This may be a good time to pause the stories about Disney’s infalliability, and the unstoppable dominance of the Star Wars franchise.  SOLO (Lucasfilm/Disney) is underperforming in a big way, with preliminary numbers at Deadline putting its opening day at $36.5M, extremely frontloaded with $14.1M of that total from Thursday night.  That’s the lowest […]

  SAN ANDREAS (Village Roadshow/Warners) is off to a mid-range start, with preliminary Friday numbers at Deadline giving it a $17.5M opening day (including $3.1M from Thursday night), which is slightly ahead of the $16.6M opening day of Mad Max: Fury Road.  No one really cares that its likely $45M weekend will be Dwayne Johnson’s […]

  OPENINGS:  By horror movie standards, INSIDIOUS: THE LAST KEY (Blumhouse/Universal) didn’t collapse on Saturday (down 13%), and that propelled it to a very solid $29.3M weekend, which among horror product in that first-weekend-in-January slot puts it behind only The Devil Inside‘s $33.7M (by way of comparison, that one fell 30% on its Saturday).  Last […]

  OPENINGS:  RALPH BREAKS THE INTERNET (Disney) was somewhat frontloaded, with a 44% drop on Day 2, so it didn’t challenge Frozen‘s $93.6M record for the biggest 5-day Thanksgiving opening.  But Disney has nothing to complain about with a #2 ranking and $84.5M ($55.7M over the 3-day weekend), putting it on track for $250M at […]

Weekend #2 of 2016 is looking like a very good $155 million for the top 12 films this weekend (see comparisons below). The Revenant from Fox should open with $27.5 million Friday-Sunday. The film is on track for around $85 million domestic in its run. Overseas the film could bring in $160 million, giving it a worldwide box office target of $245 million.     The […]

  OPENINGS:  Although the numbers are lower, RAMPAGE (New Line/Warners) is playing much like Kong: Skull Island, another giant monster movie judged by parents to be child-friendly.  Rampage rose 20% on Saturday, giving it a 3x multiple for the weekend at $34.5M, almost identical to Kong‘s trajectory (it had a 19% Saturday bump).  If that comparison holds […]

  THE MAZE RUNNER:  DEATH CURE (20th) will win the weekend, although not in particularly impressive fashion.  According to preliminary numbers at Deadline, its opening day was $8.4M (including $1.5M from Thursday night), down from the $11.3M start for the first Maze Runner, and the $11M for Scorch Trials.  It should have $23.5M by Sunday, […]

  WONDER WOMAN (RatPac/Wanda/Ten Cent/DC/Warners) is proving to be exactly what its studio–and the summer box office in general–needed.  For Warners, it’s giving the embattled DC mega-franchise its first taste of critical praise since the days of The Dark Knight, which is important in itself, and that’s paying off in ticket sales.  Preliminary numbers at […]