January turned out to be a good month. Granted, it didn’t live up to last January, but its box office was one of the top five Januarys of all time, so that’s still a good start to the year. Also, we will have our first $100 million movie released in 2017 and that doesn’t happen this early very often. As for February, there’s potentially the first $200 million hit of the year, The Lego Batman Movie. Fifty Shades Darker and The Great Wall both have a shot at $100 million. That said, it is more likely that both will miss that milestone than both will get there. As for the rest of the films, there are a few that are aiming for solid midlevel hits, like John Wick: Chapter Two and Get Out, while there are very few potential bombs. By comparison, last February there was one monster hit, Deadpool, and a lot of bombs. No other movie besides Deadpool made $50 million. No movie opening this month will match Deadpool, but we won’t have as many bombs either, so hopefully that will balance out and 2017 won’t fall further behind 2016.
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Before The Lone Ranger even hit theaters, there was a lot of bad buzz preceding it. Part of the reason was the film's budget. With a combined production and P&A budget of around $400 million, the film would need to make more than $600 million worldwide to have a hope of breaking even sometime during its home market run. However, previous to this film's release, the biggest western was Dances with Wolves, which barely cracked $400 million. On the other hand, Johnny Depp and Gore Verbinski helped revitalize the Pirate genre, so perhaps lightning can strike twice. Nope. The film bombed. But is it as bad as its box office numbers? Or was it unfairly overlooked by moviegoers?
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It's July 4th, which means it is the Independence Day long weekend, one of the busiest weekends of the year. There are two wide releases looking to compete with the holdovers for box office dollars, but it is clear that Despicable Me 2 has far more box office potential than The Lone Ranger has. Meanwhile, Kevin Hart: Let-Me-Explain should grab a spot in the top ten. Meanwhile, Monsters University, The Heat, and the rest of the holdovers should help the overall box office climb higher than last year.
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For the most part, June was a really strong month at the box office with nearly every film either matching expectations, or at least coming close enough to call it a victory. Looking forward, there are a dozen films opening wide in July, more or less. One of them, The Smurfs 2, is opening on a Wednesday, so I'm going to hold off talking about that movie till the August preview. Kevin Hart: Let Me Explain is opening in less than 1000 theaters, but it has a shot at reaching the top ten during its opening weekend. If we include both of them, there are twelve films, but I think it is better to stick with the ten truly wide, truly July openings. Of these, Despicable Me 2 is clearly going to be the biggest hit at the box office. It could become the second biggest hit of the year so far. It is not the only film that could be a $100 million hit. In fact, there are six films opening in July that I think have a better than 50% chance of reaching that level. There is currently only one film that I think won't at least become a midlevel hit. By comparison in 2012, there were three $100 million movies, led by The Dark Knight Rises, but the rest of the new releases struggled. There's no chance any movie opening this month will top $400 million, in fact, it is quite possible no film will get to $300 million. That said, 2013 has a lot better depth, so it might come out on top in the end.
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