OPENINGS:  As expected, BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER (Marvel/Disney) swamped the box office worldwide.  Its $180M US weekend was below Doctor Strange 2 ($187.4M) and the original Black Panther ($202M, on a Presidents Day weekend), but still the biggest opening Hollywood has seen in 6 months, reinforcing the MCU as the center of movie culture […]

  OPENINGS:  The most hyped box office weekend of the year delivered and then some.  BARBIE (Mattel/Warners) burst into theaters with $155M, technically the best of the year (although the $146.4M for Super Mario Bros came after a Wed-Thurs start that had already brought in $58.3M).  Among the many records set by the blockbuster were […]

>John Carter joins the worldwide box office chart, ranked at #13 out of 44 wide-release films over the past three months.  We are currently estimating John Carter could total $75 million in North America, but the overseas total to date is already $70 million.  If the overseas total ends up around $125 million, the film […]

>Three films are now in or projected to be in the $1 billion worldwide box office club: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides and Transformers: Dark of the Moon.  Clearly, movies with long titles (not surprisngly blockbuster sequels) are being rewarded and embraced around the world.  The […]

Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted had a good week around the world, now $157 million overseas to date (up from $76 million last week).  Madagascar is headed for $600+ million worldwide ($215 million domestic according to our ShowbuzzDaily projection and the overseas total to date should approach $400 million).  For comparison: Madagascar 2, November 2008, $604 million worldwide […]

  OPENINGS:  ZERO DARK THIRTY (Sony) was well ahead of the crowd with $24M, a number slightly depressed (as was almost everything this weekend) by the Sunday combination of NFL playoffs and the Golden Globes.  The $18.8M for A HAUNTED HOUSE (Open Road) didn’t get close to the openings for the Scary Movie franchise (most […]

STUDIO SCORECARD.  No change in the studio worldwide box office rankings this week.  Universal is extremely hot with the broad international appeal of Fast & Furious 6, but there is still about $500 million to go to catch #1 Disney.  Fox, Paramount and Warner Brothers are very tightly bunched in the next tier. Looking at […]

STUDIO SCORECARD. The worldwide studio rankings for 2013 to date remain the same as last week’s. Reminder: the chart below has been reformatted and expanded to include a look at all releases from each studio, divided into three buckets: worldwide grosses of over $300 million, grosses between $100 million and $299 million, and films under […]