BOX OFFICE CONTINUES TO IMPROVE

Last year’s box office got off to such a sluggish start that even a weekend during which all of the top-12 films combined grossed less than $100 million can look pretty good by comparison. Such was the case last weekend when the 12 films at the top of the box office earned just $98.3 million. [...]

BOX OFFICE AWAKENING AS UNDERWORLD SEQUEL TAKES OFF (Updated)

The top two films at the weekend box office performed well above expectations and helped push the overall gross more than 30 percent above the same weekend a year ago, according to studio estimates. Sony Screen Gems’s Underworld: Awakening debuted ahead of the pack with an estimated $25.4 million (it made an additional $13.4 million [...]

AT $700 MILLION, LATEST TWILIGHT HASN’T REACHED SUMMIT YET

In its first major announcement since being acquired by Lionsgate a week earlier, Summit Entertainment said over the weekend that The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 1 has now grossed an estimated $701.3 million worldwide, putting it on track to surpass The Twilight Saga: New Moon‘s $709.8 million. The original Twilight movie grossed $390.4 [...]

FOURTH UNDERWORLD MOVIE TO LAY SIEGE TO BOX OFFICE

Another film that wasn’t shown in advance to critics is likely to come out ahead at the box office this weekend. It’s the fourth installment of Sony’s Underworld vampire series, Underworld: Awakening. It’s expected to debut with around $20-25 million and beat out Red Tails, George Lucas’s film about the World War II Tuskegee Airmen, [...]

CONTRABAND LAUNDERS $28.5 MILLION

Final box-office figures came in slightly below studio estimates for the 3-day and 4-day Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend. Nevertheless, Universal’s Contraband starring Mark Wahlberg, performed far better than pundits had forecast, earning $24.3 million for the three-day period and $28.5 million for the four-. The 3D re-release of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast [...]

CONTRABAND: A LICENSE TO PRINT MONEY

Universal’s Contraband, starring Mark Wahlburg, smuggled $24.5 million into the U.S. box office over the weekend and is expected to increase that amount to around $29 million over the four-day Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. Most box-office pundits had figured it would earn around $20 million. Disney’s 3D digital re-release of Beauty and the Beast [...]

WILL BEAUTY AND THE BEAST RETURN AT #1?

There’s a strong possibility that the belle of the box-office ball over the Martin Luther King holiday will be Walt Disney’s Beauty and the Beast — all decked out in digital 3D stateliness. The 3D conversion is said to have cost the studio about $10 million, and box-office pundits are conservatively forecasting that it should [...]

DEVIL DIES ON SUNDAY

Several of the weekend’s top films didn’t do quite so well as studios had estimated on Sunday, but they did far better than industry analysts had forecast on Friday — most notably the No. 1 film, The Devil Inside, which wound up with $33.7 million — twice as much as the most optimistic predictions. (It [...]

DEVIL‘S SUCCESS BEDEVILS PUNDITS (Updated)

According to the playbook of most Hollywood executives, the weekend after New Year’s is a time to let moviegoers take in some of the movies they may have missed during the bombardment of new releases in December. If new films are to be released at all at that time, they should be cheapos — usually [...]

FIRST MOVIE OF 2012: A CHEAP HORROR FLICK (Updated)

The first film to open wide in the new year is one that was not screened for critics, a horror movie titled The Devil Inside. (It has to do with exorcisms. “Inside,” get it?) Paramount’s Insurge unit, which reportedly acquired the R-rated film for less than $1 million, has reportedly spent far more than that [...]

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