> The Toronto Film Festival has announced its second helping of titles for next month’s worldwide gathering of film professionals and fanatics.  These may be less star-studded than the last group of films announced, but there are still quite a few intriguing titles.  As part of our continuing coverage of the movie awards season that, […]

The 31st weekend of the year is looking like $141 million for the top 12 films, not bad for the first weekend of August. Opening at around 2,800 theaters Friday (near the 2,886 average theater count for opening weekends the last two years), 2 Guns from Universal should average $12,200 per theater for the three-day weekend (for a […]

Based on Friday’s and Saturday’s grosses, weekend #19 of 2015 looks like a wobbly $120 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, a little better than yesterday’s estimate ($117 million) but still well below the norm for this weekend. Opening at 3,003 theaters Friday, Hot Pursuit from Warner Brothers is now on track for a $13.3 million opening three-day weekend […]

    FRIENDS WITH KIDS:  Worth A Ticket – Sitcom, In A Good Way   We live in a pop culture where the recent Emmy Award nominees are so clearly superior to the films up for this past year’s Oscar that it’s not even worth arguing about. (Mad Men vs The Artist?  Game of Thrones […]

> Boxoffice numbers have been bouncing around all day (Per-theatre averages as of 3PM Pacific time!  Number of left-handed, red-haired patrons sitting through the entire end credits!), and they’re still not final or official, but a preliminary picture is starting to come together of THE HUNGER GAMES’ first day in theatres.  Both Deadline and The […]

>The complete WEEKEND PREDICTIONS will be posted later this morning.  Until then, an early look.  Contagion should open at #1 with $20.5 million this weekend.  Warrior should open with about $10 million, battling with The Help for second place.  Finally, in the DOA department, Bucky Larson: Born to be a Star (produced by Adam Sandler) […]

The weekend after Christmas offers three new films that opened Tuesday the 25th and a critical darling that went semi-wide on that day.  Les Miserables and Django Unchained are turning around the 2012 holiday season, while the other two new films are making little impact. Now playing at 2,808 theaters, Les Miserables from Universal opened with $18.1 […]

>Those interested in the disconnect between old-line film critics and audiences need look no farther than “In Defense of the Slow and the Boring,” a column in today’s NY Times.  In it, chief Times critics Manohla Dargis and A. O. Scott each write about the worth of films some find unduly slow-paced, like The Tree […]