> Early numbers for Friday and Saturday suggest that the first day, at least, of Hurricane Irene didn’t do enormous damage to the boxoffice.  Deadline reports that THE HELP had a healthy Friday-to-Saturday bump of 38%, on its way to a $14.5M weekend which would be only $1M below Mitch Metcalf’s pre-storm weekend prediction.  Similarly, […]

> For all the wildly unexpected success of THE LION KING, Disney has limited boxoffice upside, because the new Blu-Ray hits the streets on October 4, and that’s not likely to be a date that can be changed. The Friday number for DRIVE is right on the edge between meeting expectations and disappointing them; its […]

> The post-Thanksgiving weekend is usually brutal, and this year is no exception. BREAKING DAWN PART 1:  The likely 60% drop from last weekend is as expected for this very front-loaded series.  Right now the film is running $9M below New Moon‘s 2009 total at the same point in its run, but Breaking Dawn 1 […]

> It’s actually harder to come up with a manageable list of Honorable Mention movies than a Top 10, because there are so many films that are eminently worth seeking out and seeing, but perhaps a little bit flawed–sometimes too thin, sometimes too audacious for their own good.  It wouldn’t have been much of a […]

> Based on the preliminary numbers at Deadline, the race between CHRONICLE (20th) and THE WOMAN IN BLACK (CBS) is still too close to call at $21-22M each.  No matter who claims victory on Sunday morning, the final weekend result will depend on how the films are each treated by Super Bowl Sunday, and may […]

> Normally the universe of pop culture only allows for one giant event at a time, and not accidentally–they stay out of each other’s way.  You won’t find any major movies opening the same day as The Avengers or The Dark Knight Rises, and the other networks barely program against the Super Bowl or American […]

> According to preliminary numbers at Deadline, THINK LIKE A MAN (Screen Gems/Sony) is overperforming in a big way, and should easily take the first non-Hunger Games weekend in over a month.  Man‘s opening day is estimated at $12M, and assuming a Tyler Perry level of frontloading (specifically Why Did I Get Married Too, which […]

  MONTE CARLO:  Watch It At Home – The Usual Tourist Stops   Beware the credit “Screen Story by.”  It means that whatever the original source material for a movie may have been, it’s essentially been abandoned, looted for a single story element that’s now attached to an entirely different script.  In the case of […]