BOX OFFICE MAKES A COMEBACK

For most of the year, studio executives were presumably doing much hand-wringing over a box office that seemed to be collapsing compared with last year’s. Both sales and attendance were down nearly 12 percent before Iron Man 3 hit the screens. How things have changed since then. Although Iron Man 3 did not bring in […]

MEN IN BLACK WHIPS THE AVENGERS

After three weeks at the top of the box office, Marvel/Disney’s The Avengers slipped to second place over the Memorial Day holiday, brought down by Sony’s Men in Black 3. Over the four days, MIB3 collected $69.5 million versus $47.2 million for The Avengers, which dropped just 15 percent in its fourth weekend. In a […]

MORE HEADY RESULTS FOR THE HANGOVER II

Chalk up another record for The Hangover: Part II: fastest comedy to gross $200 million worldwide. While the final domestic tally came in slightly below studio estimates, the foreign total came in somewhat above. Warner Bros. put the 5-day domestic gross at $135 million and the overseas gross at $70.1 million, adding up to $205.1 […]

FOR WARNER BROS.: FIRST THE HANGOVER, THEN THE PARTY

TTalk about nursing a hangover! Moviegoers were doing just that in spades over the Memorial Day holiday as they spent $137.4 million between Thursday and Monday on The Hangover Part II, according to an estimate by Warner Bros. It marked the biggest gross for the debut of any R-rated comedy ever. While the film had […]

HOLIDAY BOX OFFICE LIKELY TO SET A RECORD

The Memorial Day weekend, which for Hollywood officially starts today (Thursday) and concludes on Monday, is expected to be memorable, with Warner Bros.’ R-rated The Hangover II pulling in one camp of moviegoers and the family film Kung Fu Panda 2 pulling in another. Warner Bros. has high hopes for its latest Hangover, which it […]

WILL “SEQUELITIS” HARM SUMMER BOX OFFICE?

Following the poor Memorial Day performance by the box office, some analysts are expressing concern that the summer could turn out to be a loser for the studios. Today’s Hollywood Reporter suggested that the box office could be “plagued by a nasty case of sequelitis” and quoted an unnamed top studio executive as saying, “There […]

A MEMORIAL DAY TO REMEMBER

It was a Memorial Day holiday made memorable by the fact that fewer movie tickets were sold over its four days than during any Memorial Day holiday since 1993 — some 23.4 million, according to box-office analyst Paul Dergarabedian. Total estimated ticket-sales revenue was the lowest since 2001. Movie studios blamed a full slate of […]