Labor Day weekend is always the exhausted last gasp of the summer movie season, but this year the studios didn’t even try.  Partly it’s the effect of August having generally been a disaster in 2015 (last year’s 4-day Labor Day span featured a $22.9M 5th weekend for Guardians of the Galaxy and $15.6M from […]

  The last time Halloween fell on a Saturday, in 2009, Hollywood mostly stayed away.  (The concert movie This Is It opened the previous Wednesday.)  This year, two studios tried to counterprogram the holiday with problematic star vehicles, and based on preliminary numbers at Deadline, the results weren’t pretty. BURNT (Weinstein) has been conspicuous for […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.   YEAR TO DATE BOX OFFICE. Looking at North American box office, 2015 to date is now +7% above last year and now +5% above the average for this point the past four years ($9.588 billion).  Over the same period, Hollywood films have grossed almost $26.0 billion worldwide when we add overseas box office (that’s now […]

  A Valentine’s Day in the middle of Presidents Day weekend allowed for strong Sunday studio estimates–in one case, suspiciously so. OPENINGS:  A couple of notable sidelights to the gargantuan success of DEADPOOL (Marvel/20th), which has the #17 opening of all time at $135.1M (probably $155M with the Monday holiday), is now the highest-opening R-rated […]

  OPENINGS:  On such a razor-thin margin, the standings could change tomorrow with final numbers, but for now, THE BOSS (Universal) has the weekend edge with $23.48M, barely a nose ($45K) ahead of those creaky superheroes.  Bragging rights are nice, but even if it falls behind on Monday, this is still a win for The […]

  OPENINGS:  The answer to the question of whether the Day 2 drop for SUICIDE SQUAD (RatPac/DC/Warners) would be as bad as the one for Batman v Superman turned out to be no–it was worse.  Suicide plunged 41% on Saturday, compared to BvS‘s 38%.  That’s the kind of drop usually associated with the hugely-frontloaded Twilight series, […]

  From the start, THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN (DreamWorks/Reliance/Universal) was perceived as a lower-intensity version of the Gone Girl phenomenon, and that’s holding with the opening of its film version.  Where Gone Girl had a $13.2M Friday start on its way to a $37.5M weekend, preliminary numbers at Deadline give Train $9.3M on Friday, […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  Updated look at 2016 by studio. YEAR TO DATE BOX OFFICE. Looking at North American box office, 2016 to date is now only marginally above last year and still +3% above the average for this point the past four years ($9.818 billion).  Over the same period, Hollywood films have grossed $25.4 billion worldwide when […]