Based on Friday’s grosses, Weekend #49 of 2013 looks like $87 million for the top 12 films from Friday-Sunday, right on target for the usually slow post-Thanksgiving weekend.   Opening at 2,101 theaters Friday, Out of the Furnace from Relativity grossed $1.9 million Friday and is on track for a $5.5 million opening weekend (below the already bearish […]

>Based on Friday and Saturday box office (and estimated Sunday numbers), the two sequels opening wide this weekend are not doing the business generally forecast, and they are under-performing the preceding movies in their series.  As a whole, the weekend is looking like $111 million for the top 12 films, down 13% from the same […]

  OPENINGS:  With the addition of Saturday and overseas numbers, SOLO (Lucasfilm/Disney) is starting to shift from a disappointment to a potential disaster.  In the US, Solo fell 30% on Saturday (by comparison, last year’s Memorial Day opening Pirates of the Caribbean 5, a movie no one particularly loved, dropped only 14% on its Saturday, […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  Here is an updated look at the 2018 film slates by studio. The studio totals also include 2018 dollars for films released in late 2017. YEAR TO DATE BOX OFFICE. Looking at North American box office, 2018 to date is now +10% above last year and now +11% above the average for this point […]

  DON’T BREATHE (Screen Gems/Sony) is the 2d horror movie of the late summer, after Lights Out, to benefit from an effectively marketed premise (monsters in the dark and the quiet) and strong reviews.  According to preliminary numbers at Deadline, Breathe is starting even faster than Lights, with a $10.2M opening day (including $1.9M from […]

Updated international box office chart.

> Apart from the usual hosannas to THE HELP’s remarkable staying power, there’s not much to be said about this weekend’s wide releases.  APOLLO 18 and SHARK NIGHT are both flops that will be hard-pressed to gross enough to pay for their marketing.  THE DEBT is a bit more of a question mark, because of […]

The second weekend of 2013 should total about $122 million for the top 12 films, a little better than the same weekend the last few years but below the comparable weekend in 2009 and 2010.  Zero Dark Thirty moves from the art houses to a fairly wide release and should play more commercially than The […]