THE TWILIGHT SAGA – BREAKING DAWN PART 1:  Watch It At Home – The Saga Sags In Slow Prelude To The End   The worldwide phenomenon that is Twilight often finds itself compared to Harry Potter, and for obvious reasons:  both are multi-film, multi-billion dollar franchises aimed at young audiences and telling a […]

Based on Friday’s grosses, Weekend #15 of 2013 is looking like $104 million for the top 12 films, down just a few percentage points from the same weekend in prior years.  Two films opened this weekend.  A sports drama period piece (not a guaranteed success) exceeded expectations and will be a strong #1, while a […]

The third weekend of 2013 should total about $106 million for the top 12 films, down a bit from the same weekend the past few years.  Three movies open Friday and an Oscar hopeful expands into wide release, but no film should gross much more than $15 million Friday-Sunday. Opening in about 2,400 theaters Friday, […]

> Frontloading strikes again. THE HUNGER GAMES (Lionsgate/Summit), with $18.9M on its 2nd Friday, is behaving like a sequel, even though it isn’t one.  It’s down 72% from opening day, which is consistent with the second Fridays of mega-sequels like The Dark Knight (down 65%), Twilight:  New Moon (-76%), Breaking Dawn Part 1 (-77%), Harry […]

> We promise that starting next week, when the battle’s been joined in earnest, there will be an honest-to-god chart and more goodies to update you all on the progress of our Summer Movie Blockbuster Draft.  This week, though, it’s still totally one-sided: Team Metcalf THOR:  $129,906,155 BRIDESMAIDS:  $38,459,240 TOTAL:  $168,365,395 Team Salem $0 A […]

>The weekend studio estimates (based on Friday and Saturday actuals and projections for Sunday) are coming in significantly stronger than the weekend numbers posted yesterday (based on Friday actuals only).  The box office volume for the top 12 films is now looking like a soft $206 million for the weekend, up 89% from last year’s […]

> Despite all Universal‘s efforts to imprint audiences with the idea that THE FIVE-YEAR ENGAGEMENT is some kind of quasi-sequel to Bridesmaids (it’s not), preliminary numbers at Deadline show the movie to be underperforming badly.  Its $3.7M Friday was only in 3rd place for the day, well below the $6M opening day the same creative […]

    THE MUPPETS:  Watch It At Home – Nonstop Cuteness   When it was announced that Disney’s new movie of THE MUPPETS (the Mouse House bought the entire franchise from Jim Henson’s company some years ago) was going to be written by Jason Segel and Nicholas Stoller, previously behind Forgetting Sarah Marshall (and Stoller […]