OPENINGS:  ARTHUR THE KING (Lionsgate) was clearly hoping to emulate the sleeper success of 2022’s Dog, which ran a $14.9M opening into $61.8M in the US.  However, the Mark Wahlberg vehicle came up very short with a $7.5M start.  Production/marketing costs are reportedly $60M, which will make for a tough road to profit.  Arthur […]

  OPENINGS:  There were no new wide openings this weekend, and with the postponement of No Time To Die until 2021, and the announcement that Regal Theaters may be re-closing some or all of its houses, it’s not clear when the major studios will be returning.  (Currently Pixar/Disney’s Soul and Universal’s The Croods 2 are […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  Here is the updated 2015 Scorecard, with Universal pulling into a very close second place (just behind Warner Brothers) thanks to Fifty Shades of Grey.  This performance from Focus and Universal is the first bit of good news in a long time for the hapless Comcast corporation, as its proposed acquisition of […]

The weekend looks like a mediocre $82 million for the top 12 films, a little softer than it looked yesterday (now slightly lagging the multi-year average for this weekend).  Argo continues to do well, as we expected, but the four openers all did even worse than our conservative predictions in Wednesday’s ShowbuzzDaily Weekend Forecast. The ShowbuzzDaily Domestic Final estimates […]

  OPENINGS:  THE LOST CITY (Paramount) opened at the high end of expectations at $31M, a particularly solid result these days for a movie that skews both female and older (the latter crowd evident in the 2% Friday-to-Saturday rise).  Lost City faces little challenge in its target demo for the next month, so it could […]

  OPENINGS:  ALIEN: COVENANT (TSG/20th) slumped almost as badly on its 2d day of release as the unpopular Prometheus (22% vs 25%), and the result was a lackluster $36M weekend in the US–and even that number includes an aggressive estimate for Sunday.  Worse yet, with Covenant now playing in every major international market except China […]

Not a bad weekend for the box office this weekend.  Overall business is up about 8% from the similar weekend average.  Three new movies opened (each with a different feel and target demographic target).  No big hits among the three, but three solid performances.       The ShowbuzzDaily Domestic Final estimates for films opening […]

  OPENINGS:  THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN (DreamWorks/Reliance/Universal) didn’t have much of a Saturday bump, rising just 2% (that compares to 15% for the 2d day of Gone Girl), suggesting that word of mouth is less than stellar.  The result was a $24.7M weekend that was lower than originally anticipated, and early international results of […]