OPENINGS:  MOANA (Disney Animation) notched the #2 5-day Thanksgiving opening of all time with $81.1M (unless tomorrow’s finals put it behind Toy Story 2‘s $80.1M), and it should easily hit $250M before it’s done, especially since Universal’s Sing is its only serious family competition for the holiday season.  Its international release is going to […]

  It wasn’t a great Saturday for either of the weekend’s big openings.  According to preliminary numbers at Deadline and elsewhere, 22 JUMP STREET (Sony/Columbia) fell more than 25% from Friday to around $19M.  That’s a much heavier Day 2 drop than Neighbors (9%) or Ted (13%), and could pull its weekend down as low […]

  The Alphabet has begun its process of setting things up for next week’s Upfronts by renewing all the shows everyone knew would be renewed:  MODERN FAMILY, GREY’S ANATOMY, THE MIDDLE, CASTLE, DANCING WITH THE STARS, SHARK TANK and THE BACHELOR, as well as this season’s new hits ONCE UPON A TIME, SUBURGATORY and REVENGE.

  With a marketplace starved of adult comedy after the failure of Bad Santa 2, and the holiday deluge of product not quite here, this weekend is proving to be good timing for the arrival of OFFICE CHRISTMAS PARTY (DreamWorks/Paramount).  According to preliminary numbers at Deadline, Office had a $6.7M Friday (including $950K from Thursday night), and depending […]

  CBS is launching the bulk of its fall schedule during the broadcast networks’ official Premiere Week, Sept 22-28, but with a few exceptions, including a slightly early kick-off for its Sunday shows, and some shifts caused by its Sept-Oct Thursday Night Football games and the temporary move of The Big Bang Theory to Mondays.  […]

CBS, as usual the last network to make its decisions known, has issued its first orders for the 2012/13 network season, picking up 2 comedies and 4 dramas. VEGAS was the network’s highest-profile pilot, written by Nicholas Pileggi (Goodfellas) and Greg Walker.  It stars Dennis Quaid, in his TV-series debut, as the real life Ralph […]

  As holidays go, the 4th of July isn’t a bright one for moviegoing, and when it falls on a Friday, the result is a weekend no better than usual (the days before and after compensate for the holiday itself).  That held true this year as well, especially because the other studios showed more deference […]

Marvel’s The Avengers now looks like a $55.1 million weekend, according to the studio estimate this morning (now exactly hitting our forecast in Wednesday’s ShowBuzzDaily Weekend Predictions).  The new films this weekend are trailing badly, however.  Battleship looks like a $25.4 million opening weekend and we are projecting a final gross of $62 million domestically.  The […]