger than they seemed yesterday, but the […]

  OPENINGS:  DUNE: PART TWO (Legendary/Warners) landed at the high end of projections with $81.5M.  Comparisons with the 2021 Dune have little meaning, since that film was part of the studio’s controversial year of premiering simultaneously in theaters and via streaming, but compared to recent blockbusters, Dune 2 was below Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania […]

  OPENINGS:  SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING (Marvel/Columbia/Sony) was considerably more front-loaded than initial enthusiasm suggested, dropping 27% on Saturday, and pushing its weekend total to $117M.  While the weekend result was still a very big number, that Saturday decline was far steeper than the 8-9% Day 2 drops for Wonder Woman and Guardians of the Galaxy 2 […]