> Hop and Universal should enjoy this weekend while it lasts:  on Friday, the 3D Rio arrives and that’s probably the end of Hop‘s big numbers. As Mitch Metcalf explained elsewhere on this page, the agents for Russell Brand, Danny McBride and James Franco aren’t having a great day.  Also a little nervous:  Fox, which […]

> The irony of the new DreamWorks/Disney is that thus far, their big “event” spectaculars have done only modest business–I Am Number Four opened with $19.5M and ended up with $55M domestically, and REAL STEEL might do about 25-30% better–while their “little” picture THE HELP has been a blockbuster, one of the most profitable films […]

Skyfall is still growing overseas, albeit at a slower rate.  But another $16 million this week puts the overseas total over$700 million and the worldwide total comfortably over $1 billion, joining Marvel’s The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises in the 2012 Billion Dollar Club. The Hobbit: An Expected Journey vaulted $180 million overseas last week.  We […]

>The Smurfs continue to print money overseas — now only $26 million from passing Cars 2 in worldwide box office revenue.  Dolphin Tale (#54) and Moneyball (#56) are currently not on the chart and have no overseas money to date.  Dolphin Tale will certainly be more exportable than Moneyball — the baseball theme will just […]

> BREAKING DAWN PART 1:  Christmas comes but once a year, and for Summit that day is the 24 hours after a Twilight movie opens.  (A little credit to the studio, too, for not fudging the numbers, which would have been easy enough to do since they’re so close, in order to claim a franchise […]

>This weekend is all about Twilight Breaking Dawn, which will be huge.  But Happy Feet Two should manage an opening that would look stellar on any other recent weekend.  Overall box office this weekend should be up 33% from the same weekend last year.         Opening at more than 4,100 theaters in North […]

>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 […]

Based on Friday’s grosses, Weekend #7 of 2013 is not as bad as the last few weeks: $123 million for the top 12 films during the traditional Friday-Sunday period of this holiday weekend (only 4% behind the pace for the same weekend the last few years).         Opening at 3,552 theaters Thursday […]