OPENINGS:  Franchises continued to be the lifeblood (so to speak) of Hollywood, and this week it was SCREAM VI (Paramount) breaking its saga’s previous record with $44.5M, almost 50% higher than the $30M for last year’s Scream reboot.  It was also above the $40M for 2000’s Scream 3, although that would change with an […]

  OPENINGS:  Beyonce’s concert documentary RENAISSANCE (Variance/AMC Theaters) led the traditionally slow first weekend of December with $21M, a shadow of the $92.8M for the Eras Tour movie a couple of months ago, but within expectations.  As with Eras Tour, it’s likely that the Renaissance box office will be front-loaded with fans, so the US […]

Weekend #20 of 2012 looks like it will be about $156 million for the top 12 films, down 2% from last year’s comparable weekend and down the same amount from the four-year average for this weekend.  Three movies open, with Battleship headed for the biggest opening of the trio (about $42.5 million).  The Dictator starring […]

> This weekend looks to be very weak.  The projected total volume of $85 million would be down 29% versus the same weekend last year (when Jackass 3-D opened to a staggering $50 million) and down 18% from the average comparable weekend the last four years.  It’s lazy remake weekend starting Friday, with two of the […]

> Hop (Universal) is set to be #1 with almost $25 million, although this weekend the last two years has boasted top openings in the $61-71 million range.  Overall, it looks like another soft weekend of box office numbers. The well-reviewed Source Code from Summit (92% positive rating at rottentomatoes) is headed for about $15 million this weekend.  Bringing […]

The second weekend of 2013 should total about $122 million for the top 12 films, a little better than the same weekend the last few years but below the comparable weekend in 2009 and 2010.  Zero Dark Thirty moves from the art houses to a fairly wide release and should play more commercially than The […]

  Last week we ran through all the major Hollywood studios–Disney, Warner Bros, Paramount, Sony, 20th Century Fox and Universal–to see how their summers have been going.  Today we’ll take a look at Lionsgate, which is generally considered a “mini-major,” a studio that doesn’t release films with the volume or budget of the majors, but […]

  Warner Bros and Peter Jackson are very, very lucky that THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG is a significantly better movie than last year’s An Unexpected Journey, which will give it strong word of mouth, because early box office indications are that audiences, burned by Journey, are initially dubious about spending 3 more hours […]