Franchises and a former President may carry the weekend to record heights, but the newcomers stumbled. OPENINGS: RISE OF THE GUARDIANS (DreamWorks Animation/Paramount) has the advantage of no new animated competition through the entire holiday season (Disney/Pixar is re-releasing a 3D conversion of Monsters Inc in mid-December), and it’s going to need that long […]
A low-rated night with little relevance to network regular schedules. ABC: The only network to take a chance with regular scripted programming last night, airing new episodes of LAST MAN STANDING and MALIBU COUNTRY presumably on the theory that these family-aimed shows could find a holiday audience. The attempt was neither success nor failure, as […]
Based on Friday’s grosses, Weekend #47 is now on pace to exceed the multi-year average for this weekend by over 20% — a much stronger pace than the Wednesday-Thursday pre-weekend box office suggested. Rise of the Guardians from Paramount/ DreamWorks opened with $8.6 million Wednesday-Thursday and added $9.3 million Friday, putting it on pace for […]
Only one network aired its regular line-up on Thanksgiving night… and it probably should have thought twice. FOX: The Washington/Dallas NFL game ran about 20 minutes into primetime, meaning that the network’s numbers will change when final ratings are released. But the preliminary 2.5 for THE X FACTOR and particularly the 1.5 for GLEE suggest […]
Based on grosses from Wednesday and Thanksgiving, Weekend #47 is on pace to exceed the multi-year average for this weekend by 10% — exactly on the pace we forecast earlier in the week. Breaking Dawn Part 2 is running slightly behind our forecast pace in this second weekend, but still clearly #1 for the weekend. […]
According to preliminary numbers at Deadline, something unexpected happened on Thanksgiving Day: two of the holiday weekend’s openings changed places in the boxoffice ranks. LIFE OF PI (20th), which had been considerably behind on Wednesday, reportedly took a 24% leap on Thursday to $4.5M. This is similar to the track for last year’s Hugo, […]
UPDATE: More refined Wednesday numbers are in via The Hollywood Reporter, and the major difference from the numbers below was for SILVER LININGS NOTEBOOK, which made $656K rather than $550K. still off the pace of last year’s The Descendants, which had a very similar release pattern. Also, RED DAWN made $4.2M rather than $4.5M, […]
On the network’s menus for Thanksgiving Eve: heaping platters of series lows. (It should probably be noted that the reason it made sense for 3 networks to air new episodes last night, despite the anticipated lack of available viewers, is that Black Friday retailers and studios with new holiday movies still created demand for commercials […]