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:  THE EQUALIZER 3 (Escape Artists/Columbia/Sony) performed both within expectations and at around the same level as its predecessors, with $34.5M for the 3-day weekend compared to $36M for Equalizer 2 and $34M for the first in the franchise.  (The Monday holiday is projected to bring the total to $42M.)  Also like the previous […]

Weekend #18 of 2012 (the first weekend of May and the unofficial start of the summer movie season) looks like it will be about $214 million for the top 12 films, up 38% from last year’s comparable weekend and up 46% from the four-year average for this weekend.  It’s all about Marvel’s The Avengers.   […]

> Hey, go see this movie. A fairly strong weekend is in store in terms of overall box office volume, up about 9% from the same weekend last year.  Most of the business will go to returning films Dolphin Tale, Moneyball and Lion King in 3D, however.  The four films opening this weekend do not have […]

Bridesmaids and Priest to open at decent levels, but Thor will continue to lead the box office this weekend.  Fast Five will continue to hang around the Top 3. Opening at over 2,700 theaters, Bridesmaids should average a decent $7,300 per theater (for almost $20 million total).  Priest should average $6,100 at around 2,800 theaters […]