OPENINGS:  THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE (Lionsgate) came up from initial Friday estimates to $70.5M, the 7th highest single day box office in US history (behind the final Harry Potter, The Avengers, The Dark Knight, and 3 Twilights) and $3.2M ahead of the opening day for The Hunger Games.  If Catching Fire held as […]

  CW:  The premiere of the final season of NIKITA may make CW wonder why it bothered, with a virtually invisible 0.2.  That was even worse than the 0.3 for THE CARRIE DIARIES, even with last week. NBC:  After more than a week of JFK specials, those interested had likely been sated elsewhere, as WHERE WERE […]

Based on Friday’s grosses, Weekend #47 of 2013 looks like $211 million for the top 12 films — not quite up to the standard of the weekend before Thanksgiving but not an embarrassment.   Opening at 4,163 theaters Friday, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire from Lionsgate/Summit grossed $68.9 million Friday and is on track for a $150.4 million […]

  Early numbers at Deadline have the opening day (including Thursday night) of THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE (Lionsgate) at $67.5M, $200K above the launch of the original Hunger Games.  That makes it slightly puzzling that the weekend estimates, at Deadline and elsewhere, peg the weekend at around $145M, $7M or so less than Hunger […]

  With shows that began at 8PM last night, THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE (Lionsgate) earned $25.3M, and as is often the case with initial numbers, they can be read in several ways.  On the one hand, the result is considerably higher than the $19.7M Thursday night gross for the first Hunger Games–but that was […]

  AFTERNOON UPDATE:  As expected, post-football adjustment wiped out the 0.2 improvements for REIGN and GLEE.  However, THE X FACTOR only lost 0.1 of its 0.3 gain, sticking at 1.5, and THE VAMPIRE DIARIES stayed at 1.3.  THE BIG BANG THEORY and GREY’S ANATOMY were also adjusted up 0.1, which for GREY’S at least got […]

  FOX has announced some changes to its midseason line-up, mostly affecting Tuesdays. GLEE returns to Tuesdays 8PM on February 25, after airing its last Thursday episode sometime before January 16.  It leads into a single sitcom hour of NEW GIRL/BROOKLYN NINE-NINE.  THE MINDY PROJECT takes a long break following its January 28 episode, returning […]

  THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE, the 600-pound gorilla of the holiday movie box office season (The Hobbit 2 is by comparison a smaller simian, at least in the US) opens tonight, and the question is just how big it will be.  The first Hunger Games opened in March 2012 and had the 6th biggest […]