>Through Sunday, Team Metcalf has a $52 million lead in the ShowBuzzDaily Summer Movie Draft.  Metcalf’s Captain America outpaced Salem’s Harry Potter weekend two, and Salem’s Friends with Benefits opening was cancelled out by Metcalf’s Transformers and Horrible Bosses.  Next weekend Metcalf’s final two films open.  Salem has three films in August, which collectively should […]

  OPENINGS:  Studios are increasingly starting their global launches of franchise blockbusters overseas, and once again, the weekend’s biggest box office news occurred outside the US.  X-MEN: APOCALYPSE (20th) has opened in 75 overseas territories that cover about 2/3 of the world (but not yet China) and had a $103.3M weekend.  That’s much lower than […]

  OPENINGS:  WONKA (Warners) kicked off the holiday movie season with $39M, at the upper end of expectations.  As a family entertainment, it can look forward to a high multiple into January, and could reach $200M+ in the US, against around $250M in production/marketing costs.  The IP musical is even stronger overseas, where it expanded […]

> It’s good that the weekend’s total will beat last year’s awful group of Get Him To the Greek, Killers, Prince of Persia and Sex & the City 2, but on a picture-by-picture basis, the news is a lot less pleasant: X-MEN:  FIRST CLASS is headed for the lowest opening of any picture in its […]

  The summer movie season will be underway momentarily on the east coast, as 7PM screenings commence for The Amazing Spider-Man–which isn’t exactly riding a rave of critical support (56% positive at Rotten Tomatoes, and 35% among “top critics”).  At Sony tonight, uneasy lie the heads that wear a crown.  But meanwhile, our survey of […]

  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 […]

  STAR TREK BEYOND (Skydance/Alibaba/Huahua/Paramount) is showing a fair franchise hold by the standards of this summer.  Based on preliminary numbers at Deadline, it had a $23M opening day (including $5.5M from Thursday), down about 26% from the start of 2009’s Star Trek reboot.  (2013’s Into Darkness opened on a Thursday, changing its weekend dynamic.)  That suggests a $57M […]

  OPENINGS:  Pedro Almodovar’s PARALLEL MOTHERS (Sony Classics) expanded to wide release at 684 theaters in anticipation of the Oscar nominations that are little more than a week away, but its $300K weekend translated into a per-theater average under $500. HOLDOVERS:  The lack of any new Hollywood competition was as usual good for the films […]