Based on Friday’s and Saturday’s grosses, Weekend #28 of 2013 looks like a decent $191 million for the top 12 films, up 5% from the comparable weekend the last few years.  It was a pretty good weekend for the ShowbuzzDaily Weekend Forecast, with the top movies in the correct rank order and most films within […]

  2 GUNS (Universal), with a 10PM Thursday start, had an unexceptional $1.2M launch, on the low end of the summer.  But while it was below White House Down‘s $1.35M, and that action movie went on to just a $24.9M weekend, it’s in the same neighborhood as Now You See Me ($1.5M) and The Heat […]

STUDIO SCORECARD. The worldwide studio rankings for 2013 to date remain the same as last week’s.  The anomalous weekly decline (down $8 million) for 20th Century Fox is a function of some downward revisions of some domestic final tallies. Reminder: the chart below has been reformatted and expanded to include a look at all releases […]

Updated international box office chart:

  OPENINGS:  There was nothing supernatural about the blah $17M opening for CARRIE (Screen Gems/Sony/MGM), on the low end of Halloween horror openings, and with Bad Grandpa targeting a similar audience next weekend, there’s little chance for recovery.  Even though the reviews were never going to be good, Sony’s strategy of keeping the movie under […]

  OPENINGS:  THE BEST MAN HOLIDAY (Universal) had a strong Saturday bump for a movie aimed at the African-American audience, up 16% from Friday (in comparison, Think Like A Man increased 9% and Tyler Perry’s last 2 movies dropped 16% and 8%). That suggests very positive word of mouth, which may give Best Man unexpected […]

  Well, bah humbug. OPENINGS:  Start the spin machine:  THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG (Warners/MGM) has opened with $31.1M, $6M below the start for last year’s An Unexpected Journey.  That’s more than a 15% drop, and if it continued throughout the weekend, Smaug could end up with a total around $70M.  However, the bulk […]

The first weekend of the new year is looking like $125 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, slightly above average for this weekend versus previous years. Opening at around 2,500 theaters Friday (slightly below the 2,886 average theater count for opening weekends the last two years), Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones from Paramount should average about $7,000 per theater for […]