On Sunday mornings, the devout go to church, and movie studios lie.  (There’s not much overlap between the two groups.)  The studios lie (or fudge, if you’re sensitive about the L Word), fundamentally, because they can get away with it:  when “estimated” box office returns are announced on Sunday mornings, they’re simply repeated–one might […]

The ratings below are household ratings from the 56 television markets with local Nielsen meters for Saturday July 27 and Sunday July 28, 2013. (The 56 markets out of 210 total cover about 70% of the US television population.)   After a one-week break, NASCAR roared back to the top of the weekend sports ratings […]

Projected weekly network ratings in prime time (based on four days of official nationals and three days of fast nationals). The same rank order for the broadcast networks this week as last: FOX, CBS, NBC and ABC. Collectively, the four networks are down a slight -3% from last week, but they are down a staggering […]

  What a difference a year makes:  on the same Sunday night last year, NBC averaged an 11.6 rating with adults 18-49 in prime time for the second night of competition at the London Summer Olympic Games, and the four broadcast networks added up to a 14.4 rating.  Last night, the networks combined for a […]

  OPENINGS:   Two smart studio decisions bailed out what could have been a scary opening weekend for THE WOLVERINE (20th).  Fox kept the budget relatively low for its expensive genre, just $250M or so including worldwide marketing, and it boosted international appeal with an Asian setting.  Both paid off, as the movie had the robust […]

International box office chart:

STUDIO SCORECARD. 20th Century Fox vaulted ahead of Paramount into fourth place in worldwide box office for 2013 to date, mostly because of The Wolverine.  Universal and Warner Brothers remain a very close #2 and #3, respectively, with both studios grossing well over $100 million this past week (primarily from overseas grosses for Universal’s Despicable Me […]

Based on Friday’s grosses, Weekend #30 of 2013 looks like a decent $158 million for the top 12 films, nearly identical to yesterday’s initial estimate and still comfortably above the same weekend the last few years. The Wolverine is way off our projected opening but still but still the best opening in recent years for a […]