What was supposed to be an exciting pre-summer weekend at the box office is instead looking rather blah. OPENINGS:  Compared to recent YA disasters like The Mortal Instruments and Beautiful Creatures, DIVERGENT (Summit/Lionsgate) looks pretty good with a $22.8M Friday ($4.9M of it from Thursday night), up marginally from Friday night estimates.  But this […]

  It’s clear, based on preliminary numbers at Deadline, that DIVERGENT (Summit/Lionsgate) isn’t going to reach prerelease hopes of an opening in line with the $69M of the original Twilight, much less that movie’s sequels or The Hunger Games.  The question is how low it will go.  Divergent had around $22M on Friday (which includes […]

  DIVERGENT (Summit/Lionsgate), in case you hadn’t heard, is purportedly The Next Big YA Thing.  It’s off to a $4.9M start in Thursday night shows that began at 8PM, and that’s a solid but–for this genre–unimpressive number.  YA movies, especially those aimed at young women audiences, are notoriously frontloaded, and back in November 2008, the […]

  AFTERNOON UPDATE:  AMERICAN IDOL managed to salvage a shred of dignity (for this week, anyway) by gaining 0.1 in adjusted numbers to hit 2.0.  HELL’S KITCHEN also climbed 0.1, as did THE VAMPIRE DIARIES and PARENTHOOD.  Final numbers for the Thursday primetime CBS NCAA TOURNAMENT games were 1.0/1.3, with the first game way down […]

  AFTERNOON UPDATE:  SURVIVOR widened its lead over AMERICAN IDOL by 0.1, and that was the only change from this morning for the new episodes.  On ABC, reruns of THE MIDDLE, SUBURGATORY and MODERN FAMILY all went up 0.1 (but the new MIXOLOGY didn’t), and the rerun NASHVILLE dropped 0.1. WEDNESDAY CABLE:  As we prepare […]

Weekend #12 of 2014 is looking like $149 million for the top 12 films, slightly better than this same weekend on average in previous years. Opening at around 3,800 theaters Friday (well above the 2,886 average theater count for opening weekends the last two years), Divergent from Lionsgate/Summit should average $16,800 per theater for the weekend (for a $63.5 […]

  ABC is now the only network with all its pick-up letters still in its pocket, as NBC announced that CHICAGO FIRE, CHICAGO PD and GRIMM are officially back for 2014-15.  Oddly, the network press release phrases the return of PARKS & RECREATION as a confirmation, even though it doesn’t seem to have been official […]

  THE 100:  Wednesday 9PM on CW – Worth A Look THE 100 has promise, although it needs some work.  Based on a series of YA novels by Kass Morgan, the premise borrows liberally from Lord of the Flies, Lost, Battlestar Galactica, The Hunger Games, and any number of post-apocalyptic dystopian tales.  In the future, […]