The 31st weekend of the year is looking like $141 million for the top 12 films, not bad for the first weekend of August. Opening at around 2,800 theaters Friday (near the 2,886 average theater count for opening weekends the last two years), 2 Guns from Universal should average $12,200 per theater for the three-day weekend (for a […]

  On Sunday mornings, the devout go to church, and movie studios lie.  (There’s not much overlap between the two groups.)  The studios lie (or fudge, if you’re sensitive about the L Word), fundamentally, because they can get away with it:  when “estimated” box office returns are announced on Sunday mornings, they’re simply repeated–one might […]

  OPENINGS:   Two smart studio decisions bailed out what could have been a scary opening weekend for THE WOLVERINE (20th).  Fox kept the budget relatively low for its expensive genre, just $250M or so including worldwide marketing, and it boosted international appeal with an Asian setting.  Both paid off, as the movie had the robust […]

International box office chart:

STUDIO SCORECARD. 20th Century Fox vaulted ahead of Paramount into fourth place in worldwide box office for 2013 to date, mostly because of The Wolverine.  Universal and Warner Brothers remain a very close #2 and #3, respectively, with both studios grossing well over $100 million this past week (primarily from overseas grosses for Universal’s Despicable Me […]

Based on Friday’s grosses, Weekend #30 of 2013 looks like a decent $158 million for the top 12 films, nearly identical to yesterday’s initial estimate and still comfortably above the same weekend the last few years. The Wolverine is way off our projected opening but still but still the best opening in recent years for a […]

Based on Friday’s grosses, Weekend #30 of 2013 looks like a decent $159 million for the top 12 films, comfortably above the same weekend the last few years. The Wolverine is way off our projected opening but still but still the best opening in recent years for a weekend that often is filled with clunkers. […]

  THE WOLVERINE (20th) is the weekend’s only big newcomer at the box office, and it got off to a healthy $4M start last night.  That number is particularly strong since Wolverine held off till 10PM to start its launch–unlike other summer openings that have begun their “Fridays” at 6-7PM on Thursday–and it was was […]