STUDIO SCORECARD. Warner Brothers has jumped into second place in worldwide box office for the year to date, thanks to the opening of Man of Steel and to some extent continued overseas business for Great Gatsby and Hangover 3.  With the projected domestic total for Man of Steel, Warners is now the #1 studio domestically [...]

  OPENINGS:  In some ways, the most important number of the weekend was the $71.6M that MAN OF STEEL (Warners) earned outside the US and Canada.  Although it’s lower than the $113.1M domestic weekend ($125.1 with Thursday Wal-Mart screenings included), it included less than half the world, only 24 territories, giving the new Superman a [...]

  OPENINGS:  Not to throw any cold water on the extremely impressive performance of THE PURGE (Universal), but it’s unlikely that the thriller will slip only 12% on Sunday, as Universal is forecasting, when the next-lowest Sunday estimate in the Top 10 is almost double that.  (The idea seems to be that after a 38% [...]

STUDIO SCORECARD. Another very good week for Universal with the moderate domestic success of The Purge and the continued strong overseas performance of Fast & Furious 6.  The perennial also-ran studio (Universal) is now about $300 million away from #1 Disney for 2013 to date.  Universal is actually #1 for the year to date domestically but [...]

  OPENINGS:  NOW YOU SEE ME (Summit/Lionsgate) had a fine $28.1M opening weekend considering its moderate cost ($75M plus marketing, but with 2/3 of that covered by foreign pre-sales), and with little competition coming next week, it could have a solid hold–plus it’s exactly the kind of light entertainment that thrives on home viewing platforms.  [...]

STUDIO SCORECARD.  No change in the studio worldwide box office rankings this week.  Universal is extremely hot with the broad international appeal of Fast & Furious 6, but there is still about $500 million to go to catch #1 Disney.  Fox, Paramount and Warner Brothers are very tightly bunched in the next tier. Looking at [...]

  OPENINGS:  FAST & FURIOUS 6 (Universal) dropped 16% on Sunday and estimates a 13% slip on Monday–that latter number may be a little overoptimistic, but even if it turns out that the 4-day total is $119M instead of $120M, it matters very little except to Universal’s press people.  FF6 was easily the 4th best [...]

  OPENINGS:  Saturday showed an 18% drop for FAST & FURIOUS 6 (Universal), but really the number was better than it looked, because “Friday” included $6.5M from Thursday night.  With that factored out, the movie held almost dead even on Saturday, and should be headed for a $120M+ 4-day weekend, easily the 4th best Memorial [...]