CAPTAIN AMERICA WHIPS JACK SPARROW

Paramount Home Entertainment’s Captain America: The First Avenger sent Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides to the plank last week. The Marvel superhero debuted in first place on the DVD and Blu-ray Disc charts, according to Nielsen VideoScan First Alert. According to Home Media magazine, Blu-ray Disc sales for Captain America accounted for […]

TIDAL WAVE OF SALES FOR ON STRANGER TIDES

It was only available as a $34 Blu-ray disc combo package, but there were enough sales in that format alone to make the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie, On Stranger Tides, the top seller last week, according to Nielsen VideoScan First Alert, which does not release actual sales figures. Disney’s home entertainment unit plans […]

DEATHLY HALLOWS ENTERS $1-BILLION CLUB

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 joined the billion-dollar club over the weekend, the club’s ninth member. Through Sunday the franchise finale had earned $1.01 billion worldwide ($318.5 million domestically; $690 million internationally). It’s the first Warner Bros. film to pass the $1-billion mark. The club is due to be joined by a […]

HARRY’S EVEN BIGGER OVERSEAS

Overseas, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 surpassed all forecasts as it set another record with $312.3 million — up 20 percent above the previous record-holder for a three-day weekend, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. Given its British roots, it was no surprise that the top overseas earner was the U.K. […]

FAST FIVE NOW THIRD-BIGGEST EARNER OF YEAR

While much attention has been directed at the performance of summer blockbusters, analysts appear to be overlooking the commanding performance of Fast Five, which passed the $600-million mark on the worldwide box office over the weekend. The fifth installment of the Fast and Furious franchise collected $370,000 in ticket sales in 40 countries over the […]

TWO COMEDIES CHALLENGE TRANSFORMERS AT BOX OFFICE

It’s clear that no major studio was going to take on the latest Transformers movie on its second weekend by putting up any costly production against it. (That will come next weekend with the opening the finale of the Harry Potter movies.) But two low-budget comedies being released this weekend are expected to do OK. […]

TRANSFORMERS BECOMES PARAMOUNT’S BEST OVERSEAS OPENER

Transformers: Dark of the Moon didn’t even have a holiday weekend going for it overseas. Nevertheless, the film bulldozed the foreign box office with an extraordinary $210 million in ticket sales for five days. Paramount International said the film opened at No. 1 in all but one of those markets and collected 70 percent of […]

TRANSFORMERS SEQUEL BASHES BOX OFFICE

Ticket sales were good but far from spectacular for Tuesday’s late-night screenings of Transformers: Dark of the Moon, studio figures indicated. The movie earned $13.5 million, but only $5.5 million — 41 percent — from 3D screens, suggesting that, given premium pricing for 3D tickets, fewer than a third of moviegoers elected to see it […]

CARS 2 DRIVES OVERALL BOX OFFICE TO VICTORY

With the top two films raking in far more than even the most optimistic forecasters had envisaged, the box office resumed its summer march forward, erasing a little more of the shortfall from 2010. After two weeks of coming in behind year-ago revenue, last weekend’s total take of $176.2 million came in at 6.8 percent […]

BOX OFFICE GREENER THAN EXPECTED

Movie theaters sold more tickets on Father’s Day than studios had expected. Green Lantern, for example, raked in $53.17 million — about $500,000 more than Warner Bros. had estimated on Sunday. Super 8, which came in at No. 2, earned $21.47 million — about $250,000 more than Paramount figured it had made. Same for Fox’s […]

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