The 38th weekend of the year is looking like a wobbly $71 million for the top 12 films, down 19% from the $89 million multi-year average for this weekend. Opening at over 3,100 theaters Friday (above the 2,886 average theater count for opening weekends the last two years), Prisoners from Warner Brothers should average $5,900 per theater for the weekend (for […]

  There’s a reason why Christopher Nolan may be, along with James Cameron, the last filmmaker who can truly demand blank checks from Hollywood.  His WWII recreation DUNKIRK (Warners), devoid of name stars (apologies to Harry Styles) but riding a tide of Oscar-level reviews, is already overperforming expectations with a $19.8M opening day (including $5.5M […]

The weekend looks like a mediocre $82 million for the top 12 films, a little softer than it looked yesterday (now slightly lagging the multi-year average for this weekend).  Argo continues to do well, as we expected, but the four openers all did even worse than our conservative predictions in Wednesday’s ShowbuzzDaily Weekend Forecast. The ShowbuzzDaily Domestic Final estimates […]

  OPENINGS:  We spent all summer hearing that it was impossible to sell audiences on big-budget non-franchise titles, as spectacles like White House Down, Pacific Rim, After Earth and The Lone Ranger went splat.  In one fantastic swoop, GRAVITY proved the lie to that with an October-record $55.6M weekend–and with two middle-aged stars.  (What a […]

Based on Friday’s grosses, weekend #32 of 2015 looks like $122 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, a little better than yesterday’s estimate ($119 million) but still down significantly from the norm for this weekend (see track below). Opening at 3,995 theaters Friday, Fantastic Four from Fox is on track for a listless $26.2 million opening three-day […]

  OPENINGS:  THE WORLD’S END (Focus/Universal) is off to a very solid start, with a $2250 per-theatre average on Friday in just 1549 theatres, giving it a $3.5M day and a weekend that could hit $10M.  That compares well to the other entries in Edgar Wright/Simon Pegg’s “Cornetto Trilogy,” even though World’s End has the […]

> This weekend is all about the holdovers.  It looks like Dolphin Tale and Moneyball will lead the way this weekend, followed closely by The Lion King in 3D.  Courageous and 50/50 look like they will be the strongest of the four openers, while the poorly reviewed Dream House and What’s Your Number? trail.  Business […]

  We’re now just over 10 days from the 12:01AM July 20 launch of THE DARK KNIGHT RISES, the summer’s last mammoth movie event, and The Hollywood Reporter has provided the first hard information about the epic’s prerelease tracking.  Not surprisingly, it’s through the roof, slightly below or above (depending on the metric used) the […]