Based on Friday’s grosses, weekend #17 of 2015 looks like $88 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, better than it looked yesterday ($81 million) but still below the norm for this weekend.  A solid Saturday lifted the weekend estimates for most films at least somewhat, but the weekend rankings did not change materially. Opening at […]

> Very early numbers say that TRANSFORMERS:  DARK OF THE MOON is headed for about $97M overseas this weekend, which of course is a huge amount of money but also a 56% drop from last weekend–higher than the 52% domestic decline.  (UPDATE:  According to the Hollywood Reporter, the Transformers number is actually $93M for the […]

> Mitch Metcalf will doubtless have more to say about this later today, but the weekend’s actual boxoffice totals have just been announced, and the surprise is that CARS 2 ended up almost $2M below the number Disney predicted yesterday, $66.1M rather than $68M.  This translates into a Sunday drop that was far heavier than […]

Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 enters the worldwide chart with $200 million overseas to date.  Ultimately, we expect the overseas number to rise to about $425 million, putting the final Twilight on track for $710 million ( a touch ahead of New Moon as the highest Twilight worldwide gross).  For a complete track of worldwide/ domestic/ overseas […]

>Transformers 3 is doing good but not great business (midway between the first and second in the series), but the overall weekend is looking like it is up only marginally from last year thanks to weak holds by Cars 2 and Bad Teacher. Transformers: Dark of the Moon opened well and looks like it will […]

  CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER (Disney) is as big as expected, and maybe even a little bigger.  Preliminary numbers at Deadline have it at up to $38M on Friday (that includes $10.2M from Thursday night), putting it close to 20% higher than the $31.9M opening day for Thor: The Dark World, which wound up […]

> Rise of the Planet of the Apes should open easily at #1 with over $43 million.  With broadly positive reviews behind it, this prequel should have decent holds in the following few weeks.  The Smurfs should slide into #2 with a decent second week decline ($21 million, down 41%).  Fighting for #3 should be […]

> Fuller numbers are in, and they show a surprising near-tie on Friday between RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES, THE HELP and FINAL DESTINATION 5, all at $7.3-7.8M for the day.  The Apes have the presumptive advantage over the weekend, because 2d weekends are less front-loaded than openings, but since The Help started […]