The Past Week: Total Box Office Volume All films in wide release playing between November 5 and November 11 grossed an excellent $207 million, up 22% from the four-year average for the week and up 30% from the same week last year.    The past six weeks are now 12% above the four-year average and […]

  After a strong start with Skyfall and Breaking Dawn Part 2, the holiday boxoffice seems to be at risk of languishing. OPENINGS:  The thing about the Christmas/New Year’s week boxoffice multiple is that it’s real and will help every movie in theatres during the holiday season, but it’s only as good as the number it’s mutiplying. So […]

After its Golden Globes win for Best Drama, the odds of winning Best Picture for Argo improved a bit (moving from a $7.50 payout on a $1 wager to $5.25 and moving past Les Miserables into second place).  But the favorite remains Lincoln, which also actually tightened to a $1.29 payout (from $1.40 last week), as Les Miz and especially Zero […]

Oz the Great and Powerful joins the worldwide chart just outside the top 10.  With $70 million overseas to date, the foreign total should approach $300 million, making $500 million worldwide an achievable goal (behind Life of Pi in 5th place). The other films were relatively quiet overseas this past week.  The next best was A Good Day to […]

The 23rd weekend of the year is looking like a wobbly $127 million for the top 12 films, well under the same weekend the last few years.  Three out of four weekends in May were anchored by solid commercial films (Iron Man 3, Star Trek Into Darkness and Fast & Furious 6).  But the first […]

  Our summertime look at the health of Hollywood’s studios continues.  We’ve already examined Disney and Warner Bros, and today Paramount is in our viewfinder. Since getting out of both the Marvel and the DreamWorks Animation business, Paramount has been sedate, even sedentary, with the quietest summer of any studio.  Management has been fairly stable, […]

Updated international box office chart:

The 40th weekend of the year is looking like a good $107 million for the top 12 films, way down from this weekend last year (boosted by Taken 2) but up 9% from the multi-year average for this weekend. Opening at over 3,450 theaters Friday (way above the 2,886 average theater count for opening weekends the […]