Film News

In a rare weekend with fewer new studio wide releases, IFC Films had a one-two punch at the box office with Matt Johnson’s film BlackBerry grossing $473k nationwide in 450 theaters, for a U.S. per theater average of $1.05k and cracking the top ten on Friday. It will gross an estimated $740k in North America this weekend,

A beloved ballplayer and an iconic consumer device join a Hollywood satire by Charlie Day, an Emanuele Crialese film with Penelope Cruz and debuts from Sundance and Venice in a potentially strong specialty weekend that will test the appetite for indie film with no new franchise wide releases. Sony Pictures Classics opens Sean Mullin’s Yogi

Refresh for updates...The box office and the industry is in need of counterprogramming working after several non-tentpoles were squashed by Super Mario Bros Movie and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, and hopefully that will be Focus Features’ Book Club: The Next Chapter. With $500K in Thursday previews, the movie is looking at a $7M-$10M

The sequel to the Oscar winning animated hit is looking at an opening between $70M to $80M per two tracking agencies as it heads into its June 2-4 opening. Spider-Man: Across the Universe, while it has its fanboy fandom, doesn’t necessarily comp to a live-action Marvel Cinematic Universe title per distribution sources, despite the audience

Students at Boston University will have to cross a Writers Guild picket line to attend their May 21 graduation ceremony, where Warner Bros. Discovery President & CEO David Zaslav, an alumnus of the school, will be making the commencement address. The guild previously had warned the school that its members would picket there if he

EXCLUSIVE: Blumhouse’s Jeff Wadlow-directed horror movie Imaginary will be released by Lionsgate on February 2. It’s the first time in quite some time that the two studios have teamed up. In the movie, which Wadlow co-wrote with Greg Erb and Jason Oremland, a young woman returns to her childhood home only to discover that the

Perhaps last week’s Tony Award nominations started paying off at the box office quicker than expected, at least for a few productions: Figures for last week, while down overall, indicate a nice bump upwards for Some Like It Hot, Shucked, Summer, 1976 and Good Night, Oscar. Some Like It Hot, the musical adaptation of the

James Gunn’s MCU threequel, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, came in even higher than Disney was anticipating. We had a sense it was $116M on Saturday night. The pic is now at $118.4M per Disney this morning after a $31.4M Sunday (yesterday was forecasted at $27M). That’s the 12th highest opening of all-time during

Comedy is back; Super Mario Bros has proved that laughs are good for a half billion dollars. The antihero business is intact. Both Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 and John Wick: Chapter 4 hit their marks. But affairs of the heart are still suffering at the movie box office. Love Again is the latest

With Universal pushing R-rated comedy Please Don’t Destroy from Aug. 18 to Peacock, another R-rated movie, Strays, featuring the voices of Will Ferrell & Jamie Foxx is back-filling that date. Originally, Strays was to open on June 9, a month from now. The WGA Strike is partly the reason for Strays‘ movie; an original bawdy

Indian films are a box office mainstay and one, Jodi, from Rhythm Boyz Entertainment, hit big this weekend Stateside, grossing $734,000 on just 125 screens. In April, the film set a record as the most viewed Punjabi trailer in 24 hours (over 12 million views on YouTube). “This has been happening more and more —

Giant theater chain AMC Entertainment saw sales blow past Wall Street forecasts for the March quarter, rising 20% to $954 million. Losses narrowed by $102 million to $235 million, for an adjusted EPS of 17 cents a share, a also ahead of expectations. “It will take a few more years for the industry box office

AMC Entertainment CEO Adam Aron said the giant movie theater chain will start making its own candy line that will be cheaper for patrons, and for the company, given price hike by sweets manufacturers post-Covid. “We noticed, as a result of the pandemic and supply chain shortages, that candy manufacturers had increased their prices to

A sleek theater from Look Dine-In Cinemas opened this weekend in NYC (or reopened at the former Landmark) on West 57th Street. With wood, windows and well-stocked bar, it’s the face of exhibition that wants to grab moviegoers and keep them. The look is midcentury modern. Each Look location — there are 12 — “is

The James Gunn Marvel Studios title is spotting $47M-$48M today, including $17.5M previews, for what will hopefully be a $110M start at 4,450 theaters. One analyst tells us that dollar for dollar that Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is looking a lot like Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Both movies did about $37M in

EXCLUSIVE: Longtime Lionsgate Film Distribution Head David Spitz is exiting, Deadline has learned, with former STX distribution vet Kevin Grayson getting named President of Domestic Distribution of the studio’s motion picture group. Spitz came to Lionsgate via its absorption of Blair Witch Project studio Artisan. Before that, Spitz was at Reservoir Dogs distributor, Live Entertainment

UPDATED, EXCLUSIVE: We heard whispers about this at CinemaCon last week and sources have solidified for us: Hollywood’s famed and historic Cinerama Dome’s reopening is looking more and more like 2024. Essentially, there’s still more work to be done on the Sunset Blvd venue.  The delay will come as a great upset to those indie

EXCLUSIVE: Distribution sources are telling us that Disney Marvel Studios’ final James Gunn movie, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, is doing around $14M in previews. As we always say, that can go higher or lower by the morning. Thursday previews kicked off at 3PM, and there were 100 Imax shows on Wednesday. Note, these

EXCLUSIVE: Disney’s live-action take of 2x Oscar nominated animated feature, The Little Mermaid, officially landed on tracking today for what looks to be a $110M 4-day opening. That will land the movie among the top eight openings for the holiday, last year Paramount’s Top Gun: Maverick scoring a record start of $160.5M. Of course, Little

Sony is determined to bring moviegoers back to comedies in theaters and they just dated their Will Gluck directed Anyone But You for Dec. 15. The trailer dropped last week during the studio’s presentation at CinemaCon. The screwball comedy, which stars Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell, follows two people who loathe each other so much —

Filmmaker James Gunn’s Marvel Studios swan song, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, is blasting off this weekend, the de facto start of the summer box office, with an eye at $250M worldwide. Of that $110M is coming from domestic, and $140M from overseas. Wrinkling some box office sources brows is how the threequel’s start

The Broadway box office report won’t register the impact of this morning’s Tony Award nominations for a week or two, but today’s news certainly comes as welcome and promising signs for Shucked, Kimberly Akimbo, Fat Ham and other well-reviewed productions doing their best to compete against blockbusters like Sweeney Todd and Parade. Shucked in particular

At a time when theatrical is looking to distinguish itself with more prolific fare than the factory conveyor belt of humdrum product coming from streaming, it’s with great upset to hear that Lionsgate’s feature adaptation of Judy Blume’s pinnacle 1970 novel Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret fell greatly short at the box office