According to preliminary numbers at Deadline, something unexpected happened on Thanksgiving Day:  two of the holiday weekend’s openings changed places in the boxoffice ranks. LIFE OF PI (20th), which had been considerably behind on Wednesday, reportedly took a 24% leap on Thursday to $4.5M.  This is similar to the track for last year’s Hugo, […]

  Kathryn Bigelow’s acclaimed ZERO DARK THIRTY (Sony) is off to a tremendous start in limited release, according to THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER.  The real-life drama about the CIA hunt for Osama bin-Laden, despite (or in part because of) being assailed by, among others, members of the US Senate for its depiction of US torture, was on track […]

  OPENINGS:  TEXAS CHAINSAW (Lionsgate) did what most horror movies do, dropping 23% on Saturday for a lousy 2.3x weekend multiple of its Friday gross.  It was actually in 2d place on both Saturday and Sunday, but that frontloaded Friday was enough to give it a comfortable $23M win for the weekend.  With a $20M […]

The 7th weekend of 2013 looks like it will be down from prior years but not at the excessive rates we have seen the past few weekends.  We expect $121 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, 6% to 15% below the normal pace for this weekend.   Opening in 3,552 theaters Thursday, A Good […]

Based on Friday’s grosses, Weekend #11 of 2013 is the second weekend in a row up somewhat from prior years: $103 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday (up 6% from the same weekend last year).  Oz continues to carry Hollywood on its back.  Opening this weekend, Steve Carrell and Jim Carrey flopped in The […]

  OPENINGS:  Here’s the really remarkable thing about this weekend’s haul for IRON MAN 3 (Disney).  It’s not the $175.3M opening in the US, even though that’s the 2d highest start in US history–that was pretty much where it was expected to be, well above Iron Man 2 but not quite equal to the combined […]

  There’s so much product in the marketplace right now that overall numbers for the summer movie season seem fairly robust–but looked at title by title, we see two blockbusters (Iron Man 3 and Fast & Furious 6) and then a lot of films that will be happy to hit breakeven. OPENINGS:  Expectations were low […]

  Preliminary box office numbers at Deadline have THE HEAT (20th) overperforming with a $15M Friday, which could give it a $40M opening weekend, almost as much as the movie cost to produce.  That means the first 3 days for the Sandra Bullock/Melissa McCarthy pairing may nearly match the first 4 days of The Hangover […]