Updated throughout: theater counts and critical sentiment for films opening this weekend. The 12th weekend of 2013 looks like it will be way off last year’s pace set by the opening of The Hunger Games, but the weekend will be closer to a more normal year.  The top 12 films Friday-Sunday should total $126 million, […]

> Hollywood Hearts this weekend. OPENINGS:   It turned out that THE VOW (Screen Gems/Sony) was indeed slightly more frontloaded than SAFE HOUSE (Universal), but not by enough to rob it of 1st place.  Vow‘s massive $41.7M haul was higher than any opening weekend for a Julia Roberts, Sandra Bullock or Katherine Heigl vehicle–ever.  (Cut to […]

  OPENINGS:  SPECTRE (MGM/Columbia/Sony) had the #7 opening of the year at $73M… yet there are signs of trouble.  While Skyfall rose 11% on its 2d day of wide release, and Casino Royale gained 5%, Spectre fell by 5%, actually slightly worse than the lightly-regarded Quantum of Solace.  Since Spectre wasn’t more frontloaded than Skyfall, […]

The 50th weekend of the year is looking like $160 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, a very good kick-off to the holiday movie season. Opening at around 3,900 theaters Friday (well above the 2,886 average theater count for opening weekends the last two years), The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug from Warner Brothers should average a very good $21,200 per […]

STUDIO SCORECARD. Disney solidified its grip on first place in worldwide box office (thanks to Monsters University), while Paramount jumped ahead of 20th Century Fox courtesy of World War Z. 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 now […]

Based on Friday’s grosses, weekend #5 of 2015 looks like $84 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, somewhat above the norm for this weekend but not as strong as our optimistic forecast.   Opening at 2,893 theaters Friday, Project Almanac from Paramount is on track for an $8.2 million opening three-day weekend (well below our $16.5 million […]

>Transformers 3 keeps on rolling at #1, while Horrible Bosses opens reasonably well and Zookeeper is more mediocre.  The weekend is looking like it will be down 20% from 2010.    The ShowbuzzDaily Domestic Final estimates now show that Horrible Bosses is headed for a domestic gross of $97 million, while Zookeeper is on track […]

  THE UPSIDE (STX/Lantern) survived the wreckage of the Weinstein Company bankruptcy, and found an opening between the end of the holiday movie season and next week’s MLK weekend, poking through with what preliminary numbers at Deadline put at a Friday-winning $7M (including $1.1M from Thursday night).  That should propel it to a weekend win […]