OPENINGS:  BAD GRANDPA (Paramount) romped to 1st place at the multiplexes this weekend with $32M, but perhaps more notably, it also made $8.4M in just 16 overseas territories.  That’s the same level as Jackass 3D, which ended up making $54M internationally, a tremendous success for such a low-budget franchise.  Bad Grandpa 2 seems all […]

  OPENINGS:  For both 3 DAYS TO KILL (Relativity) and POMPEII (TriStar/Sony/FilmDistrict), the only hope of salvation lies overseas.  3 Days, at least, has a relatively low production cost, but even if the reported $28M figure is accurate, its $12.3M US weekend won’t get it anywhere near recoupment of its worldwide marketing expenses.  Things are […]

  MONDAY UPDATE:  Father’s Day was a holiday, all right… for some movies.  22 JUMP STREET vastly overestimated its appeal to dads, taking a sizable 30% hit on Sunday and falling an ugly $3M below its original weekend number to $57.1M.  HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 2 was also a bit weaker than expected, down […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.   Scroll down for domestic and overseas grosses for each film individually so far in 2014. YEAR TO DATE BOX OFFICE. Looking at North American box office, 2014 is still running -5% behind last year and -3% below the average for this point the past four years ($7.784 billion).  Over the same […]

  Note:  due to last week’s low-grossing Super Bowl Sunday, all weekend-to-weekend comparisons appear unusually strong this week. OPENINGS:  THE SPONGEBOB MOVIE:  SPONGE OUT OF WATER (Nickelodeon/Paramount) notched the #5 February opening ever with $56M (although not quite in a league with last year’s The LEGO Movie, which was #2 with $69.1M).  The studios seem […]

  OPENINGS:  TED 2 (MRC/Universal) suffered a 16% Friday-to-Saturday drop, and is currently projected by its studio to have a $33M weekend, down 40% from the $54.4M start for the original Ted 3 years ago.  Overseas, Ted 2 opened to $20.3M in 26 markets.  That leaves much of the world still to come, but a […]

  OPENINGS:  Nothing improved for the weekend’s newcomers after Friday’s dim numbers.  THE LAST WITCH HUNTER (QED/Summit/Lionsgate) led with a soft $10.8M, and whether or not Lionsgate is being entirely frank when it claims to have little exposure, someone is going to be feeling a tug on their wallet.  The results overseas, not unexpectedly, were […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  Updated look at 2016 by studio, with Fox continuing to lap the field and even show it’s human with Eddie the Eagle its first movie of the year in the weak box office category.  We have amended the summary categories somewhat this year with the top category now reserved for films over $500 million […]