WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  20th Century Fox had a terrific week with the combination of the okay arrival of How to Train Your Dragon 2 and the continued overseas revenue from X-Men Days of Future Past.  Fox now stands at over $2.2 billion worldwide year to date, miles ahead of Warner Brothers ($1.7 billion), which is still seeing overseas […]

  International Box Office Note:  This is the last weekend before the World Cup begins diverting much of the planet’s attention (except, of course, in the US) away from movies for the next month.  That’s expected to have a noticeable effect on the overseas box office. OPENINGS:  THE FAULT IN OUR STARS (20th) confirmed all […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  The studios are starting to separate from each other as we approach the midpoint of the year.  20th Century Fox is nearing $1.9 billion worldwide box office to date.  Fox had a decent week with an additional $148 million worldwide (mostly from the domestic release of The Fault in Our Stars).  Warner Brothers […]

  OPENINGS:  MALEFICENT (Disney) is claiming a $70M weekend, and like all round-number estimates, that should be viewed with some skepticism.  But even if it dips slightly in final numbers tomorrow, it’s a fine start.  It’s not, however, the equal of Disney’s other revisionist fairy tales Alice In Wonderland ($116.1M) or Oz: The Great and […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  The release of Maleficent has put Disney in a virtual three-way tie for second place (with Warner Brothers and Sony), each with around $1.35 billion worldwide for 2014 to date.  Fox remains comfortably in first place with $1.7 billion.  The other studios remain out of the running, particularly Universal, which was not helped at […]

  The studios continued to be bullish on their holiday estimates, with preliminary Monday numbers expecting strong business that may or may not be confirmed in final box office figures tomorrow.  For now, the most optimistic film is HEAVEN IS FOR REAL (TriStar/Sony), expecting a mere 7% drop on Monday, with the older skewing NEIGHBORS […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  The release of X-Men: Days of Future Past has pushed 20th Century Fox to the top of the heap with over $1.5 billion in worldwide box office in 2014 to date.  The race will ebb and flow through the rest of the summer and into the holiday season, but Fox, Warner Brothers and Sony […]

  (Note:  Most of the studios aggressively estimated their Sunday declines as being around 10%, even though last year’s Memorial Day Weekend Sunday drops were mostly steeper than that, so there could be a number of downward adjustments in store when final numbers are released.) OPENINGS:  X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST (20th), oddly enough, was […]