Now that we’ve looked through all the major and mini-major Hollywood studios (Disney, Warner Bros, Paramount, Sony, 20th Century Fox, Universal and Lionsgate/Summit) and examined their summers, today we’ll wrap up our summer studio survey with snapshots of some of the more prominent independent studios.  Summer isn’t their key season–the August/September film festivals will […]

>21 Jump Street joins the worldwide box office chart about a third of the way down the list, ranked #14 out of 44 films released wide in North America over the past three months.  We expect its domestic gross to top out at $119 million, while the overseas total should expand from the current tally […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  The release of X-Men: Days of Future Past has pushed 20th Century Fox to the top of the heap with over $1.5 billion in worldwide box office in 2014 to date.  The race will ebb and flow through the rest of the summer and into the holiday season, but Fox, Warner Brothers and Sony […]

  The Sundance Film Festival saved its most high-profile announcements for today, releasing the titles of its Narrative and Documentary Premieres.  The lion’s share of the festival movies that reach theatres/VOD will come from this group, which feature the most prominent filmmakers and actors.  Here are a few of the most immediately promising: ACOD:  A […]

> The past week (seven days ending Sunday) is up 17% versus last year’s comparable week, thanks to a solid second-weekend hold for the 3D resissue of The Lion King and good openings for Moneyball and Dolphin Tale.  Year-to-date box office is now down 3.5% versus last year, the smallest year-to-year margin we’ve seen so far this year.  The Lion […]

The Dark Knight Rises cooled to $45.6 million Saturday, down 39% from $75.1 million late-Thursday/Friday.  (In 2008, The Dark Knight dropped 29% on Saturday from Thursday/Friday, $47.7 million from $67.2 million.)  The opening weekend is now looking like an unofficial $161 million.  This would be the #3 opening all-time (behind #1 Marvel’s The Avengers at […]

>The worldwide grosses rankings have been updated, and Rango (Paramount) now claims the top spot, passing The Green Hornet (Sony), as expected in last week’s international report.  But we suspect that Rango still has some upside — the overseas number should easily exceed the movie’s domestic number, with $40-50 million more to come from outside […]

>Those interested in the disconnect between old-line film critics and audiences need look no farther than “In Defense of the Slow and the Boring,” a column in today’s NY Times.  In it, chief Times critics Manohla Dargis and A. O. Scott each write about the worth of films some find unduly slow-paced, like The Tree […]