> EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE:  Worth A Ticket –  Earns Its Tears If EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE accomplishes nothing else–and it actually accomplishes quite a bit–it’s served to let us know exactly where the third rail of current American popular culture is located.  It’s not every day that the august NY Times informs […]

>The fifth weekend of the year should generate about $84 million for the top 12 films — up 15% from last year’s comparable weekend but down a similar percentage from a “normal” weekend this time of year.  Three new films open this weekend to positive reviews, but none of the three should gross more than […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  Universal remains a dominant #1, growing even more this week.  Unfriended helped a little with its domestic opening, but the big reason for the weekly again this week was Furious 7 which is exploding overseas.  As for the other openers this weekend, Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 does not significantly improve Sony’s fortunes, nor does Monkey Kingdom for Disney. […]

The Hobbit, like Breaking Dawn Part 2, is finally starting to peter out overseas (each around $550 million overseas and $800+ million worldwide).  Still growing briskly, Life of Pi has hauled in another $56 million overseas since last week’s report and is closing in on an impressive $500 million worldwide. Les Miserables was the second biggest American film overseas […]

> Green Lantern debuts on the Worldwide Ranking at #15, while Mr Popper’s Penguins appears outside the Top 20.  Pirates of the Caribbean closes in on $1 billion worldwide. Green Lantern debuts at #15 on the Top 20 Worldwide list with a very limited overseas release so far, while Mr Popper’s Penguins finds itself way […]

The 26th weekend of the year (halfway through already!) is looking like an on-target $189 million for the top 12 films, within a few percentage points of the comparable weekend the last few years.     Opening at around 3,000 3,222 theaters Friday (somewhat above the average 2,886 theater count for opening weekend wide releases), White […]

> The boxoffice did more or less what it was supposed to on Wednesday, drifting down 5-10% from Tuesday.  Thursday should be fairly steady, then business should have a bit of a roller-coaster ride:  an increase on Friday, down somewhat on New Year’s Eve, back up on New Year’s Day, and down again on January […]

  Pending the arrival of this week’s finale, Mike Newell’s 2005 HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE may be, on balance, the most satisfying of the series.  It combines first-rate moviemaking with one of J.K. Rowling’s most ingeniously constructed, emotionally rich stories–capped, of course, by the unveiling of Ralph Fiennes as the finally fully […]