Weekend #40 of 2016 forecasts for films opening wide and major returning films: NEW FILMS THIS WEEKEND September 30-October 2, 2016 Critics Positive ($ millions) Opening Weekend Forecast Domestic Total Projection Overseas Total Projection Worldwide Total Projection Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children Fox PG13 63% 28.5 80 140 220 Deepwater Horizon LG PG13 84% 19.5 […]

    THE WOMAN IN BLACK:  Watch It At Home – Fun, But Creaky As Its Doors   THE WOMAN IN BLACK is so aggressively old-fashioned it sometimes feels like the horror movie version of The Artist.  A haunted house story in the grand style, it may be in color and wide-screen, but its heart […]

Based on Friday’s grosses, Weekend #24 of 2013 looks like a really good $192 million for the top 12 films, not quite the $200+ million we forecast but still up 27% from the average for this weekend the past few years. Man of Steel is opening exactly at our expectations, while most of the holdovers […]

> The post-Thanksgiving weekend is usually brutal, and this year is no exception. BREAKING DAWN PART 1:  The likely 60% drop from last weekend is as expected for this very front-loaded series.  Right now the film is running $9M below New Moon‘s 2009 total at the same point in its run, but Breaking Dawn 1 […]

> Jim Field Smith’s comedy BUTTER, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival, ambitiously makes a play for both the heartwarming indie Little Miss Sunshine audience and the satire-minded Election crowd.  That may be one play too many, but the movie is worth seeing anyway. Jason A Micallef’s first produced script is set in the […]

The complete Friday Box Office report will be posted at its usual time Saturday morning, but in the meantime we have one big over-performer in Despicable Me 2, one opener slightly above forecast (Kevin Hart) and one flat-out, embarrassing bomb (Lone Ranger), doing even worse than our bearish expectations. With $34.3 million Wednesday and $24.5 million […]

STUDIO SCORECARD.  No change in the studio worldwide box office rankings this week.  Universal is extremely hot with the broad international appeal of Fast & Furious 6, but there is still about $500 million to go to catch #1 Disney.  Fox, Paramount and Warner Brothers are very tightly bunched in the next tier. Looking at […]

[UPDATE: The predictions for the films opening this weekend have been revised, reflecting corrections to some key computations.] Weekend #43 of 2014 is looking like $100 million $109 million for the top 12 films this weekend, up 23% from the norm for this weekend. Opening at around 2,700 theaters Friday (just below the 2,886 average theater […]