After its history-making $120.5M opening day, there were two pre-existing Saturday models that STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS (Lucasfilm/Disney) could have followed.  The final Harry Potter was so front-loaded that it crashed by 53% from Friday to Saturday.  On the other hand, Jurassic World gently declined by 15%, similar to the 14% drop for […]

  OPENINGS:  LONGLEGS (Neon) captured the zeitgeist, successfully delivering the marketing message that it was the scariest horror movie in recent memory.  The result was  a$22.6M weekend, which set a new Neon record by a wide margin, and also marked the year’s highest non-franchise start for the genre.  Production and marketing costs for Longlegs reportedly […]

  OPENINGS:  The question for IF I FALL (Warners/MGM), as with any movie that has a high proportion of young female appeal, is just how frontloaded it will turn out to be.  Friday’s $6.8M included $1.1M from Thursday night, about 16% of the total.  The Fault In Our Stars was much more frontloaded, earning more […]

> Well, another disaster weekend for the Hollywood studios.  $70 million in business for the top 12 films, down 17% from the same weekend last year (which was a fairly typical second weekend in December).  New Year’s Eve from Garry Marshall will badly miss a forecast that was already down over 50% from the opening […]

Weekend #20 of 2015 is looking like $157 million for the top 12 films this weekend, very close to the norm for this weekend. Opening at around 3,400 theaters Friday (above the 2,886 average theater count for opening weekends the last two years), Pitch Perfect 2 from Universal should average a very good $15,600 per theater for the three-day weekend […]

  The box office race is likely to be tight this weekend, with contenders at either end of the quality spectrum.  THE EMOJI MOVIE (Columbia/Sony) drew first blood with a $10.2M opening day (including $900K from Thursday night), according to preliminary numbers at Deadline.  That’s $2.2M better than the first day of Captain Underpants last […]

The “kids” didn’t show up for MEN IN BLACK 3 (Sony) on Saturday–it was wishful thinking to believe they would, considering the franchise’s decade-long absence–and the result, according to preliminary numbers at Deadline, was a very mild Friday-to-Saturday bump under 10%.  That puts the picture on track for a 4-day holiday weekend of $67-70M, just […]

  In an entertainment universe changing with bewildering speed, two stories today spoke to the difficulties and opportunities of old and new media.  First, let’s take a look at what’s happening to the traditional mode of seeing movies in theaters Big-budget adventure-adventure spectacles have long been the bread and butter of the Hollywood studios, and […]