> It’s always to the advantage of the new opening to own first place at the boxoffice, so if Paramount thought FOOTLOOSE could pull it out over REAL STEEL, they would have staked their claim today.  (Both pictures are reporting a 39% Saturday-to-Sunday drop.) The Hollywood Reporter says Real Steel also made $23M overseas, which […]

> 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 […]

>Preliminary numbers from Dec. 26 suggest that while business, as expected, was higher than Christmas Day, momentum may have slowed a bit. Some highlights: MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – GHOST PROTOCOL (Paramount): The Monday bump seems to be around 5-6%, lower than projected yesterday, but still enough to get the picture to $77M to date and a […]

> Although Sundance still has several days to go, and surprises could spring up at any time (yesterday The Surrogate, a drama with John Hawkes as a man in an iron lung who decides to lose his virginity to a sex therapist played by Helen Hunt, came out of nowhere to win a huge $6M […]

> Well, that didn’t last long. After an Oscars+1 day where Best Picture winner THE ARTIST had the smallest Monday decline of any movie in the Top 10,  by Tuesday the glow was gone.  On a day when almost every Top 10 film was significantly up, ccording to Box Office Mojo, Artist had an increase […]

> How long before the Hunger Games sequels start arriving in 3D? THE HUNGER GAMES:  On its current trajectory toward a $350-375M US total, THE HUNGER GAMES (Lionsgate/Summit) will end up among the 15-20th biggest movies of all time, outgrossing all the Twilights and every Harry Potter except Deathly Hallows Part 2.  At $61.1M, it […]

  People have been accusing Julian Schnabel’s MIRAL of being propaganda for the Palestinian cause, but in a way that’s an insult to propagandists, who are usually focused and effective at what they do.  Miral is more of a mess than that, a no-doubt heartfelt story about one of the most historically complicated situations in […]

    I DON’T KNOW HOW SHE DOES IT – Not Even For Free:  You Don’t Want To Know   The recent movie I DON’T KNOW HOW SHE DOES IT most resembles is The Nanny Diaries, which is odd because it was a flop for Harvey Weinstein and The Weinstein Company, and yet Weinstein’s studio […]