>Based on Friday and Saturday box office (and estimated Sunday numbers), the two sequels opening wide this weekend are not doing the business generally forecast, and they are under-performing the preceding movies in their series.  As a whole, the weekend is looking like $111 million for the top 12 films, down 13% from the same […]

STUDIO SCORECARD. Disney solidified its grip on first place in worldwide box office (thanks to Monsters University), while Paramount jumped ahead of 20th Century Fox courtesy of World War Z. TOTAL NORTH AMERICAN BOX OFFICE. Looking at wide-release films in North America (those that play on at least 400 screens at some point), 2013 now […]

    STAR WARS EPISODE I:  THE PHANTOM MENACE 3D, to give it its fully identifying title, has the distinction of being the most successful movie ever made that is generally agreed to be terrible.  Over $900M in tickets have been sold for Phantom Menace since its opening in 1999 (that number will go over […]

Oz the Great and Powerful had a very good week overseas, up $67 million to $137 million foreign to date and almost $400 million total projected worldwide.  It should approach $600 million worldwide, ending up at around #5 on our chart. The other significant gainer this past week was A Good Day to Die Hard, up $23 […]

STUDIO SCORECARD. The studio rankings for worldwide box office remain the same this week, with Sony, Universal and 20th Century Fox having the most productive weeks.  Sony benefited from the domestic and especially overseas revenue from The Smurfs 2, while Universal was helped by the release of 2 Guns and the continued overseas grosses for Despicable Me 2.  Even […]

The “kids” didn’t show up for MEN IN BLACK 3 (Sony) on Saturday–it was wishful thinking to believe they would, considering the franchise’s decade-long absence–and the result, according to preliminary numbers at Deadline, was a very mild Friday-to-Saturday bump under 10%.  That puts the picture on track for a 4-day holiday weekend of $67-70M, just […]

>Based on Friday and Saturday box office (and estimated Sunday numbers), The Help continues at #1 yet again, down only 2% from last week.  This is really getting to be a tired headline, but with the feeble crop of recent releases The Help is just taking full advantage of the situation.  The weekend overall is now […]

  Note:  All times PST 5:01PM:  Wasting no time, here’s Ricky Gervais with his first monologue since the very different world of 2016.  5:02PM:  Not exactly testing the limits with jokes about “Wild Hogs” and Joe Pesci whacking people. 5:05PM:  The crowd hasn’t had enough to drink yet to even pretend this monologue is funny. […]