Vulture picked the wrong weekend to predict Universal’s demise. OPENINGS:  SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN (Universal) had a very good $20.3M Friday, and will do better than $50M for the weekend, successfully selling (male) audiences on the revisionist fairy tale as an epic action movie.  All that epic action and spectacular CG came at […]

  Roger Ebert, after enduring cancer with extraordinary fortitude for over a decade, passed away today.  Ebert was one of the smartest, hardest-working and most passionate film critics of his generation, and almost certainly the most famous.  Although he was devoted to criticism expressed in writing–both in newspapers (and books) and, later in his career, […]

Based on Friday’s and Saturday’s grosses, weekend #7 of 2015 looks like a terrific $196 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, well above the norms for this weekend and even better than it looked yesterday ($188 million estimate based on Friday’s grosses).   Opening at 3,646 theaters Friday, Fifty Shades of Grey from Focus/ Universal is on […]

The 42nd weekend of the year is looking like $112 million for the top 12 films, down 8% from this weekend last year but down a smaller 2% from the multi-year average for this weekend. Opening at over 3,000 theaters Friday (slightly above the 2,886 average theater count for opening weekends the last two years), Carrie […]

SAFE HOUSE:  Watch It At Home – You’ve Seen It     SAFE HOUSE feels like a remake, even though technically it’s not.  It’s a little bit Training Day, a little Bourne, a little Man On Fire (and everything else Tony Scott has ever done), with almost nothing added of its own, an exercise in […]

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 still +9% above last year and still +11% above the average for this point […]

Updated international box office chart:  

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 still +10% above last year and still +12% above the average for this point […]