> Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides opens huge overseas, almost topping Fast Five in its first weekend.    The table below shows the domestic and international grosses for the Top 25 films (out of the 47 movies released between January and April at over 500 theaters).  Fast Five is still the #1 film worldwide released between January and […]

>Through Monday, July 4, Team Metcalf has pulled within $60 million of Team Salem.  Metcalf will enjoy another few weeks of Transformers: Dark of the Moon and two more marginal openings before Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 on July 15 puts Salem back in the driver’s seat.  Next update on Friday.

>The 13th weekend of the year should be very strong: about $169 million for the top 12 films up 49% from last year’s comparable weekend and up 32% from the four-year average for this weekend.  Wrath of the Titans should open just below $40 million, far behind the pace of Clash of the Titans from […]

>Rise of the Planet of the Apes allowed Team Salem to pick up some ground, but Team Metcalf remains $73 million ahead in the ShowBuzzDaily Summer Movie Draft, thanks to decent second and third week business for his titles.  Salem has two movies to go, although neither is expected to be much a factor in […]

> RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES has a slew of positives going for it commercially:  the reportedly fairly low $93M production cost, the month of August ahead with its limited competition, strong support from an older audience that doesn’t flock to theatres on opening weekend, a genre and emphasis on visuals that should […]

> Deadline has some early Friday boxoffice numbers, and the news was good for CONTAGION and its maybe-I’m-retiring-and-maybe-I’m-not director Steven Soderbergh:  an $8M opening day that should lead to a weekend around $22M, which would overperform Mitch Metcalf’s predictions by a bit.  On the other hand, despite strong reviews, WARRIOR hasn’t yet been able to […]

> Deadline has updated early Friday numbers, and it’s looking like another too-close-to-call weekend:  all the movies in the Top 5–MONEYBALL, THE LION KING, DOLPHIN TALE, COURAGEOUS and 50/50–have Friday grosses between $3.2-3.8M.  Courageous is probably the most front-loaded, due to its focused church-based audience (although it’s per-theatre number will be very impressive), and while […]

> Whether or not IMMORTALS holds together at the boxoffice after its opening few days, the impressive launch is good news for Relativity, which is trying to prove it can survive as a standalone distributor of Hollywood-level movies.  That doesn’t necessarily mean Immortals will hit profit (its financial picture is complicated by various distributors handling […]