>Puss in Boots managed to bounce back from a soft opening last week, declining only 18% and holding on to the #1 position.  Tower Heist stumbled out of the gate and is on track for #2 and an underwhelming $25 million.  A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas was impressive only by the low standards […]

> Friday’s preliminary boxoffice, according to the Hollywood Reporter, has the looks of another soft weekend for the major studios.  TOWER HEIST appears to be underperforming, and with a reported $9.5M Friday, may only reach $27M for the weekend.  Since Universal is mostly sitting out the holiday movie season, this would be a disappointing end […]

    J. EDGAR:  Watch It At Home – Brokeback Hoover   It’s a little unexpected that of all the films Clint Eastwood has directed, his new biography J. EDGAR most resembles The Bridges of Madison County.  Measured and mournful, the film, which opened the AFI Film Festival in Los Angeles last night and opens […]

    TOWER HEIST:  Watch It At Home – Hardly Luxury-Class   There may never have been a director more proud of being a hack than Brett Ratner.  In a recent NY Times profile, Ratner boasts (when he’s not going on about his friendship with Roman Polanski, because yeah, there’s a social relationship you’d want […]

> $59.99 for home VOD — Genius! Box office normally starts to pick up when the calendar turns to November, moving from $90-100 million per weekend through most of October to $120 million or more per weekend in early November (building toward $185 million or more for the Friday-Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend).  Last year’s first […]

>Real Steel is knocking on the $200 million worldwide door, as the overseas gross to date jumped above $100 million (outweighing a downgrade in our domestic total estimate).  Picking up steam, Paranormal Activity 3 doubled its overseas tally to $54 million, and it is just getting going.  (See the updated chart after the jump.) Making […]

>The year to date box office tally picked up a tiny bit of ground moving from -3.8% versus last year to -3.7% this week.        The Past Week: Total Box Office Volume All films in wide release playing between October 24 and October 30 grossed a mediocre $123 million, up 4% versus the same week in 2010 but down […]

> DreamWorks Animation can blame the weather for diminishing its PUSS IN BOOTS number–although there seemed to be little effect on the weekend’s other openings–but $34M is awfully low for a major animated release.  (And no one will be surprised to see the actual figure fall tomorrow by $400K or more, which is the margin […]