Based on Friday’s grosses, weekend #9 of 2015 looks like $86 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, down significantly from the norms for this weekend and the first down weekend since January 9-11.   Opening at 3,323 theaters Friday, Focus from Warner Brothers is on track for a $18.5 million opening three-day weekend (somewhat below our […]

> Get ready for the flood of jokey 80s TV show remakes that will now be unleashed upon us. OPENINGS:  21 JUMP STREET (Sony) fell ever-so-slightly on Saturday, and if it fails to hit its $35M weekend estimate, it won’t miss by much.  CASA DE MI PADRE (Pantelion/Lionsgate), though, is predicting a highly suspect 19% […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  Here is an updated look at the 2018 film slates by studio. The studio totals also include 2018 dollars for films released in late 2017. YEAR TO DATE BOX OFFICE. Looking at North American box office, 2018 to date is now +17% above last year and now +24% above the average for this point the […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  Updated look at 2016 films by studio.  We will begin tracking the 2017 slate in a few weeks. YEAR TO DATE BOX OFFICE. Looking at North American box office, 2017 to date is +12% above last year and still +29% above the average for this point the past four years ($0.190 billion).  Over the […]

> As Hollywood prepares to honor its best (well, this year… maybe not so much), an undistinguished group of arrivals dominate the boxoffice. OPENINGS:  ACT OF VALOR (Relativity) is claiming the lowest Sunday decline for any adult-skewing picture in the Top 10, ignoring the usual Oscar Day decline (even though the film had the lowest […]

Based on Friday’s and Saturday’s grosses, weekend #8 of 2014 looks now like $98 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, slightly below this weekend’s average the past several years but well above last year’s weak showing this weekend.  Two new films misfired this weekend, while Lego Movie continues to reign supreme (although now looking […]

  Michael Lewis’ book Moneyball was a marvelous read, but seemed like dim source material for a movie. Credit, then, is due to the creators of the film version–the various producers, screenwriters Steven Zailian and Aaron Sorkin, and director Bennett Miller–for finding a compelling narrative spine in a true-life story about the change in an […]

  V/H/S, which screened as part of Sundance’s Park City At Midnight series, is a gimmick piled upon a gimmick. First is the horror anthology itself, familiar from the Twilight Zone movie and Rod Serling’s Night Gallery TV show, among many others.  In this case, half a dozen unrelated short films, each from a different […]