MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS (20th) had a surprising amount of marketing muscle behind it, and at least in the short term it seems to be paying off.  According to preliminary numbers at Deadline, opening day was $10.6M (including $1.6M from Thursday night), and considering that Murder is aimed at an older audience that […]

Weekend #26 of 2014 (the halfway mark for the year already) is looking like $175 million for the top 12 films this weekend, 8% below the norm for this weekend and 4% below the same weekend last year, which featured two moderate openers rather than one big one (The Heat and White House Down).  Although Transformers should […]

  OPENINGS:  The second entry in the studio’s experiment with split theatrical/HBO Max distribution THE LITTLE THINGS (Warners) arrived with $4.8M in theatres, on the higher end of recent action movie openings ($3.1M for The Marksman, $4M for Unhinged), although of course paltry by pre-pandemic standards.  In addition, the film launched overseas with $2.8M from […]

  It’s been a while since we’ve had a chance to look at box office together, and the period has been a busy one, with the return of Hollywood blockbusters like A Quiet Place Part II, F9, The Suicide Squad and Black Widow to theaters (some exclusively, others shared with various forms of home availability).  […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  Universal is the big gainer again this week, primarily because of continued overseas strength for Jurassic World.  Paramount had the second best week, thanks to Terminator: Genisys.  In contrast, Magic Mike XXL made a small contribution to its studio totals, giving Warner Brothers about the same modest week that Disney had with late overseas returns […]

>BREAKING DAWN PART 1: Although the huge day-after-Thanksgiving take lifted everything in the multiplex, Breaking Dawn 1 continues to run behind New Moon by 10 percent. THE MUPPETS: Still well under Tangled’s Thanksgiving gross last year, but given its moderate cost, a solid hit. HUGO:. It’s per-theatre gross is almost identical to Muppets, although it’s […]

Now 18 full weeks into 2012 (entering the middle third of the year, the all-important May-August period), year-to-date domestic box office is now running 20% ahead of last year’s pace and now 15% ahead of the comparable period’s average for the last several years.   Marvel’s The Avengers ended up with an even stronger weekend than the studio forecast Sunday morning: an […]

International box office for 2013 releases through January 19, 2014. Click here for a summary of worldwide performance by studio. We will start tracking the 2014 films in a few weeks.