> Reviews of some of the more prominent movies in theatres right now: X-MEN:  FIRST CLASS MIDNIGHT IN PARIS THE HANGOVER PART II KUNG FU PANDA 2 THE TREE OF LIFE

> The 10% drop for CARS 2 on Saturday is unusual, but by no means unheard of, for a big animated film (Toy Story 3 and Wall-E had similar drops, and they worked out OK).  Any additional slippage on Sunday beyond the 19% Disney is projecting, though, could be cause for concern.  The similar Saturday […]

>Through Sunday, Team Metcalf is holding on to a $39 million lead over Team Salem in the ShowBuzzDaily Summer Movie Draft.  The terrific opening of Harry Potter was balanced somewhat by decent holds for Transformers 3, Horrible Bosses and to some extent Zookeeper.  We expected Salem to pull ahead by Sunday, but that should happen sometime […]

> Normally a relatively quiet period, the weekend before Halloween usually offers only one new release and well under $100 million in total volume for the top 12 movies.  But this year, we have three releases, with one poised to do solid business.  Puss In Boots should do well over $40 million in its opening […]

> Hop (Universal) is set to be #1 with almost $25 million, although this weekend the last two years has boasted top openings in the $61-71 million range.  Overall, it looks like another soft weekend of box office numbers. The well-reviewed Source Code from Summit (92% positive rating at rottentomatoes) is headed for about $15 million this weekend.  Bringing […]

> Well, there’s something you don’t see every day:  2 studios both content to forego bragging rights for the Sunday weekend estimates and wait for actual numbers on Monday, when public attention is lower. (Note:  The Hot Blog, which calculates its own numbers, has COWBOYS & ALIENS up by $100K.)  The important thing to remember […]

> Early numbers for Friday and Saturday suggest that the first day, at least, of Hurricane Irene didn’t do enormous damage to the boxoffice.  Deadline reports that THE HELP had a healthy Friday-to-Saturday bump of 38%, on its way to a $14.5M weekend which would be only $1M below Mitch Metcalf’s pre-storm weekend prediction.  Similarly, […]

> For all the wildly unexpected success of THE LION KING, Disney has limited boxoffice upside, because the new Blu-Ray hits the streets on October 4, and that’s not likely to be a date that can be changed. The Friday number for DRIVE is right on the edge between meeting expectations and disappointing them; its […]