Weekend Wrap-Up: Unhinged Begins to Pry Open the Box Office

August 25th, 2020

For the first time in what feels like years, a film earned more than $1 million at the box office over the weekend. The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run had a shot last weekend, but we had to wait for Unhinged’s American debut for this milestone to be surpassed. The film made $4 million in 1,823 theaters for a two-week total of $5 million, including its run in Canada. More...

Limited and Virtual Releases: Will Inception Wow Audiences Ten Years Later?

August 21st, 2020

This week’s list of limited releases isn’t very long and most of the new ones are earning reviews that are merely good, or worse. The new releases that are earning overwhelmingly positive reviews are The August Virgin and Desert One. Words on Bathroom Walls is opening in a lot of theaters, probably too many, which leaves Inception’s tenth-anniversary re-release as the film with the best chance at box office success. More...

International Round Up: Deliver Us from Box Office Doldrums

August 13th, 2020

South Korea had an explosive weekend with Deliver Us From Evil earning the best opening in that market since January. The film pulled in $10.59 million on 1,997 screens over the weekend for a total opening of $15.03 million. There is still some bad news in the market though. For instance, Steel Rain 2: Summit fell 70% from last weekend to $1.49 million on 1,016 screens for a total of $10.74 million so far. Peninsula fell a further 67% to $748,000 on 639 screens for a total of $27.08 million after four weeks of release. These are sharp declines, even for South Korea, which isn’t known for long legs. That said, they are not a disaster. Additionally, while the overall box office is only about half of what it was this weekend last year, there are still restrictions in seating capacity in theaters and the lack of depth are still factors, so it appears the box office is in shape to truly bounce back once the situation has returned to normal. More...

Weekend Wrap-Up: Tax Collector Collects What’s Due

August 12th, 2020

For the third weekend in a row, a new film topped the weekend box office chart. This time it was The Tax Collector, as the action film opened in first place with $310,000 in 129 theaters. The film didn’t win over many critics, but it has a grindhouse feel that helped it thrive in drive-ins. The overall market for films reporting official results was close to $750,000, making this technically the best weekend since March 13. It’s a low bar to clear, but we’ll take what we can get at the moment. More...

August Preview, Part 2: How Quickly Can the Box Office Recover?

August 2nd, 2020

Warner Bros. dropped blockbuster news about Tenet at the end of July, announcing that the film would debut in 70 international territories starting August 26, and come to as many US theaters as possible on September 3. While it actually isn’t all that unusual for a tentpole release to come out overseas a little before North America—Aquaman did so at the end of 2018, for example—the studio’s decision lays down a marker for how big releases might navigate a world where some countries are slowly recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic, while others, most notably the United States, are conspicuously failing to do so.

In part 2 of this month’s preview, we’ll take a look at how the progress of the pandemic is affecting theatrical ticket sales around the world, how quickly countries are recovering, and what that means for our chances of seeing other blockbuster films coming out soon. More...

International Round Up: South Korea Leads the Way, Will the Rest of the World Follow?

July 23rd, 2020

The release at the weekend of Peninsula, the follow-up to Train to Busan, in South Korea gave us the first genuinely positive box office news in months. Some markets around Asia showed impressive relative growth. The studios are beginning to adapt to the uneven pace of recovery from the first (and hopefully, at least in some countries, last) wave of the pandemic. But there are also some notable weak spots. Here’s a round-up of current conditions at the international box office. More...

International Round Up: Scoob Starts Snacking at the Box Office

July 16th, 2020

We are still waiting for a real return to normalcy in any major box office market, but at least we had a major Hollywood release testing the waters this past weekend. Okay, maybe calling Scoob! a major Hollywood release is stretching things, but it is also a bigger release than many international markets have seen in months. The film earned $1.8 million in five markets, led by $900,000 during its second-place debut in France. More...