The Past Week: Total Box Office Volume All films in wide release playing between September 10 and September 16 grossed a piss-poor $93 million, down 19% from the four-year average for the week and down 21% from the same week last year.  We have to go back to the same week in 2004 to find […]

This weekend is on track to be the fourth weekend in a row to be up over the previous years.  Paranormal Activity 4 opens very large but will play out very quickly as the young, horror audience flocks to the first weekend.  Tyler Perry puts down his Madea outfit and his writer-producer-director suit and simply […]

This weekend is looking incredibly strong: over $250 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, up 27% from a typical third weekend in November.  The final Twilight (12-34 females), Lincoln (35+ adults), and the second weekend of the strongest Bond yet (young adults) make for a powerful combination.   Opening at over 4,000 theaters Friday […]

  The cash has started pouring in for THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY (Warners/MGM).  In 3100 theatres, the film earned $13M in midnight screenings last night.  That was considerably higher than the $8M earned by the midnights for Return of the King, but King was in2003, before the phenomenon of midnight releases had really taken hold […]

  OPENINGS:  DJANGO UNCHAINED (Weinstein/Sony) and LES MISERABLES (Universal) are both success stories, but Django has pulled away from Les Miz over the past couple of days, and should outpace the musical by the end of the week.  Django appears likely to beat Inglourious Basterds and its $120.5M to become Quentin Tarantino’s biggest hit ever, […]

Based on Saturday’s grosses, Weekend #5 of 2013 continues to be on pace for $69 million for the top 12 films (over 30% behind the pace for the same weekend the last few years and identical to the early estimate yesterday).   Opening at 3,009 theaters Friday, Warm Bodies from Summit grossed $7.6 million Friday and $9 […]

The 10th weekend of 2013 looks to be the first up weekend after six down weekends in a row.  The top 12 films Friday-Sunday should total $128 million, up 6 to 11% from the same weekend the last few years.  Keep in mind this is the weekend that has given us John Carter, Battle: Los […]

With March in the books, the North American box office is showing some signs of life.  Through 12 weeks (84 days), 2013 totals $1.898 billion (looking at wide-release films playing on at least 400 screens).  2013-to-date is making a slight move away from the same period in the truly dreadful years of 2008 ($1.803 billion) […]