OPENINGS:  BAD GRANDPA (Paramount) cost only $15M to produce, and although that’s somewhat misleading (when worldwide marketing is added, the total cost becomes more like $75M+), it’s still headed for easy success with a $12.6M opening day that should mean a $26-28M weekend and $60M in the US when it’s done.  Paramount’s decision to […]

  NBC:  The regular Friday line-up got off to a solid start.  GRIMM, at 1.8, was just about where the show had been last spring (and up 0.2 from last season’s finale).  The better news was that DRACULA looks to be as compatible with Grimm as the network had hoped, holding that 1.8 for a […]

Based on Friday’s grosses, Weekend #43 of 2013 looks like $96 million for the top 12 films, less than forecast but still up 12% to 18% from the same weekend in recent years. Opening at 3,336 theaters Friday, Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa from Paramount grossed $12.6 million Friday and is on track for a $30.0 million opening weekend […]

  Amid its very public internal tumult today, Deadline managed to post some preliminary box office numbers, and if they hold up, BAD GRANDPA (Paramount) will take over first place for the weekend.  Its reported $11.5M Friday (including $1.4M from Thursday night) is only about half of the opening day for the last Jackass (which […]

  DRACULA:  Friday 10PM on NBC – If Nothing Else Is On… A century of vampire movies and TV shows has taught us that undead is by no means the same as lifeless, but NBC’s new excavation of DRACULA doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo.  Produced on a lavish scale (at least in the […]

  FOX announced most of its midseason decisions today, and there were a few surprises.  Biggest was the reduction of AMERICAN IDOL‘s Thursday night results show to 30 minutes, with the new sitcom SURVIVING JACK at 8:30PM, and the Greg Kinnear vehicle RAKE following at 9PM.  We’ve come a long way from the days when […]

  Every Sunday now, the networks issue press releases to celebrate the giant gains made by shows during the full week following their initial airing, ratings known as “L7.”  Armed with numbers from a couple of weeks earlier, they crow–perhaps “scream” is a better verb–about this series adding millions of viewers, and that one increasing […]

  AFTERNOON UPDATE:  WORLD SERIES GAME 2 ended up at an adjusted 3.6, just where we expected and slightly above last year’s Game 2.  There weren’t a lot of additional adjustments, but a couple of them were significant.  THE BIG BANG THEORY bounced back 0.3 to 5.2, but THE MILLERS actually went down 0.1 to […]