Refresh for latest…: Warner Bros’ hybrid live-action/animated feature Tom & Jerry began offshore rollout in mid-February, and this session became the first studio title to hit China in the wake of the Lunar New Year, as well as adding a host of other new markets. The Hanna-Barbera rascals scampered off with a further $19.4M from
IMAX
Shares of the nation’s largest theater chain bucked a down market Tuesday, fortifying their advance of the day before after news that cinemas in New York City will open soon after a year-long lockdown as Covid infection rates fall in the city and state. AMC Ent. stock is up 11% in late morning trades, after
Refresh for latest…: Chinese moviegoers ushered in the Year of the Ox with the colossal three-day debut of Detective Chinatown 3 grossing an estimated RMB 2.56B ($397M). This tops Avengers: Endgame’s 2019 five-day China bow of RMB 2.22B to make DC3 not only the biggest opener in Chinese history, but also giving it bragging rights
Talk about pent-up demand. Detective Chinatown 3, which was originally scheduled to hit Chinese cinemas during the Lunar New Year period in 2020, has sprung out of the gate today with an astonishing Maoyan-estimated RMB 1.05B ($163M) to score the biggest opening-day gross ever of any movie in a single market. The debut overtakes Avengers:
China’s box office is primed for a sparkling Lunar New Year frame as new titles start rollout on Friday. As we noted this past Sunday, pre-sales had alread begun to pop, with threequel Detective Chinatown 3 in the lead. The film from Chen Sicheng as of 11:30PM local time on Thursday had hit over RMB
Disney/Pixar’s Soul continues to shine overseas with a $96.2M cume after seven frames. In 11 markets this session, the Pete Docter-helmed original added $6.9M to its international box office kitty with No. 1s again in Russia and Korea. In China, it has surpassed Incredibles 2 to become the market’s 2nd highest-grossing Pixar title ever. China
As exhibitors get set to report results from the last quarter of their annus horribilis, 2020, one Wall Street bull is predicting record box office in 2023. Eric Wold, a veteran analyst with B. Riley Securities, acknowledged in a note to clients that exhibitors’ efforts to emerge from the abyss of Covid-19 have been hampered
Refresh for latest…: Disney/Pixar’s Soul got off to a jazzy start in Korea this weekend, debuting at No. 1 and seeing the second best bow for a non-local title since the Covid pandemic began. The Pete Docter-directed original also launched in Russia, at No. 1, and came in ahead of several pre-Covid animation openings. In
International box office was led again by China this weekend with local titles A Little Red Flower and Shock Wave 2 at the top of the charts, and Disney/Pixar’s Soul continuing its jazzy run there. The Pete Docter-directed original is soon to become Pixar’s No. 3 highest-grossing title ever in the market. Other weekend highlights
With an estimated $12.4B in global grosses, $10.2B of which came from the international box office, 2020 was off overall by 71% and 67%, respectively, from 2019 according to Gower Street Analytics. It’s a year the world at large would like to forget, but in industry terms it provided interesting phenomena to reflect upon even
Refresh for latest…: There was a bit more varied action at the international box office this weekend, including the continued rollout of Warner Bros/DC’s Wonder Woman 1984, a sizable start for China’s Shock Wave 2, the debut of Disney/Pixar’s Soul, The Croods: A New Age nearing $100M global, and a brand new milestone for Japan’s
Imax CEO Rich Gelfond doesn’t see the Warner Bros.-induced sound and fury in Hollywood subsiding anytime soon as talent joins theaters to protest the studio’s 2021 theatrical windows – nor does he think Warner will stick it out for a full year. “I don’t this is a storm that’s going to blow over in a
Refresh for latest…: Sunday’s international box office reporting looks vastly different to what was expected coming into the weekend. A Friday gross that portended a high-teens launch for Monster Hunter in China was quickly thwarted when local authorities pulled the feature game adaptation from the country’s cinemas. This was the result of an online backlash
“There is no way to sugarcoat this for the theater operators,” said one Wall Streeter as exhibition stocks plunged Thursday on WarnerMedia’s bombshell – a reimaging of its entire 2021 release slate that hit an exhibition industry already teetering on the brink. Cinemark shares– up earlier in the session — lost nearly 22% of their
DreamWorks Animation/Universal’s The Croods: A New Age led the weekend in China with a $19.2M debut, outpacing local titles One Second and Caught In Time as it got a huge Saturday boost. This is the third best bow for a studio movie in the Middle Kingdom during the pandemic era (behind Tenet and Mulan). In
Refresh for latest…: The international box office continues to be led by Asia, with Demon Slayer The Movie: Mugen Train still enjoying runaway success this weekend. Currently the No. 5 all-time biggest movie in Japan, the anime adaptation should climb up to No. 2 sometime in the next week or so. This session, the cultural
Refresh for latest…: With cinemas in the bulk of the European majors now dealing with a second wave of closures amid the COVID-19 crisis, international box office is again led by Asia this weekend — and should continue to be so for the foreseeable future. Japan’s runaway smash Demon Slayer The Movie: Mugen Train is
Refresh for latest…: Asia continues to power international box office with local titles atop the charts. This is a trend we can expect to carry on as the Hollywood studios have widely vacated the rest of 2020, and as Europe begins a re-closing process amid coronavirus spikes. In just the last week, France shuttered its
IMAX today reported third quarter earnings for the period ended September 30. Revenues were $37.3M versus $86.4M in the third quarter of 2019, largely impacted by the global COVID-19 pandemic. The result is, however, much better than Q2 which saw revenues of just $8.9M. In part that’s down to the resurgence of moviegoing in Asia.
