OPENINGS:  Both of the weekend’s big arrivals found their audiences.  WRECK-IT RALPH (Disney) had to settle for $49.1M after Saturday’s 58% bump–not that huge for an animated title–but if those numbers hold, it’ll still be enough to set a record for (non-Pixar) Walt Disney Animation, beating the 48.8M for Tangled. FLIGHT (Paramount) had a […]

  You’ll be hearing quite a bit of spin over the next few days about how relatively inexpensive FOCUS (RatPac Dune/Warners) was to produce, $50-65M depending on the source.  That number, however, ignores the lavish Warners marketing campaign, which probably brings total worldwide costs to more like $175M.  That’s important, because Focus, based on preliminary […]

  NETWORK UPDATE:  Things got even better for THE LAST MAN ON EARTH, which rose an additional 0.1 in final numbers.  DATELINE, too, had an extra tenth. Ratings in key demos for the Top 25 original cable telecasts (plus a few other lower-rated but noteworthy programs): With February’s parade of Sunday events out of the […]

Last night the regular CBS Thursday schedule tied its season high (premiere night) with a 3.4 adult 18-49 rating in the fast nationals from 8-11 pm.  Last night is also up over the same night last year (2.8) and up over the season average last year at this point (3.2).  In contrast ABC and FOX […]

The ratings below are household ratings from the 56 television markets with local Nielsen meters for Saturday March 14 and Sunday March 15, 2015. The 56 markets (out of 210 total) cover about 70% of the US television population. College Basketball Saturday 1.55 rating CBS 1:00 pm Big Ten Semifinal: Purdue vs #6-Wisconsin 1.90 rating CBS 3:30 […]

  No great disconnects between Saturday’s estimates and Sunday’s, although one number needs some scrutiny. OPENINGS:  RISE OF THE GUARDIANS (DreamWorks Animation/Paramount) was at the top of the new arrivals, but with a very disappointing $24M weekend ($32.6M over 5 days).  At that rate, it’s going to have to struggle to hold onto its theatres […]

> Compared to the ShowbuzzDaily Forecasts, the weekend numbers for the three opening movies were in the right rank order, although Hop vastly exceeded its forecast.  Source Code and Insidious were much closer to their predictions.  At the end of the day, Hop should be considered a success for Universal, the ultra-low cost Insidious will be a success […]

Based on Friday’s and Saturday’s grosses, weekend #12 of 2015 looks like $123 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, a little better than it looked yesterday but still below the norms for this weekend.   Opening at 3,875 theaters Friday, Insurgent from Lionsgate/Summit is on track for a $54.0 million opening three-day weekend (better than yesterday’s estimate and […]