> Not Even For Free Let’s give a little love to the devious people at Universal who cut the trailers.  The masterminds behind the red-band for YOUR HIGHNESS managed to find, in its 102 dull minutes, roughly 3 and a half that, when cut together with fiendish skill, suggested the movie had actual laughs.  Bow […]

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 […]

> Watch It At Home. Were the executives at Warner Bros so desperate to be in business with Russell Brand that they huddled together in a conference room one day, frantically going through their library titles in search of alcoholic lead roles he could play?  (“Days of Wine and Roses… a little dark.  Clean and […]

Weekend #33 of 2014 is looking like $140 million for the top 12 films this weekend, up 20%from the norm for this weekend and the third up weekend in a row after six straight down weekends. Opening at over 3,000 theaters Friday (slightly above the 2,886 average theater count for opening weekends the last two years), The […]

Based on Friday’s grosses, weekend #13 of 2014 looks like $126 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, down 10% from the average for this weekend the past several years.   Opening at 3,567 theaters Friday, Noah from Paramount grossed $14.9 million through Friday, putting the film on track for a $40.4 million opening weekend (slightly above our […]

For the 17 days December 16-January 1, top 10 films in North America have totaled $1.065 billion, now +66% ahead of the same period last year, +68% above the average since 2002, and +30% ahead of the previous record for this period (2009, the year of Avatar). Box Office Volume — Top 10 Films North America […]

>Five full weeks into 2012, domestic box office continues to run well ahead of last year’s anemic pace but about even with the comparable period’s average for the last several years.  The studio estimates for the films opening this weekend turned out to be very accurate.  Chronicle officially opened at #1 with $22,004,098 the first […]

  Nora Ephron never won an Oscar, although she was nominated for 3 of her screenplays (for Silkwood, When Harry Met Sally… and Sleepless in Seattle).  With the exception of Silkwood, she didn’t write or direct Oscar-type movies–gravitas wasn’t her thing.  Ephron, who died today at the age of 71, was a proponent of light, […]