Shares in IMAX were down in pre-market trading this morning after the company announced its Q3 results, which included a loss of $47.2M on revenues of $37.3M. As of 10AM ET, they were down 4.92%. CEO Rich Gelfond, however, remains bullish on the theatrical business and the company’s future health. “Our financial position gives us
Refresh for latest…: Big news this weekend out of Japan where anime adaptation Demon Slayer The Movie: Mugen Train shattered all-time opening records. The film, which opened on Friday October 16, as opposed to the usual Saturday/Sunday weekend, is estimated to have grossed upwards of $30M for the three-day. This number could rise above $40M,
Exhibition shares took a beating Tuesday as AMC Entertainment announced its cash might be gone by year end and Walt Disney became the latest big content company to restructure operations around streaming. As theaters reopen to limited audiences without key New York and Los Angeles markets and a paucity of new studio fare, heavily indebted
Refresh for latest…: China’s National Day holiday officially ended last Thursday, with takings for the October 1-8 period at an estimated RMB 3.95B ($589M) as the market continues to close the 2020 gap with domestic. This weekend saw continued play for the key titles, led by patriotic pic My People My Homeland which added another
Imax Corp. has decided to furlough 150 workers due to the withdrawal of movie studios from the theatrical marketplace due to COVID-19. The large-format film company’s auditoriums have fared well in China and across Asia in reopening during COVID-19, but it has reached a crossroads in much of the rest of the world. Just about
Refresh for latest…: Christopher Nolan’s Tenet handily passed $200M overseas this weekend with a $25M offshore frame to bring the overseas box office to $214M. Including domestic, the global cume is now $250.1M. Boosting play overseas, as we noted yesterday, was the Japan bow which came in a a strong $4.3M in the No. 1
Imax CEO Rich Gelfond anticipates streamers will become more active in exhibition as the post-COVID business shakes out and said his team is turning gray at the stress of constantly shifting release schedules — even as Deadline reports that Warner Bros. is thinking of pushing Wonder Woman 1984 to late December. “One of the reasons
Refresh for latest…: Christopher Nolan’s Tenet added a further estimated $58.1M at the international box office this weekend, taking the overseas cume on the Warner Bros title to $126M after two sessions. With the time-bending film debuting in the U.S. this frame, the estimated worldwide total is $146.2M. The global weekend figure of $78.3M includes
Christopher Nolan’s Tenet has begun its offshore rollout, and while Warner Bros is keeping a tight lid on grosses until fully reporting Sunday, some international box office information is available on the highly-anticipated title. In Korea, one of the key plays on Tenet, the Wednesday opening day was a little over $827K from 2,228 screens.
In an effort to rein in resurgent coronavirus cases in Seoul, Korean authorities last week tightened restrictions on public gatherings. This dealt a blow to the local box office which has seen strong performances over the past several weeks with titles like Peninsula and Deliver Us From Evil. But the Top 5 films in the
After pulling in $33.5M across five days of previews at the Chinese box office, local war epic The Eight Hundred overwhelmingly stormed theaters today, its first official day of release. Adding roughly $20M across the country on Friday — the biggest single-day box office since cinemas resumed operations — the Middle Kingdom cume is now