Now if the Madagascar animals had to battle the Prometheus aliens, that might have been interesting. OPENINGS:  PROMETHEUS (20th) edged out MADAGASCAR 3 (DreamWorks Animation/Paramount) for Friday honors ($21.4M to $20.5M), but girls, you’re both pretty.  Madagascar should pull ahead for the weekend thanks to family matinees (and what could be mixed word of mouth […]

        NETWORK FINALS:  FAMILY GUY gained 0.1 in final numbers, and the rerun LITTLE BIG SHOTS lost the same.         Broadcast Official Nationals Program Ratings Chart     CABLE HIGHLIGHTS:  AMC’s THE WALKING DEAD had its familiar Week 2 tumble, down two-tenths to 1.00, with the premiere of DISPATCHES […]

The concept of “premiere week” is getting seriously stretched this year by the networks, since NBC, CW and now FOX have announced schedules that launch only a few shows the week of September 24.  This is probably a good thing for viewers, as it will allow people to try out shows in a staggered way, […]

Weekend #42 of 2014 is looking like $136 million for the top 12 films this weekend, up 22% from the norm for this weekend. Opening at around 3,000 theaters Friday (slightly above the 2,886 average theater count for opening weekends the last two years), Fury from Sony should average a very solid $9,900 per theater for the weekend […]

ABC won Week 40 of the broadcast season (June 18-24) with a 2.37 Adult 18-49 rating in prime time, its second weekly win in a row (thanks to two NBA Finals games — #4 and #5).  But ABC could really have used a Game 6 on Sunday.  Last year, the second week of the NBA […]

  Note:  Holdover titles tended to decline less than usual because comparisons include last week’s Easter Sunday. OPENINGS:  BORN IN CHINA (Disney) was at the top of an unimpressive group of debuts this weekend with $5.1M, narrowly ahead of the $4.6M for Monkey Kingdom, the last in the studio’s “Disneynature” series of Earth Day wildlife […]

Based on Friday’s grosses, weekend #43 of 2014 looks like a decent $103 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, 17% above the norm for this weekend ($89 million). Opening at 2,858 theaters, Ouija from Universal grossed $8.3 million Friday and is on track for a $20.0 million opening three-day weekend (somewhat below our $25.0 million ShowbuzzDaily […]

  Deadline is reporting that THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN (Sony) has set a new all-time Tuesday record with $32-35M, beating previous record-holder Transformers, the last movie to open on a Tuesday that fell on July 3, which had $27.9M in 2007.  (There are, admittedly, very few movies that open on Tuesdays–after Transformers, the next was the […]