OPENINGS:  Saturday wasn’t pretty for ABOUT LAST NIGHT (Screen Gems/Sony), which tumbled 38% on the day after Valentine’s Day to $8.1M, and is now projecting $27M for the 3-day weekend ($30M or so with the holiday Monday).  That’s still a strong opening for a moderately-budgeted movie, and while About won’t get anywhere near Ride […]

Based on Friday’s and Saturday’s grosses, weekend #7 of 2014 now looks like $160 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, much lower than yesterday’s estimate ($171 million) but still 22% ahead of this weekend’s average the past several years.  Saturday was not kind to three of the four new movies (except RoboCop).  We know […]

The wheels have pretty much come off the Olympic cart in Russia.  Saturday night was even worse than Friday’s disaster, a preliminary 4.3 adult 18-49 rating from 8:30-11:00 pm Saturday night (assuming the first half hour is excluded from the nightly average as is common on Saturday).  This is two full rating points behind the […]

  Valentine’s Day is an enormous moviegoing event each year, so it remains to be seen whether Friday’s brisk business will translate to the rest of the holiday weekend. OPENINGS:  ABOUT LAST NIGHT (Screen Gems/Sony) barely missed 1st place with $13M on Friday, beaten by $30K, but it’s off to an impressive start, especially when […]

Based on Friday’s grosses, weekend #7 of 2014 looks like $171 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, 30% ahead of this weekend’s average the past several years.  The Lego Movie continues to lead the box office, while Kevin Hart’s star shines brightly with the strong opening of About Last Night. Opening at 2,253 theaters […]

  NBC:  See Mitch Metcalf’s Skedball post for detailed analysis of the Sochi WINTER OLYMPICS ratings.  Last night’s preliminary 4.5 slumped badly, down 1.4 from Thursday and below all 3 of the previous Winter Games on the parallel night.  NBC will hope this drop was solely due to Valentine’s Day.  Despite the over 2 point […]

A brutal night for NBC from Sochi: a preliminary 4.5 adult 18-49 rating from 8:00-11:00 pm, versus a 5.5 rating on the same night in Turin 2006, a 5.4 from Vancouver 2010 and 8.5 from Salt Lake City 2002.  Events last night included: Men’s Figure Skating Final, Men’s Super Combined, Women’s Aerials and Women’s Skeleton.  Also, […]

  The studios brought out a trio of romantic movies for Valentine’s Day, but the couple audiences most wanted to see was Emmet and Wyldstyle, as preliminary numbers at Deadline have THE LEGO MOVIE (Warners) topping the Friday box office with about $13M.  Since Lego will benefit the most from the holiday weekend matinee crowd, […]