> Hollywood, like teen girls before a Twilight opening, counts the hours until THE AVENGERS arrives. OPENINGS:  Universal badly miscalculated when it scheduled THE FIVE-YEAR ENGAGEMENT for a weekend when Think Like A Man and The Lucky One were both available for the romance market.  The movie was moderately budgeted (although it had a substantial […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  Fox had a great week worldwide last week ($167 million worldwide), partly from the domestic release of Gone Girl this weekend but also from strong overseas returns for The Maze Runner.  Fox is now over $4 billion for the year worldwide, the #1 Hollywood studio by far, and saddled with surprisingly few duds on its […]

    Audiences sank Universal’s Battleship. OPENINGS:  There’s no way to spin the arrival of BATTLESHIP (Universal)  as anything other than a horribly expensive flop.  Its $9M opening day is even less than the infamous John Carter‘s $9.8M, and it may not have the 3x weekend multiple that got Carter to a $30M weekend.  Battleship […]

>Based on Friday and Saturday box office (and estimated Sunday numbers), Twilight Saga Breaking Dawn Part 1 will drop 70% this weekend but remain at #1, and its final domestic estimate has been upgraded to over $300 million because the second weekend drop could have been even worse.  The Muppets opened decently in second place […]

International box office for 2013 releases through January 19, 2014. Click here for a summary of worldwide performance by studio. We will start tracking the 2014 films in a few weeks.

> Moving on… As we all know, last night was the Rise Of the Planet Of the Black-and-White Silent French People.  For some of us, this was not good news.  But there’s always next year!  Which means this year.  So let’s see what’s on the horizon for the 2012 Academy Awards: Harvey Weinstein seems to […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  Universal’s year to date versus last week is negative despite the addition of Crimson Peak this weekend.  The overseas total for Everest was over-stated last week and has been corrected in the studio table below and the individual film ranking at the bottom of the post.  Still, Universal remains a dominant #1, with a lead of […]

A very decent holiday box office continues.  Through 12 days of the Holiday Season (December 16-27), the top 10 films in North America each day have totaled $433 million, up 19.5% from last year ($362 million) and up 9.9% from the multi-year average since 2002 ($394 million). The $58.7 million for the top 10 films […]