The weekend box office race may end up being quite close once matinees come into play, but NIGHT SCHOOL (Perfect World/Universal) took Friday, with preliminary numbers at Deadline putting it at $9.3M for the day (including $1.4M from Thursday night).  That’s below the $13M Friday for Kevin Hart’s Central Intelligence, and $12.9M for Get […]

  OPENINGS:  FIFTY SHADES FREED (Perfect World/Universal) declined a mild 17% from Fifty Shades Darker to $38.8M, suggesting that Freed will end up around $95M in the US  That wouldn’t be great compared to roughly $150M in production/marketing costs, but the Fifty Shades franchise has always made the bulk of its revenue overseas, and that’s […]

  OPENINGS:  Can the 2d-biggest US opening of all time fairly be considered a mild disappointment?  Certainly AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON (Marvel/Disney), for all its giant $187.7M start, underperformed compared to widespread expectations, not only failing to beat the $207.4M opening of The Avengers, but coming in $20M below that mark despite 5 more hours […]

Based on Friday’s and Saturday’s grosses, weekend #14 of 2015 looks like $215 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, way above the norms for this weekend and setting a new record for early April. Opening at 4,004 theaters Friday, Furious 7 from Universal is now on track for a $143.6 million opening three-day weekend (down slightly from […]

  After a strong start with Skyfall and Breaking Dawn Part 2, the holiday boxoffice seems to be at risk of languishing. OPENINGS:  The thing about the Christmas/New Year’s week boxoffice multiple is that it’s real and will help every movie in theatres during the holiday season, but it’s only as good as the number it’s mutiplying. So […]

  A few notes:  this week’s newcomers opened along a range of dates, including Tuesday night, Wednesday, Friday night and Saturday, and those scheduling decisions had an affect on the totals below.  Also, the fact that Friday was Christmas Eve lowered the day’s ticket sales, probably by 30% or so.  (Something similar will apply to […]

Weekend #15 of 2015 is looking like $130 million for the top 12 films this weekend, somewhat above the norm for this weekend but a touch below the same weekend last year. Opening at around 3,300 theaters Friday (above the 2,886 average theater count for opening weekends the last two years), The Longest Ride from Fox should average $4,600 […]

> Two of the season’s major films are launching unconventionally this evening, and it’s worth taking note.  Both Sony’s THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO and Paramount’s MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – GHOST PROTOCOL will begin “sneak” screenings at around 6-7PM, before officially opening tomorrow.  For boxoffice gross purposes, it’s not clear whether the studios will report […]