Saturday preliminary broadcast ratings: DEMOGRAPHIC DETAIL The chart above goes beyond the adult 18-49 rating, adding other key advertiser sales demographics (adult 18-34 and 25-54 ratings), audience skews (women 18-49, men 18-49 and adults 50+ shares), and total viewership (ages 2 or more expressed in thousands of people).  

Another strong weekend at the box office: this weekend is looking like it will be over 50% higher than comparable weekends in recent years (improving from the +18% weekend last week).      Taken 2 from 20th Century Fox opened with a very good $18.6 million Friday and is on pace for $50.0 million Friday-Sunday.   […]

  OPENINGS:  KUNG FU PANDA 4 (DreamWorks Animation/Universal), the first new all-ages animated release since the holiday season, arrived at the high end of projections with $58.3M, impressively above the $41.3M start for 2016’s Panda 3.  (And at a reported production budget 40% lower than its predecessor.)  It faces no direct competition for months, and […]

  OPENINGS:  CIVIL WAR (A24) marked its studio’s biggest swing to date, with costs that will approach $100M for production and worldwide marketing.  (A24 limited its risk by pre-selling some overseas territories to subdistributors.)  The early results were promising, with a studio-record $25.7M weekend, alhough tepid audience surveys and the fact that the audience was […]

> As has been reported, there really was an ambulance outside the Ryerson Theatre in Toronto after the midnight premiere of Alexandre Courtes’ THE INCIDENT, there to rescue at least one person who had fainted during the movie.  Of course, this may just mean that Toronto Film Festival patrons have delicate sensibilities–an idea supported by […]

        NETWORK FINALS:  Due to the many NFL preemptions that affected early numbers, we’ll look at the week-to-week comparisons here. ABC:  WHAT WOULD YOU DO held at 0.5, and 20/20 lost 0.1 to 0.5. CBS:  TKO: TOTAL KNOCK-OUT and WHISTLEBLOWER were steady at 0.5/0.3, and an additional hour of WHISTLEBLOWER was also […]

  RIO 2 (20th) has leaped out to a Friday lead, according to preliminary numbers at Deadline, one that it should be able to sustain for the weekend.  The Rio sequel has $11.5M on Friday, about 10% ahead of the first Rio‘s $10.3M opening day.  That film made $39.2M for the weekend, and Rio 2 […]

>The tenth weekend of the year should generate about $122 million for the top 12 films, a slightly better than normal weekend for the second weekend in March — up 4% from last year’s comparable weekend and up 10% from the four-year average for this weekend.  John Carter will be the top opener, but it […]