This weekend is looking like a battle of the family films, with no clear victor at this point.  THE BOSS BABY (DreamWorks Animation/20th) is performing quite a bit better than expected, with preliminary numbers at Deadline giving it nearly $15M on Friday (including $1.5M from Thursday night), which should lead it to a $50M […]

  OPENINGS:  The Saturday hold for DUNKIRK (Warners) wasn’t as strong as those for other Christopher Nolan non-sequels, down 11% where Inception stayed steady, and Interstellar actually rose 8%, pushing the weekend studio estimate to $50.5M.  Nevertheless, that’s a terrific start for a film that was far from a sure thing as a summer blockbuster.  […]

  The only new opening on Black Friday was a limited release, but everything already in the market took the customary post-holiday leap.  COCO (Pixar/Disney) will easily win the 3-day weekend, after $19.1M on Friday according to preliminary numbers at Deadline.  Coco continues to be on pace with Tangled ($19.5M on Black Friday), and it […]

  THE MEG (Gravity/Warners) appears to be having the opposite box office experience from what we’ve come to associate with US/China action movies.  In the US, it’s overperforming, perhaps helped by a calendar slot a week after Discovery’s yearly Shark Week:  preliminary numbers at Deadline estimate opening day at $16.5M ($4M from Thursday night), which […]

  The holiday box office has turned out to be AQUAMAN (DC/Warners), and then everything else.  Preliminary numbers at Deadline have its 3rd Friday at $16.8M, up 15% from Thursday and down 40% from last Friday, for a likely $51M weekend, and $215M by New Year’s Day.  Comparisons to other DC releases at the same […]

  OPENINGS:  POKEMON: DETECTIVE PIKACHU (Legendary/Warners) started strong in the US with $58M, not that far off the $69.1M launch of The LEGO Movie.  Pikachu may not have that movie’s legs, especially with Aladdin just 2 weeks away, but it should total $175-200M here.  Pokemon in general is a more worldwide phenomenon than LEGO, which […]

  OPENINGS:  JUMANJI: THE NEXT LEVEL (Columbia/Sony) successfully rode its strategy of arriving in theatres ahead of The Rise of Skywalker to a $60.1M weekend, far ahead of the $36.2M opening weekend for the last Jumanji (although that had a different release pattern, opening on the Wednesday between that year’s Star Wars installment and Christmas […]

  OPENINGS:  It’s likely that THE 355 (Universal) would have been challenged at the box office even in normal times, considering that its level of action spectacle is significantly lower than superhero movies can afford, and that the cast features performers who are extremely talented but with little proven appeal to ticketbuyers.  (The 27% score […]