>Well, it’s officially a rout.  Team Salem has built a whopping $225 million lead, even with the under-performance of Green Lantern.  If Team Metcalf is going to get back into this contest, Cars 2 better behave like a high-end Pixar film and Transformers: Dark of the Moon needs to be a mega-hit.  Next update on […]

>International box office continues to bail out American movies released late this year.  While Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 can legitimately be called a hit domestically and abroad, Adventures of Tintin and Real Steel are both major hits only because of business outside North America. And Puss in Boots would have been a slight […]

> Now the only question is when they announce the start of  pre-production on LORAX 2. OPENINGS:  It turned out THE LORAX (Universal) wasn’t frontloaded at all.  Quite the contrary, its 80% Saturday bump put the movie through the roof, a triumph of great marketing over cruddy filmmaking.  Lorax is currently the 3d highest March […]

Before next weekend’s arrival of a bona fide hit, The Dark Knight Rises, this weekend was highlighted by a bit of a summer movie poser: Ice Age: Continental Drift (an estimated $46.0 million opening weekend, missing our forecast in Wednesday’s ShowbuzzDaily Weekend Predictions), looking less like a summer movie that should be given a weekend […]

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. […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  Here is an updated look at the 2018 film slates by studio. The studio totals also include 2019 dollars for films released in late 2018. We will continue to track the 2018 slates until late February, when we will switch to tracking the 2019 slates. BOX OFFICE. Looking at North American box office, […]

Warners is claiming that Sucker Punch cost around $80M, which given the scale of the film suggests either admirable cost-effectiveness or a lowball number–in any case, word of mouth is likely to be terrible (see my review, not to mention that its overall Rotten Tomatoes number is at 20%), so it’s doubtful to get past […]

Based on Friday’s grosses, weekend #28 of 2015 looks like $206 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, above the norm for this weekend and way above last year’s weak weekend. Opening at 4,301 theaters Friday, Minions from Universal is on track for a $117.0 million opening three-day weekend (somewhat above our $108.0 million ShowBuzzDaily forecast earlier this week). The […]