Not a bad weekend for the box office this weekend. Overall business is up about 8% from the similar weekend average. Three new movies opened (each with a different feel and target demographic target). No big hits among the three, but three solid performances. The ShowbuzzDaily Domestic Final estimates for films opening […]
Based on Friday’s and Saturday’s grosses, weekend #4 of 2015 now looks like $142 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, well above the norm for the fourth weekend of the year, which usually struggles to get above $100 million. (See complete weekend track below.) All credit goes to American Sniper, which is truly extraordinary. […]
OPENINGS: The entertainment business revolves these days around IP, but not all franchises are created equal, and there turned out to be a thunderous lack of interest in TERMINATOR: DARK FATE (Skydance/Tencent/20th/Disney/Paramount), which opened to just $29M in the US against production/marketing costs of $300M+. A big-budget action epic in that predicament normally hopes […]
WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD. YEAR TO DATE BOX OFFICE. Looking at North American box office, 2015 to date is now +6% above last year and +6% above the average for this point the past four years ($4.430 billion). Over the same period, Hollywood films have grossed $12.3 billion worldwide when we add overseas box office (that’s […]
OPENINGS: DOCTOR STRANGE (Marvel/Disney) did what a Marvel movie is supposed to do. In the US, its $85M debut was higher than the starts of Captain America and Thor (both $65-66M), and just a hair away from the November opening of Thor 2 ($85.7M), it not quite in a league with the $94.3M for […]
OPENINGS: The most hyped box office weekend of the year delivered and then some. BARBIE (Mattel/Warners) burst into theaters with $155M, technically the best of the year (although the $146.4M for Super Mario Bros came after a Wed-Thurs start that had already brought in $58.3M). Among the many records set by the blockbuster were […]
OPENINGS: Hiyao Miyazaki’s THE BOY AND THE HERON (GKids) exceeded expectations and set a high-water mark for its filmmaker and for non-franchise Japanese animation with a $12.8M launch. The film will lose its Imax screens next week and faces challenges from other family-oriented films, but if word of mouth is strong and it can […]
Marvel’s The Avengers continues to tear up the record books. The studio is projecting the second weekend will come in at $103.2 million (now almost exactly hitting the $104 million in our ShowBuzzDaily Weekend Predictions) and leaving the old second-weekend record in the dust ($75.6 million for Avatar in December 2009). Avengers now also holds the record […]