The studios continued to be bullish on their holiday estimates, with preliminary Monday numbers expecting strong business that may or may not be confirmed in final box office figures tomorrow.  For now, the most optimistic film is HEAVEN IS FOR REAL (TriStar/Sony), expecting a mere 7% drop on Monday, with the older skewing NEIGHBORS […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  The release of X-Men: Days of Future Past has pushed 20th Century Fox to the top of the heap with over $1.5 billion in worldwide box office in 2014 to date.  The race will ebb and flow through the rest of the summer and into the holiday season, but Fox, Warner Brothers and Sony […]

  (Note:  Most of the studios aggressively estimated their Sunday declines as being around 10%, even though last year’s Memorial Day Weekend Sunday drops were mostly steeper than that, so there could be a number of downward adjustments in store when final numbers are released.) OPENINGS:  X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST (20th), oddly enough, was […]

Based on Friday’s and Saturday’s grosses, weekend #21 of 2014 now looks like $179 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, well below our $205 million forecast and down 28% from the same weekend last year (but still up 6% from the norm for this weekend over the last few years).  Basically, the two openers […]

  Day 2 for X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST (20th) was down by a larger margin than expected, according to preliminary numbers at Deadline and elsewhere, from $36M on Friday to $29-30M on Saturday.  If that number holds, it’ll be as much as a 20% drop, compared to 16% for Godzilla and 6% for Captain […]

  OPENINGS:  With $36M on Friday, X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST is assured of going over $100M by Monday, and the only question is by how much.  The day fell a bit below the openings for Godzilla ($38.4M) and Captain America: The Winter Soldier ($36.9M), but above The Amazing Spider-Man 2 ($35.2M).  (On their 2d […]

  The highest rated shows on network television last night had 1.3 ratings. NBC:  The season finale of HANNIBAL is currently at 0.9, matching last week, but it began at 10:01PM and followed a 1.6 for the last half-hour of DATELINE, so that number may come down in final ratings on Monday.  However, it should […]

Based on Friday’s grosses, weekend #21 of 2014 looks like $180 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, well below our $205 million forecast and down 28% from the same weekend last year (but still up 6% from the norm for this weekend over the last few years).  Basically, the two openers this weekend are […]