OPENINGS:  Hollywood’s barely-breathing Labor Day weekend didn’t get any healthier on Saturday.  The CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (Columbia/Sony) re-release had a 35% Saturday bump, and like everything else in the market, it will hold nearly steady on this holiday Sunday, then have a Sunday-type decline on Monday.  (The exception is that children’s […]

  OPENINGS:  Even in healthy times, Super Bowl weekend isn’t a fertile time for movie openings, the exceptions being counterprogramming like 2008’s Hannah Montana concert movie.  In that vein, this weekend featured the limited release of the animated EARWIG AND THE WITCH (GKids) at 430 theatres, for a $100K total that translated into a $230 […]

Based on Friday’s and Saturday’s grosses, weekend #51 of 2014 now looks like $127 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, up slightly from yesterday’s estimate ($126 million) and now up 5% from the norm for this weekend ($121 million) but down -8% from the same weekend last year.   Continuing at 3,875 theaters, The Hobbit: […]

  OPENINGS:  LEAP (Weinstein) was the weekend’s tallest dwarf, claiming to have cleared $5M for the weekend, but that number will require an extremely strong Sunday hold.  Even if it’s sustained in tomorrow’s finals, it’s hardly anything to be enthused about–except in comparison to the weekend’s other losers. BIRTH OF THE DRAGON (WWE/Blumhouse/BH Tilt/Universal) couldn’t […]

  OPENINGS:  The $21.6M start for THE HITMAN’S BODYGUARD (Summit/Lionsgate) was on target for the B-movie, which had a modest 2% Saturday dip.  It also earned $6.6M in early international release.  While it does nothing much to burnish Ryan Reynolds post-Deadpool, Hitman is on track for a modest profit on $90M or so in production/worldwide […]

  OPENINGS:  NAPOLEON (Apple/Sony) launched at the higher end of expectations, with $20.4M over the 3-day weekend and $32.5M for the 5-day holiday.  As with Apple’s Killers of the Flower Moon, however, that leaves it a long way from any hope of breakeven on roughly $300M in production/marketing costs (particularly considering that audience polling indicated […]

  OPENINGS:  SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK (CBS/Lionsgate) dropped 21% on its 2nd day of release, which isn’t unusual for the horror genre (recently, The Curse of La Llorona fell 26% on its Day 2, and Child’s Play was down 25%), resulting in a $20.8M weekend, and a likely $40M US total.  Scary […]

  OPENINGS:  As we forecast on Friday night, X-MEN: APOCALYPSE (TSG/20th) isn’t just running lower than 2014’s Days of Future Past, it’s also been more frontloaded.  20th is projecting a $65M 3-day weekend and $80M over 4 days, but Apocalypse dropped 23% from Friday to Saturday, compared to 18% for Future Past, and Apocalypse‘s Saturday […]