OPENINGS:  STAR TREK: INTO DARKNESS (Paramount) is the first underperformer of the summer, and there will be plenty of harrumphing and speculation about why that is.  With Sunday likely to be much weaker than last weekend’s Mother’s Day, Darkness will be hard-pressed to match in 4 days (plus Wednesday night screenings) the $79.2M that [...]

    OPENINGS:  THE GREAT GATSBY (Warners) opened about as well as Warners could have hoped with a $19.8M Friday (including Thursday night).  Mothers Day is traditionally a big ticketselling day, especially for female-skewing films, and that should cushion the weekend to perhaps $55M despite bad reviews and unimpressive exit poll results, although there’s still [...]

  OPENINGS:  IRON MAN 3 (Disney) was exactly where it was expected to be, its $68.3M US opening day (the 8th largest ever) considerably higher than Iron Man 2‘s $51.2M, but not quite in a league with The Avengers’ $80.8M.  That should mean a $170M-ish weekend.  Meanwhile, Iron 3 has made a spectacular $388.3M internationally [...]

  OPENINGS:  PAIN & GAIN (Paramount) is a “relationship” movie, not in the sense of the relationships between the movie’s characters (oh God, no), but the relationship between the studio and its director, Michael Bay.  This was a passion project for Bay, and Paramount agreed to let him make it–and oh, by the way, also [...]

  OPENINGS:  OBLIVION (Universal) had a fairly good start, with a $13.3M Thursday night/Friday that should give it a $35-38M weekend, depending on word of mouth.  But that’s still lower than the $15.3M earned by GI Joe: Retaliation on its second day of release only 3 weeks ago, and at a probable higher cost (Universal [...]

  OPENINGS:  After a painful post-Hobbit winter, Warners was in dire need of a hit, and Jackie Robinson became its great American hero, as 24 (Warners) had a very strong $9.1M opening day.  Word of mouth should be on the movie’s side–the challenge for the studio was to get people into the theaters in the [...]

  OPENINGS:  Saturday will tell the tale on EVIL DEAD (TriStar/FSony/FilmDistrict).  Its $11.9M Friday was stronger than the $10.1M/10.2M starts for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3D and Mama earlier this year (although it comes with a $1.8M asterisk from Thursday night screenings), and the question is whether word of mouth will lead to a solid increase [...]

  For the studios, a Good Friday that generally lived up to its name. OPENINGS:  GI JOE: RETALIATION (Paramount/MGM) had a very solid second day, rising 48% for a $15.5M Friday.  That’s still only 2/3 of the $22.2M that its predecessor GIJoe: The Rise of Cobra did on its opening day (despite 3D ticket premiums [...]