WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  Updated look at 2016 by studio.   YEAR TO DATE BOX OFFICE. Looking at North American box office, 2016 to date is now +3% above last year and now +4% above the average for this point the past four years ($6.388 billion).  Over the same period, Hollywood films have grossed $16.7 billion worldwide when […]

Based on Friday’s grosses, Weekend #49 is on pace to fall below the  multi-year average for this weekend by 9% — ending a solid four-week winning streak at the box office.  One movie dared to open on one of the weakest weekends of the year (usually ranked #49 out of 52 weeks in terms of […]

>Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, already a billion dollar movie worldwide, is now closing in on a billion dollars overseas alone.  The estimated worldwide gross for the final Harry Potter film now stands at $1.275 billion, with an estimated final domestic gross of $375 million and overseas gross to date of $900 […]

>Now that we are in mid-August, let the true dumping of movies begin!  Sure they can be called summer movies, but films the next few weeks have little hope of turning in impressive box office results.  The Help (a truly rare August hit) should continue at #1 with a very small second weekend decline, while […]

> The holiday celebrations at the studios may have been a bit premature.   Traditionally, the Tuesday after Christmas sees a 10-20% drop from Monday, and that number becomes the template for the rest of the holiday period.  But yesterday, aside from the films aimed straight at the family crowd, the drops were much worse. MISSION: […]

Based on Friday’s grosses, the final weekend of 2013 looks like a great finish: $186 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, down a touch from yesterday’s estimate but still up significantly from the same weekend last year (see comparisons to previous years at the bottom).  The new films this long weekend are actually not […]

Weekend #32 of 2014 is looking like $152 million for the top 12 films this weekend, up 11%from the norm for this weekend and the second up weekend in a row after six straight down weekends. Opening at over 3,700 theaters Friday (above the 2,886 average theater count for opening weekends the last two years), Teenage Mutant […]

  We’ve reached the last of our major studio midsummer surveys (we’ll take a look at mini-majors and indie distributors next week), having tackled Disney, Warner Bros, Paramount, Sony,and 20th Century Fox.  Our final target is Universal Pictures. It was all going so well for Universal–until this weekend.  After going a remarkable 3 for 3 […]