>The fourth weekend of the year should generate about $91 million for the top 12 films — about the same as last year’s comparable weekend and down 10% from a “normal” weekend this time of year.  The top film should be Liam Neeson in The Grey, at a very unspectacular $15 opening weekend number.   […]

> Watch It At Home:  For Fans of Florescent Green Another summer weekend; another superhero epic.  What used to be an extravagant event genre is now hard-pressed to muster more than a yawn.  What is there to say about GREEN LANTERN?  Well, it’s better than January’s sophomoric Green Hornet, so at least it’s got color […]

> The holiday celebrations at the studios may have been a bit premature.   Traditionally, the Tuesday after Christmas sees a 10-20% drop from Monday, and that number becomes the template for the rest of the holiday period.  But yesterday, aside from the films aimed straight at the family crowd, the drops were much worse. MISSION: […]

The Past Week: Total Box Office Volume All films in wide release playing between August 13 and August 19 grossed a decent $196 million, up 7% from the four-year average for the comparable week and up 3% from the same week in 2011. Year to date (now over $6.8 billion for wide-release films) is now […]

> Live by Cinemascore, die by Cinemascore. THE DEVIL INSIDE:  The most hilarious studio event of the last 24 hours has been Paramount‘s frantic attempt to argue that an “F” Cinemascore for THE DEVIL INSIDE, making it one of the half-dozen worst exit-polled movies of the past several years, isn’t really that bad if you […]

>No new wide releases this weekend, the final weekend of the year as we welcome the arrival of 2012.  We are estimating a box office volume of $145 million for Friday-Sunday for the top 12 films, up 27% from $114 million last weekend (which was limited by Christmas Eve on Saturday) and down only 2% […]

The weekend predictions will return next week, when Exodus: God and Kings and Top Five are released nationally.  This weekend, typical for the post-Thanksgiving weekend, is extremely quiet.  Only The Pyramid is opening at a very small 589 theaters.

> Even though the Oscar race has had clear favorites in THE DESCENDANTS, THE ARTIST and THE HELP since last fall, the first 2 haven’t sparked any huge enthusiasm among the general public, where after almost 2 months, Descendants has yet to gross $50M, and Artist, which Harvey Weinstein hasn’t dared put into general release, […]