The franchise spin-off PARANORMAL ACTIVITY: THE MARKED ONES (Paramount) pulled in $1.2M at 10PM shows last night.  That was far below the $4.5M that Paranormal Activity 4 made on its Thursday in October 2012, but it was on par with the $1.15M earned by Texas Chainsaw when it opened on the first Thursday of […]

  AFTERNOON UPDATE:  There were no meaningful changes from the morning’s overnight numbers.  As often happens, when the dust settled on CBS, THE BIG BANG THEORY rose 0.1 to 5.4 and THE MILLERS slipped 0.1 to 2.8.  In addition, 2 1/2 MEN added 0.1 for 2.2.  Both half-hours of COMMUNITY ended up at 1.3s.  The […]

Through 17 days of the Holiday Season (December 16-January 1), the top 10 films in North America each day have totaled $664 million, up 10.6% from last year ($600 million) and up 8.5% from the multi-year average since 2002 ($612 million). New Year’s Day added up to $47.6 million, slightly under the overall average for […]

  The calendar has turned to 2014, and the critics, for the most part, have spoken.  Now Oscar season is moving into the Guild part of its schedule, and today the Producers Guild announced its Best Picture nominees.  The PGAs have been a fairly accurate precursor of Oscar nominees, with 8 of its picks last […]

  Everything went up at the New Year’s Day box office (bringing to an end the holiday bounty), but to wildly varying degrees.  Business should fall today and rise tomorrow and Saturday, but not to a point equal to New Year’s, with weekend totals for holdovers a bit more than double their numbers from yesterday. […]

  The first night of 2014 was the last of the network holiday blahs. CBS:  The Eye’s reruns scored better than anyone else’s, sparked by 1.3 for CRIMINAL MINDS. ABC:  CBS took the night, but MODERN FAMILY was the evening’s highest rated rerun at 1.5. NBC:  SVU was on top with 1.0. FOX:  For the […]

The first weekend of the new year is looking like $125 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, slightly above average for this weekend versus previous years. Opening at around 2,500 theaters Friday (slightly below the 2,886 average theater count for opening weekends the last two years), Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones from Paramount should average about $7,000 per theater for […]

  Audiences to Hollywood:  Happy New Year!  And… what have you done for us lately?  2013 turned out to be a terrific year for high-quality movies, with so many good films and performances that some will inevitably be squeezed out of the Oscar race.  But that was so last year.  What does 2014 have in […]