The weekend box office race may end up being quite close once matinees come into play, but NIGHT SCHOOL (Perfect World/Universal) took Friday, with preliminary numbers at Deadline putting it at $9.3M for the day (including $1.4M from Thursday night). That’s below the $13M Friday for Kevin Hart’s Central Intelligence, and $12.9M for Get […]
THE LEGO MOVIE 2: THE SECOND PART (Warners Animation) is looking like a textbook example of a studio watering down its own franchise. Warners jumped into 2 spin-offs before even reaching its first official sequel, and the result according to early numbers at Deadline is a $8.9M opening day, down 48% from the first […]
OPENINGS: ANNABELLE COMES HOME (New Line/Warners) had a $20.3M weekend, but it had opened on Wednesday, so its 5-day total was $31.2M. Even so, its 5 days were lower than the 3-day weekends for Annabelle ($37.1M) and Annabelle: Creation ($35M), and just a bit ahead of the Conjuring spin-off Curse of La Llorona ($26.3M) […]
OPENINGS: In the US, ONWARD (Pixar/Disney) was merely a disappointment by Pixar standards, with an OK 37% Saturday bump that allowed it to claim a $40M weekend, pending actuals on Monday. That isn’t much better then the $34.7M launch for last year’s Lego Movie 2, and it’s far off last March’s $55M for How […]
OPENINGS: THE LOST CITY (Paramount) opened at the high end of expectations at $31M, a particularly solid result these days for a movie that skews both female and older (the latter crowd evident in the 2% Friday-to-Saturday rise). Lost City faces little challenge in its target demo for the next month, so it could […]
OPENINGS: The combination of the typically low early-December box office and the approach of Avatar 2 dissuaded the studios from introducing any new product this week. The closest thing to a wide release in the US was the expansion of SPOILER ALERT (Focus/Universal) to 783 theaters, where it fared badly with $700K, averaging $900 […]
OPENINGS: While DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: HONOR AMONG THIEVES (eOne/Paramount) launched at the upper end of expectations, $38.5M (which included an unusually intense program of preview screenings) was a shaky start for a project with $250M in production/marketing costs and the hope to become a franchise. It will need to hold up extremely well over the next several […]
OPENINGS: WONKA (Warners) kicked off the holiday movie season with $39M, at the upper end of expectations. As a family entertainment, it can look forward to a high multiple into January, and could reach $200M+ in the US, against around $250M in production/marketing costs. The IP musical is even stronger overseas, where it expanded […]