> THE HUNGER GAMES has an excuse. Last night at midnight, The Hunger Games began its long-awaited run in theatres by grossing $19.7M.  Which is, by any estimation, a lot of money–the most ever earned by a non-sequel, and the 7th highest midnight ever.  But… it’s less than half the $43.5M of the midnight record […]

Weekend #38 of 2014 is looking like $104 million for the top 12 films this weekend, up 20% from the norm for this weekend. Opening at around 3,500 theaters Friday (above the 2,886 average theater count for opening weekends the last two years), Maze Runner from 20th Century Fox should average a solid $9,800 per theater […]

> Oren Moverman’s first film as a director, The Messenger, was a beautifully contained, emotionally detailed story about soldiers assigned to deliver tragic news to the families of the deceased.  In his new film RAMPART, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival, Moverman is more ambitious and, unfortunately, a victim of the sophomore jinx. This […]

The 28th weekend of 2012 is looking like a very weak $149 million for the Top 12 films Friday-Sunday, down 29% from this weekend last year and down 42% from the multi-year average for this weekend.            Ice Age: Continental Drift from 20th Century Fox (the fourth Ice Age film) opened with […]

> NEW YEAR’S EVE (Warner Bros):  So much for that franchise.  New Year’s was expected to have a softer start than Valentine’s Day, which opened on a holiday weekend that included the titular day itself.  But there’s “soft” and then there’s a 65% decline from Valentine’s opening day.  New Year’s will have a longer playing […]

> The Hollywood Reporter has preliminary boxoffice numbers for Friday, and as expected, PUSS IN BOOTS will be the easy weekend winner.  Its $9-9.5M on Friday, if it holds, would probably mean $36-38M for the weekend, which would be a Halloween weekend record, but considerably below other fall animated films like Megamind ($12.5M Friday for […]

> Once upon a time, there was a series of fantasy adventures by a hugely bestselling author, and a grand, ambitious plan to film them all.  In the end, they were adapted into gigantically successful movies, and the last one set the world’s record for the most successful opening weekend ever… But this is not […]

>Now 11 full weeks into 2012, year-to-date domestic box office is running 23% ahead of last year’s horrible pace (down from +26% last week), and the year-to-date total is now pacing 11% ahead of the comparable period’s average for the last several years (down from +12% last week).  Despite a very good opening for 21 […]