Based on Friday’s grosses, weekend #44 of 2014 looks like $82 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, down 33% the norm for this weekend ($123 million), which admittedly does not usually have Halloween ruining it by falling on Friday. Opening at 2,766 theaters, Nightcrawler from Open Road Films grossed $3.2 million Friday and $4.7 million […]

> RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES is off to a great start internationally as well, with $23M for the weekend in just 25 territories (only 4 of which–Australia, Spain, Russia and Taiwan–are major boxoffice centers).  The biggest individual winner of the weekend may be Peter Chernin, the former Fox exec who kicks off […]

> Watch It At Home;  The thrills are so postmodern, they don’t seem to be happening in the theater. When the original Scream arrived in 1996, the slaughtering-the-teenagers genre was already old enough to drive; the first Friday the 13th had opened more than 16 years before.  The conventions of the form were as well-worn […]

> The holiday movie season is not off to a roaring start. BREAKING DAWN PART 1:  The giant franchise will of course win Thanksgiving weekend.  But its $12.5M Wednesday gross was down 12% from what New Moon did on the day before Thanksgiving in 2009, which suggests a 5-day weekend that might be at $58M […]

> Worth A Ticket; Birds Fly High Enough for Kids, and Adults Too. Click For More Reviews: THOR    PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN 4    MIDNIGHT IN PARIS Animation has, over the past decade, passed beyond being merely a movie genre to a veritable industry within the industry.  Every studio is in the business now, making films […]

Updated worldwide box office chart for 2013 North American films.  The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug (Warner Brothers) and Frozen (Disney) are the top American performers overseas by far this past week.  Also, click here for a summary of worldwide performance by studio.

Weekend #18 of 2016 forecasts for films opening wide and major returning films: NEW FILMS THIS WEEKEND April 29-May 1, 2016 Critics Positive ($ millions) Opening Weekend Forecast Domestic Total Projection Overseas Total Projection Worldwide Total Projection Keanu WB R 19% 15.5 46 8 54 Mother’s Day OpenR PG13 n/a 10.5 27 23 50 Ratchet […]

[UPDATE: The predictions for the films opening this weekend have been revised, reflecting corrections to some key computations.] Weekend #43 of 2014 is looking like $100 million $109 million for the top 12 films this weekend, up 23% from the norm for this weekend. Opening at around 2,700 theaters Friday (just below the 2,886 average theater […]