With six of eight movies open, Team Metcalf’s slate is closing in on $1 billion in domestic box office ($929 million through Sunday).  Metcalf’s seventh film opens Friday (Rock of Ages).  And then he will wait to see if the early lead will hold up as the other two teams really get going. Team Salem […]

  A great start for the weekend, if you overlook the fact that 2 of the 3 new arrivals flopped. OPENINGS:  THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN (Sony) has successfully rebooted the franchise, no question about it.  (Unless it tanks overseas, which is hugely unlikely.)  But Spidey hasn’t come back quite at full strength:  even with a 6-day […]

  THE DARK KNIGHT RISES (Warners) remained effortlessly in front for a 2d straight weekend, according to preliminary Friday numbers at Deadline.  Rises earned another $20M on Friday, bringing it to $245M in 8 days, and a likely Weekend 2 of $66M, which would bring it to around $290M by Sunday night (plus hundreds of […]

The Past Week: Total Box Office Volume All films in wide release playing between August 13 and August 19 grossed a decent $196 million, up 7% from the four-year average for the comparable week and up 3% from the same week in 2011. Year to date (now over $6.8 billion for wide-release films) is now […]

  Paul W.S. Anderson and Paul Thomas Anderson share the glory. OPENINGS:  W.S. Anderson’s RESIDENT EVIL:  RETRIBUTION (Screen Gems/Sony) took the weekend, but its $21.1M haul is the lowest the series has seen in a decade, and 20% below the opening of the last installment.  All of this only means something if it’s reflected overseas, […]

  Mitch Metcalf will have more to say about this weekend’s actual boxoffice numbers versus Sunday’s studio estimates later today, but one point is worth noting for its Oscar implications.  It was important to Warner Bros that ARGO, the studio’s big awards season hope and the fruit of its golden-boy director Ben Affleck (and also […]

Updated International chart — now tracking the past six months on a rolling basis.  At any given time, that will translate to about 75 films on the chart at a time. New this week is Skyfall, which will probably top out at around $650 million worldwide (between Madagascar 3 and Men in Black 3).

The Past Week: Total Box Office Volume All films in wide release playing between December 3 and December 9 grossed only $101 million, down 3% from the four-year average for the week but up 13% from the same week last year.  The past six weeks are still 18% above the four-year average and 25% above […]