Based on Friday’s grosses, weekend #11 of 2014 looks like $106 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, almost exactly matching the average for this weekend over the last few years.  Two new wide releases didn’t do anything special, but two limited releases distinguished themselves.   Opening at 3,115 theaters Friday, Need for Speed from Disney grossed $6.6 […]

  NETWORK UPDATE:  THE BIG BANG THEORY usually does very well with afternoon adjustments, and it rose 0.2 once again, bringing it to 3.4 (although that’s still considerably below where it was at this time last year).  The first hour of GREY’S ANATOMY grew by 0.1, but AMERICAN CRIME lost the same.  BONES went up […]

Warners is claiming that Sucker Punch cost around $80M, which given the scale of the film suggests either admirable cost-effectiveness or a lowball number–in any case, word of mouth is likely to be terrible (see my review, not to mention that its overall Rotten Tomatoes number is at 20%), so it’s doubtful to get past […]

Weekend #29 of 2016 forecasts for films opening wide and major returning films: NEW FILMS THIS WEEKEND July 15-17, 2016 Critics Positive ($ millions) Opening Weekend Forecast Domestic Total Projection Overseas Total Projection Worldwide Total Projection Ghostbusters Sony PG13 75% 53.0 150 140 290 The Infiltrator Broad Green R 57% 5.0 20 15 35 Note: […]

Based on Friday’s and Saturday’s grosses, weekend #14 of 2014 looks like $160 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, up over 40% from the four-year average for this weekend.  All credit goes to the second Captain America, as Disney has succesfully transformed April into the new May on the evolving movie release calendar.   […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  Fox expanded its lead with $147 million worldwide this week, mostly from the release of The Maze Runner, pushing the studio to over $3.8 billion worldwide for the year to date.  Disney is in second with $2.6 billion, and Warner Brothers remains in third place with almost $2.5 billion.  In the chart below […]

  It was foretold by the gods of Marvel that THOR: THE DARK WORLD (Disney) would rule this weekend, and preliminary numbers at Deadline confirm that it will, with a $31M Friday (including $7.1M from Thursday night).  That should get it to a weekend around $80M.  It’s certainly a huge number, likely to be the […]

  OPENINGS:  Star/co-writer/co-producer Melissa McCarthy reportedly took a fraction of her usual fee on TAMMY (Warners) to keep the production budget down to the low $20Ms.  After a $6.4M 4th of July (up 17% from Thursday), the movie is well on its way to recouping that budget–it should have a $22M weekend, and $34M since […]