Snow White and the Huntsman now looks like a $56.255 million weekend, according to the studio estimate this morning (up a touch from yesterday’s early estimate and exceeding our forecast in Wednesday’s ShowBuzzDaily Weekend Predictions by a wide margin).         The box office volume for the top 12 films is looking like $135.5 million for […]

> TOWER HEIST hurts Universal on several levels.  It’s a big-budget movie (with marketing costs included, the total is likely $200M) in a genre that doesn’t necessarily travel well, and it was the studio’s big year-end release.  And just to make things worse, next week its pair of Stiller and Murphy have to face off […]

> The Hollywood Reporter has some early numbers for the weekend’s overseas boxoffice.  (Remember:  comparisons of international boxoffice receipts aren’t necessarily apples-to-apples, as films follow different distribution patterns with respect to number and size of markets.)  As in the US, BREAKING DAWN PART 1 is in the lead, with a projected $40M from 73 territories […]

> SHOWBUZZDAILY is only 2 weeks away from traveling to Park City, Utah for the 2012 Sundance Filim Festival, so the time seems right for a rant about the nightmare that is obtaining tickets for Sundance screenings.  Every festival has its quirks, and all cater especially to wealthy contributors who can afford to pay thousands […]

> The homevideo divisions of movie studios are notoriously reticent about giving out specific sales information regarding their titles beyond Week 1 boasts, but today Universal made a point of disclosing to Deadline that BRIDESMAIDS had accumulated $40M in revenue from 7 million transactions through VOD, pay-per-view, hotel viewings and online electronic-sell-through (EST), which it […]

> Maybe JOHN CARTER should have starred Jonah Hill. OPENINGS:  21 JUMP STREET (Sony) got off to a great start, with a $13.1M Friday that should get it to around $35M for the weekend.  Expect a quick announcement that a sequel script is in development.  Although the movie’s success is of course great for Hill, […]

> The odds, finally, were not in The Hunger Games‘ favor. OPENINGS:  America continues to want to spend its leisure time (and money) at the movies.  THINK LIKE A MAN (Screen Game/Sony) cost under $15M to produce, and while that doesn’t include the comparatively large marketing expenses, it’s still nice to make back almost your […]

    FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS – Worth A Ticket:  Almost Great   For about an hour, as you watch his new FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS, you could be forgiven for thinking that writer-director Will Gluck is the future of Hollywood romantic comedy.  Gluck came out of TV with the very underrated Fired Up, about a pair […]