THE HUNGER GAMES:  Worth A Ticket – The Odds Are Mostly In Its Favor   Now that virtually every blockbuster movie opens in IMAX, going to an IMAX theatre at this time of year provides a de facto trailer festival for an entire summer of (seemingly) more or less mindless spectacle.  As The Avengers […]

> In less than 24 hours, boxoffice figures for tonight’s midnight opening of THE HUNGER GAMES will start to arrive, and after that, the data, analysis and comparisons will be flooding in all weekend.  You can play along:  here’s a cheat sheet with some important numbers to keep in mind as the numbers roll in. […]

>The 12th weekend of the year should be a whopper: about $176 million for the top 12 films.  How big is that for the fourth weekend in March?  Enormous, unprecedented: up 62% from last year’s comparable weekend and up 55% from the four-year average for this weekend.  Of course, this weekend is all about The […]

> With the exception of some whose hearts are set on 12:01AM screenings tomorrow night, no one should have to complain that they weren’t able to see THE HUNGER GAMES because there weren’t any seats to be had.  According to Deadline, the movie is scheduled to play in 4137 theatres in the US and Canada, […]

> The most successful movie of all time, Avatar, had an opening weekend ($77M) that only ranks 38th on the list of the biggest openings.  Conversely, the #1 opening weekend of all time belongs to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Part II), with $169M, more than double Avatar‘s–but its total gross of $381M puts […]

>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 […]

> For anyone who thought the angst over JOHN CARTER‘s boxoffice returns was overstated:  Disney has issued a public statement advising that it expects the film to result in a $200M loss, which will singlehandedly pull the Disney film studio as a whole to a loss of $80-120M for this calendar quarter.  That’s less horrific […]

>21 Jump Street joins the worldwide box office chart about a third of the way down the list, ranked #14 out of 44 films released wide in North America over the past three months.  We expect its domestic gross to top out at $119 million, while the overseas total should expand from the current tally […]