OPENING:  THE WOMAN IN BLACK 2:  ANGEL OF DEATH (Relativity) fell to 4th place for the weekend, as expected, after a strong opening day.  Still, a $15.1M haul for the cheap thriller isn’t at all bad, and it wouldn’t be surprising to see a Woman in Black 3 come along in a year or […]

Weekend #45 of 2014 is looking like $167 million for the top 12 films this weekend, up 19% from the norm for this weekend.   Opening at 3,500 theaters Friday (well above the 2,886 average theater count for opening weekends the last two years), Interstellar from Paramount should average a terrific $18,500 per theater for the […]

International box office for 2013 releases through February 9, 2014.  Frozen now has Despicable Me 2 in its sights, after passing both Hunger Games: Catching Fire and The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug in recent weeks.  And another very good week for The Wolf of Wall Street overseas as it approaches $300 million worldwide. Click here for a summary of worldwide performance by […]

Warner Brothers is back on top of Disney, thanks to the second Hobbit film.  For a complete ranking of 2013 films individually by worldwide performance click here. TOTAL NORTH AMERICAN BOX OFFICE. Looking at wide-release films in North America (those that play on at least 400 screens at some point), 2013 totals almost $9.5 billion, virtually even with […]

  From the start, THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN (DreamWorks/Reliance/Universal) was perceived as a lower-intensity version of the Gone Girl phenomenon, and that’s holding with the opening of its film version.  Where Gone Girl had a $13.2M Friday start on its way to a $37.5M weekend, preliminary numbers at Deadline give Train $9.3M on Friday, […]

Weekend #21 of 2015 is looking like $162 million for the top 12 films this weekend, well below the norm for this weekend. Opening at around 3,800 theaters Friday (well above the 2,886 average theater count for opening weekends the last two years), Tomorrowland from Disney should average an okay $9,700 per theater for the three-day weekend (for a $37.0 million […]

  OPENINGS:  The combination of the typically low early-December box office and the approach of Avatar 2 dissuaded the studios from introducing any new product this week.  The closest thing to a wide release in the US was the expansion of SPOILER ALERT (Focus/Universal) to 783 theaters, where it fared badly with $700K, averaging $900 […]

  OPENINGS:  EVIL DEAD RISE (Warners) modestly exceeded expectations with $23.5M, although that was still below the franchise’s last reboot in 2013 at $25.8M (which only reached a $54.2M total in the US and didn’t spawn a sequel).  Horror has become the most dependable genre in Hollywood, and Evil Dead Rise is the only one […]