Movies

SUNDAY AM UPDATE: Without Paramount’s Top Gun: Maverick in the marketplace, the Thanksgiving box office was much lighter than previous holidays, grossing an estimated $141.3M over 5-days, off 46% from 2019’s pre-pandemic holiday over the same period of time. Two family movies, Disney’s animated Encanto, which banked 52% of its $40.3M 5-day gross from Latino and Hispanic

While some in the industry are still trying to blame a lackluster box office on the pandemic, think again: Sony’s Spider-Man: No Way Home in its first day of pre-sales yesterday on Fandango already beat that of 2019’s Avengers: Endgame; that movie ultimately turning into the biggest domestic opening of all-time with $357.1M. In addition, the presales for Spider-Man:

Broadway box office saw a Thanksgiving holiday boost of about 30%, with total receipts for the 33 productions rising to $32,543,570 for the week ending Nov. 28. Total attendance was up about 12% (to 238,354) over the previous week, indicating that much of the increased box office tally was due to higher holiday-week ticket prices.

EXCLUSIVE: Pierre Morel-directed action movie Al Kameen (The Ambush) has logged the biggest opening weekend ever for any Emirati or Arabic-language film in the UAE. The movie, which is a co-production between AGC International and Image Nation Abu Dhabi, scored 170,000 cinema admissions between November 25 and November 29, making it the fifth largest opening this year

Landmark Theatres will be entering into a long-term lease at one of the former Arclight Cinemas locations, that being the Glen Town Center in Glenview, IL. The chain, owned by the Oscar-nominated Cohen Media Group, has plans to reopen the cinema as a 10-screen venue this coming spring after a $2.5M remodel, supported by the

The first episode of Marvel’s Hawkeye on Disney+ drew 1.5M U.S. households over the Wednesday-Sunday holiday stretch, while 1.3M stuck around and watched the second episode. This is according to the latest streaming viewership stats from Samba TV which measures 3M U.S. households, and what they watch on streaming over a five-minute increment. That first episode number

EXCLUSIVE: Disney+/Marvel’s Hawkeye was the most shared TV series title among pirate networks for the week of Nov. 22-28 according to MUSO, while Amazon Prime’s The Wheel of Time ranked second. Such are the calamities for an entertainment industry obsessed with streaming: If there’s a pristine copy of a movie or series available on the web,

UPDATE: Notably on the menu this weekend overseas were new openers Disney’s Encanto and MGM/Universal’s House Of Gucci. The former came in lower than hoped at the international box office, with $29.3M in 47 material markets, though it did make the low end of its global projection at $69.6M (including domestic‘s 5-day frame). The Disney

Remember when New York and Los Angeles use to post big figures for the opening of a specialty film at the box office? Well, those days look to be coming back. United Artist Releasing’s MGM Paul Thomas Anderson’s 1970s teen comedy Licorice Pizza posted a huge $83,8K opening screen average from four theaters, which the

While Samba TV reported today that 707K U.S. households watched the Will Smith drama King Richard over the weekend, an even more interesting detail was how HBO Max subscribers tuned in: The OTT service tells us that a majority of subs watched the biopic about Serena and Venus Williams’ coach father from start-to-finish without pausing. Translation, King

In a benchmark that was to be expected, Warner Bros./Legendary’s feature adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune has clocked past $100 million at the domestic box office. This brings the global running total to north of $370M; the ultimate exclamation point here for the Denis Villeneuve directed movie being $400M WW. Dune made $400K on Thanksgiving yesterday sending its domestic

Broadway box office held steady last week, slipping a negligible 2% from the previous week to $25,074,048, with paid attendance of 212,819 off a small 1%. Though there was one additional production on stage compared to the previous week – the revival of Company joined the roster – Harry Potter and the Cursed Child was

Already the top film of 2021 globally, Chinese war epic The Battle At Lake Changjin is taking over the title of highest grossing movie ever in China, edging the previous leader, 2017’s Wolf Warrior 2. Through Wednesday evening local time, Lake Changjin had reached an estimated RMB 5.693B ($890M) after 56 days in release. Wolf

Disney’s animated movie Encanto received a $1.5 million start Tuesday off showtimes starting at 6 p.m., as the pic opens today in 3,980 theaters. The movie, which features a soundtrack from Emmy-, Grammy- and Tony-winning Lin-Manuel Miranda, is expected to make $35M-$40M over the next five days. So far, Encanto is 94% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes off 67

EXCLUSIVE: By this weekend, Warner Bros/Legendary’s Dune will cross $100M, making it the second movie from the studio this year to clear the century mark stateside off their controversial day-and-date theatrical HBO Max pandemic strategy. But with the Denis Villeneuve-directed adaptation of the Frank Herbert exclusively available in theaters now in its second month of release, sans

Through its first ten days on Netflix, the Dwayne Johnson-Gal Gadot-Ryan Reynolds $200M action heist movie Red Notice is already the streamer’s second most watched movie of all time with 277.9M hours clocked. The Rawson Marshall Thurber directed title is honing in on being the streamer’s most-watched-movie-of-all-time, that currently being the Sandra Bullock thriller Bird

Disney will continue to embrace the theatrical window over the Thanksgiving stretch with the Jared Bush/Byron Howard/Charise Castro Smith-directed Colombia-set animated musical Encanto which is looking to hook families with a $35M-$40M five-day domestic start and another $35M+ overseas as the movie debuts day-and-date in all offshore territories except China, Australia, New Zealand, Philippines and Vietnam.

Warner Bros/Village Roadshow’s highly anticipated The Matrix Resurrections has been cleared for release in China, however an exact date is yet to be fixed. Warner’s official Weibo account posted the news, saying the film “is confirmed to be introduced, and it will be released in theaters nationwide soon!” The fourth Matrix installment, both a reboot

EXCLUSIVE: The highest grossing movie during the pandemic, MGM/United Artists Releasing’s No Time to Die was also the most pirated movie for the period of November 15-21. In addition, the most ripped TV season over the last week was Amazon’s adaptation of the Robert Jordan fantasy novel The Wheel of Time. All of this information

Refresh for latest…: There was a lot of holdover play this session overseas with one new Hollywood addition in Sony’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife which came in essentially on par with pre-weekend offshore projections at $16M in 31 international box office markets. However, with domestic’s overperformance, the Jason Reitman-directed sequel trapped a better-than-expected $60M global opening. In