>Thor opens solidly but not enough to push the weekend past Iron Man 2’s torrid pace last year. The ShowbuzzDaily Domestic Final estimates now show that Thor should finish its run with $190 million, while Fast Five has been upgraded to $212 million and Rio has been downgraded slightly to $138 million.  The other openers, […]

>The past week (seven days ending Sunday) is up 5% versus last year’s comparable week.  Year-to-date box office is now down 3.2% versus last year, the smallest year-to-year margin we’ve seen so far this year.        The Past Week: Total Box Office Volume All films in wide release playing between October 10 and October 16 grossed an awful $116 million, down 5% versus the same week in 2010 but down the same […]

  Vulture picked the wrong weekend to predict Universal’s demise. OPENINGS:  SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN (Universal) had a very good $20.3M Friday, and will do better than $50M for the weekend, successfully selling (male) audiences on the revisionist fairy tale as an epic action movie.  All that epic action and spectacular CG came at […]

>The holiday film season is upon us.  Based on Wednesday numbers, Twilight Breaking Dawn Part 1 should hold on to the #1 spot this weekend despite an anticipated precipitous drop, followed closely by The Muppets.  The other kid-friendly openers, Arthur Christmas and Hugo, are fighting over table scraps.  The weekend is shaping up to be […]

>Fast Five passes Rio to become the worldwide #1 film released in the January-April period.    The table below shows the domestic and international grosses for the Top 25 films (out of the 47 movies released between January and April at over 500 theaters).  Fast Five is now #1 with $483 million worldwide, followed by […]

> After a nice Friday bump, TRANSFORMERS:  DARK OF THE MOON took a small step backwards yesterday, with a lower % of increase than either of its predecessors had on their first Saturdays.  As Mitch Metcalf noted in his piece on holiday weekend boxoffice, films in general should benefit from smaller than usual declines today, […]

>Rise of the Planet of the Apes allowed Team Salem to pick up some ground, but Team Metcalf remains $73 million ahead in the ShowBuzzDaily Summer Movie Draft, thanks to decent second and third week business for his titles.  Salem has two movies to go, although neither is expected to be much a factor in […]

> Deadline has preliminary numbers for Saturday and the weekend, and any worries that THE HELP would suffer from front-loading are out the window.  Rather amazingly, the picture seems to have climbed more than 25% from Friday to Saturday, and it seems likely to get near $25M for the weekend and $35M since its opening […]