Warner Brothers and Disney remain in a tight battle for the worldwide crown for 2013.  We will keep updating this over the next few weeks and declare a winner after the overseas grosses are fully counted.  The most significant films still grossing overseas are The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug (for Warner Brothers) and Frozen (for Disney).  For a […]

  OPENINGS:  PARANORMAL ACTIVITY: THE MARKED ONES (Paramount), with its $18.2M weekend, made less at 2867 theatres than the first Paranormal made at 760, a little more than 4 years ago.  It was also well below the $29M weekend for the last Paranormal installment in 2012 (which had been the franchise low).  In other words, […]

International box office for 2013 releases through January 5, 2014. Click here for a summary of worldwide performance by studio.

Based on Friday’s and Saturday’s grosses, the first weekend of 2014 now looks like $132 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, not as high as it appeared yesterday but still up 5% from comparable weekends the past few years.   Opening at 2,867 theaters Friday, Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones from Paramount grossed $8.7 million Friday and […]

  The National Society of Film Critics is the only major group that withholds its honors until after year-end, and for the most part its choices today were as idiosyncratic as its scheduling.  With the exception of Best Actress to Cate Blanchett and Foreign Film to Blue Is The Warmest Color, the awards were off […]

  OPENINGS:  PARANORMAL ACTIVITY: THE MARKED ONES (Paramount) was an experiment in several ways–the first installment of the franchise to be a spin-off and not a direct sequel, the first released out of the Halloween season, and one of Hollywood’s first tries at producing and marketing a movie primarily to the Latino audience.  All of […]

  NBC:  GRIMM gained 0.2 from its last extremely low airing to reach 1.4, but the number isn’t as good as it looks, since it’s down 0.2 from its 1.6 in the previous week.  DRACULA fell 0.2 from its last airing.  The night started with 1.5 for DATELINE, up 0.4. FOX:  THE COTTON BOWL has […]

Based on Friday’s grosses, the first weekend of 2014 looks like $138 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, up about 10% from similar weekends the past few years.   Opening at 2,867 theaters Friday, Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones from Paramount grossed $6.8 million Friday, putting the fifth in the franchise on track for an $18.1 million […]