Weekend #44 of 2014 is looking like $73 million for the top 12 films this weekend, down 40% from the norm for this weekend.  This weekend though is really an afterthought, as the calendar trashed it as it does every seven years by placing Halloween on a Friday.  Some half-hearted openings this odd weekend, and […]

  OPENINGS:  KILLING THEM SOFTLY (Weinstein) is estimating a pathetic $7M weekend, just about the worst of Brad Pitt’s starring career, and even that may be pushing it, since the studio is claiming a relatively soft Sunday drop.  The same is true of the even more dismal THE COLLECTION (LD), which for reasons best known […]

> Well, there’s something you don’t see every day:  2 studios both content to forego bragging rights for the Sunday weekend estimates and wait for actual numbers on Monday, when public attention is lower. (Note:  The Hot Blog, which calculates its own numbers, has COWBOYS & ALIENS up by $100K.)  The important thing to remember […]

> MONEYBALL‘s debut looks to be in line with the opening weekend of The Social Network ($22.4M) just about a year ago.  That movie rode the Oscar race to a $97M gross.  Moneyball is more likable but less incisive than Network, and while it’s going to be part of the Oscar conversation, it’s less likely […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  Updated look at 2016 by studio.   YEAR TO DATE BOX OFFICE. Looking at North American box office, 2016 to date is now even with last year and still +2% above the average for this point the past four years ($5.943 billion).  Over the same period, Hollywood films have grossed $15.3 billion worldwide when […]

> If Arthur Schnitzler had only been a member of the WGA in 1900, when he wrote the play La Ronde, and he’d had the benefit of the format rights guild members receive today, he and his descendants would be very rich indeed.  Schnitzler’s concept, a series of sequences in which, initially, Person A meets […]

>Team Metcalf is now $102 million ahead of Team Salem in the first annual Summer Movie Draft.  The weekday business of Transformers 3 the next few days will push the margin a little higher, but the opening weekend of the final Harry Potter Friday will erase these recent gains and position Salem for a commanding […]

  Deadline is reporting that THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN (Sony) has set a new all-time Tuesday record with $32-35M, beating previous record-holder Transformers, the last movie to open on a Tuesday that fell on July 3, which had $27.9M in 2007.  (There are, admittedly, very few movies that open on Tuesdays–after Transformers, the next was the […]