The 20th weekend of the year is looking like $158 million for the top 12 films, a little better than average for this weekend over the past few years but much better than the same weekend last year, which featured the opening of the one of the greatest clunkers/ punchlines/ punching bags ever: Battleship from […]

  DON’T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK – Not Even For Free:  No, Really–Don’t Be Afraid     FilmDistrict has gone out of its way to identify co-writer/co-producer Guillermo del Toro with DON’T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK, to the extent that from the marketing, one could easily fail to realize that the movie is […]

Weekend #6 of 2015 is looking like $108 million for the top 12 films this weekend, well below the normal volume for this weekend ($133 million). Opening at around 3,500 theaters Friday (well above the 2,886 average theater count for opening weekends the last two years), The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water from Paramount should average […]

> The Marvel superhero audience likes to get its sleep.  Despite the fact that THE AVENGERS is expected to do record-challenging business this weekend, last night’s midnight screenings totaled $18.7M–a tremendous amount of money, to be sure, the 8th largest midnight opening of all time, but 8th place isn’t where Avengers mostly expects to be.  […]

A down week this week (last year boasted the opening of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2) erased the big gains last week, and now the year to year comparisons are back to where they were a few weeks (high single-digit percentages). The Past Week: Total Box Office Volume All films in wide […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  Here is an updated look at the 2018 film slates by studio. The studio totals also include 2018 dollars for films released in late 2017. YEAR TO DATE BOX OFFICE. Looking at North American box office, 2018 to date is still +10% above last year and now +12% above the average for this point […]

> GREEN LANTERN cost at least as much as Thor ($350-400M with worldwide marketing), and will probably open around 15% lower–and Thor is no blockbuster hit.  Which means that although intensive promos got bodies into theatres, Warners and DC aren’t out of the woods.  The picture only scored a B on Cinemascore despite what must […]

Based on Friday’s and Saturday’s grosses, Weekend #3 of 2013 is now on pace for $122 million, up from the $113 million estimate yesterday and now running ahead of the pace for the comparable weekend the past several years.  Just about every film in the top 12 picked up the pace with solid business on […]