OPENINGS:  INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY (Paramount/Lucasfilm/Disney) barely scraped the bottom of weekend expectations with $60M, and that studio estimate assumes an very strong Sunday.  The extremely expensive tentpole–$400M+ in production and worldwide marketing costs–combined an elderly franchise built around an 80-year old star with mediocre reviews following an ill-advised Cannes premiere, […]

  OPENINGS:  THE POST (DreamWorks/Reliance/Participant/20th) expanded to wide release with $18.6M over 3 days (which should become $22M with Monday).  That’s a bit better than the $15.4M 3-day start for Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies, which didn’t have the benefit of a holiday weekend opening.  Bridge got to $72.3M in the US, and The Post […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  Year to date, Sony and Universal (on the basis of sheer volume of films) is slightly ahead of Warner Brothers (the studio with the year’s only big hit so far), although three studios are very close to each other. Scroll down for domestic and overseas grosses for each film individually so far […]

  OPENINGS:  ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL (20th) squeezed everything it could out of its opening 2-holiday week, with paid preview screenings on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights (totaling $2.4M) preceding its official Thursday opening.  All-in, that put it at $36.5M through Sunday, which will probably become $41M with Monday.  It has two more or less open […]

  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% […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  Here is an updated look at the 2019 film slates by studio. BOX OFFICE. Looking at North American box office, 2019 is now -18% below last year’s comparable span (1 point better than last week) and now -16% below the average for this point the past four years ($2.351 billion).  Over the same […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  Here is an updated look at the 2018 film slates by studio. The studio totals also include 2019 dollars for films released in late 2018. We will continue to track the 2018 slates until late February, when we will switch to tracking the 2019 slates. BOX OFFICE. Looking at North American box office, […]

The see-saw continues in the 2013 studio rankings.  Disney moved back into first (thanks to the domestic release of Frozen with overseas still to come) and Warner Brothers moved back into second place. Meanwhile continued strength from The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (a big increase in overseas grosses and an upgrade in the domestic forecast total) pushed Lionsgate/Summit to […]