February 2nd, 2016
This week the home market is led by a Blu-ray double-dip, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, while there is also an Oscar contender, Bridge of Spies, on the top. After that, the list is filled with bombs and weaker limited releases. It was an easy choice to select Snow White as Pick of the Week.
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November 2nd, 2015
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Most people expected the box office to be really weak this past weekend, but I don't think anyone anticipated this. How bad was this past weekend? All three new releases missed the Mendoza line* and there were no new releases in the top five. The overall box office was just $75 million, which was the lowest for the year and the fourth worst weekend in the past decade. This represents a 28% drop-off from last week and a 21% drop-off from the same weekend last year. 2015's overall lead over 2014 shrunk from 5.2% to 4.7%. The overall lead fell by $40 million at $8.69 billion to $8.31 billion. This is reason to panic, or it would be if Spectre wasn't opening on Friday. The film is breaking records in the U.K. and should be an explosive hit here. Hopefully it will do well enough that we can pretend the past two weeks never happened.
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October 26th, 2015
Most of the new releases were not expected to do well at the box office. ... Almost no one saw this coming. We had some near-record bombs this weekend and even the best of the new releases were terrible. This left The Martian in first place; in fact, the top three spots and four of the top five were held by holdovers. The best new release, The Last Witch Hunter, barely cracked the $10 million mark. The overall box office fell 14% from last weekend to $105 million. This was also 9.5% lower than the same weekend last year. Midweek numbers were better this year than last year, so the year-over-year actually improved and 2015 now has a 5.2% lead over 2014 at $8.60 billion to $8.18 billion.
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October 25th, 2015
Dismal is about the politest word that can be applied to the box office performance of new releases this weekend. None of the five films new in wide release managed to make the top three on the chart, and two of them didn’t even crack the top ten. That leaves The Martian and Goosebumps to battle it out for first place, and a fourth-week decline of just 25% for The Martian looks virtually certain to give it the win. Fox projects it will make $15.9 million for a total by the end of the weekend of $166 million or so. Its performance to date falls neatly between that of Interstellar and Gravity, which puts the sci-fi adventure on course for a final domestic box office of $230 million (see full comps here).
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October 24th, 2015
Where to start? There are so many new releases to talk about and none of them did well. Some did so poorly that talking about them seems mean. So, let’s start by saying that Friday’s box office chart was led by The Martian, while Goosebumps has a shot at repeating on top of the chart, with each film earning about $14 million to $15 million. Meanwhile, Bridge of Spies should earn third place over the weekend with between $11 million and $12 million.
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October 23rd, 2015
There were four films that had midnight shows last night, but none of them did particularly well. In fact, had their combined total been earned by one movie, it still wouldn't be much to celebrate about. Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension led the way with $600,000 in 1,000 theaters. This is substantially lower than the $800,000 Crimson Peak earned just last week, and that film wasn't a big hit at the box office during its opening weekend. Additionally, Crimson Peak's reviews are a lot better The Ghost Dimension's reviews are. Add in the sequel effect and we could be in for a really bad opening weekend.
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October 22nd, 2015
The box office prediction contests for the past few weeks have had a horror / "horror" theme. That is to say, two people won horror movies and the third won movies that were so bad it is scary they exist. There are four new releases this weekend and they all epitomize the latter. Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension has a review embargo, which is never a good sign, while the other three wide releases are all earning less than 20% positive reviews. Does that mean there's nothing worth seeing this week? Nope. Fortunately, Steve Jobs is expanding wide and should earn first place at the box office. It is the only film on this week's list with a shot at $20 million. This weekend last year, Ouija nearly reached $20 million and five other films earned $10 million. I don't think we will match that this year. It could be close and any gain or loss in the year-over-year comparison should be in single digits, so there's no reason to be overly concerned.
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October 1st, 2015
September ended on a record note with the debut of Hotel Transylvania 2. Additionally, there was great depth and 2015's lead over 2014 grew to nearly $500 million. How do things look going forward? The month starts out with The Martian, which should have no trouble becoming the biggest hit of the month and might even top $200 million. On the other hand, no other film is expected to get to $100 million. There's only one or two that will even come close. Fortunately, last October was very similar with one $100 million hit, Gone Girl, while two other films came close, Annabelle and Fury. It looks like it will be up to the depth films from both years to determine which year comes out on top.
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