JACK THE GIANT SLAYER (Warners) climbed in its 2nd day of release, but not high enough to make any real difference.  Jack, according to preliminary numbers at Deadline, had a 60% Saturday bump, a good-but-not-great family audience increase (Escape From Planet Earth rose 80% on its 2d day a couple of weeks ago), which […]

  According to preliminary numbers at Deadline, ZERO DARK THIRTY (Sony) didn’t have a tremendous Saturday bump at the boxoffice, just about 5%, but it was still far and away the biggest picture of the weekend, with an estimated $24.5M that should propel it through the next several weeks of Oscar season. The weekend’s shocker […]

  VENOM (Tencent/Columbia/Sony) is the first big-budget action movie to open since The Meg in mid-August, and that (plus a huge marketing campaign) seems to have gotten it past murderous reviews for an enormous start, the biggest ever in October.  Preliminary numbers at Deadline have opening day at $32.3M (including $10M from a Thursday that […]

  It’s a busy but not particularly big weekend at the multiplex.  The weekend’s winner will be BOO 2! A MADEA HALLOWEEN (Lionsgate), which did a fairly good job of holding the audience for last year’s original Boo.  Deadline reports a preliminary $7.5M opening day, down 21% from Boo‘s start.  If that percentage holds, the […]

  By superhero movie standards, SHAZAM (DC/New Line/Warners) was moderately priced, with around $225M in production/marketing costs.  Preliminary numbers at Deadline put its opening day at $20M (including $5.9M from Thursday), and although that’s a cut below comic book blockbusters like Captain Marvel ($61.7M), Spider-Man: Homecoming ($50.8M) or Wonder Woman ($38.2M), it’s solidly in line with […]

  The odds are strong that on Sunday morning, TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION (Paramount) will claim a $100M weekend, the first of 2014–but we won’t really know until Monday whether the movie has hit that mark.  According to reports at Deadline and elsewhere, Transformers 4 fell sharply on Saturday from its $41.6M opening day, in the […]

  In the bygone movie palace days Quentin Tarantino worships, exclusive “roadshow” engagements of major Hollywood releases sometimes ran for months before the films spread nationwide.  The super-hyped 70mm release of his THE HATEFUL EIGHT (Weinstein) was originally scheduled for a 2-week run, but that was swiftly cut down by half, and then to 6 […]

  It’s been 7 weeks since Christopher Robin arrived for the family audience, and THE HOUSE WITH A CLOCK IN ITS WALLS (Universal) took advantage of that drought with a $7.7M opening day according to early numbers at Deadline, which should give it a $24M weekend.  House had a moderate production budget and a marketing […]