High School Musical 3: Senior Year (Disney) is likely to win a second consecutive weekend, but there is a great deal of mystery about how this Kenny Ortega-directed sensation will play out. There were lots of questions going into opening weekend. The thinking was that teens would show up in big numbers Friday night and then Saturday’s business would increase because Moms would bring carloads of tween girls to America’s multiplexes. Instead, the big screen debut of the gang from East High generated 40% of its opening weekend business on Friday, resulting in a 10% Saturday dip.
I spoke to an exec at a competing studio today, and they suggested that [...]

The release dates are changing like autumn leaves as studios juggle titles to both maximize box office performance and position projects for awards season. A pair of decidedly serious motion pictures with real Oscar pedigrees have both landed on Friday, January 16, the start of the long Martin Luther King Day Weekend.

High School Musical 3 (Disney) has been a very tough movie to predict and project. My original prediction for the movie on October 22 was $35M-$38M. Everyone told me I was way too low. I went online with my Friday number on Friday night at 9:30 p.m., and it was almost dead-right (I announced $16.5M and today Disney says that number was $16.9M). The question became how would the weekend play out.
Some of my regular sources said the HSM3 would drop on Saturday because it was fueled by teens. More of them expected to see a Saturday increase because many tweens would need Mom to take them to see the [...]

“Go Wildcats!” That’s the cheer at Disney as the High School Musical franchise has effortlessly leapt to the big screen, like a perfectly choreographed Kenny Ortega dance move, with a spectacular $16.5M Friday. High School Musical 3 (Disney) is headed for a $55M 3-day weekend. Some had this picture sailing a bit higher, but, make no mistake. This is huge. The HSM franchise is essentially a license for Disney to print money.
There is no way that Disney could have known what it had when the original High School Musical debuted on The Disney Channel on January 20, 2006. For the uninitiated, it’s basically The Breakfast Club meets Busby Berkely. The [...]

The parents of American tweens will not be the least surprised about the certain blockbuster status of High School Musical 3: Senior Year (Disney). The original High School Musical debuted on the Disney Channel in 2006 with 7.7M viewers, and its soundtrack became the #1 selling US album of 2006. Then came its even bigger Disney TV sequel, High School Musical 2, which grabbed an opening night TV audience of 17.3M and spawned the #1 album in both the US and the world for 2007.
High School Musical is, frankly, a license to print money for Disney. The word is synergy. The Disney Channel and Radio Disney have created the HSM [...]

Max Payne (Fox) has successfully made the, often-times treacherous jump, from video game to the big screen grabbing an estimated $6.75M on its opening day. That will mean a likely $18.5M opening weekend, which is decent news for Mark Wahlberg and Fox.
I received advance word from a couple of reputable critics that Max Payne is not very good (one called it Max Payne-ful), and, as it turns out, Fox was smart to embargo reviews until today. The 16% Fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes does not bode well for word-of-mouth, but the movie will manage the 6th-best opening for a video game movie franchise and the all-time #9 opening for any [...]

Note from /Film Editor Peter Sciretta: Exciting news. Box office expert Steve Mason has returned to /Film after a six month absence. Mase will be checking in a few times a week with Box Office projects and results. Below is his first column back.

Movies based on video games do not always work, and I spoke to a pair of reputable film critics today who have seen and dislike Fox’s Mark Wahlberg vehicle Max Payne (although reviews have been embargoed until opening day), but it will likely be the big winner this weekend at America’s multiplexes. One of the critics went full-on snarky calling it Max Payne-ful, but industry tracking seems [...]

We’ve known that George Lucas—who apparently chews on fanboy disappointment like Popeye does spinach—is considering another Indiana Jones sequel, even though a proposed Mutt Williams torch-passing seems more and more unlikely (and hokey). Harrison Ford expressed interest over the summer in making an Indiana Jones 5, and preferably sooner than later. The actor’s stance hasn’t changed. He chatted with Hero Complex and gave this New Age-y update…
“Really, [another sequel] comes from the ethos, from the ether. It’s natural. It’s a way of nature, of course, success breed opportunities … also we don’t stay as closely in contact as have in the last year, that’s part of it.”
As for the next [...]

In a new interview with The Times UK, director Oliver Stone ponders the domestic box office prospects for his W. biopic, opening in limited release the 17th of this month. The Lionsgate film had a budget of $30 million—financed by Chinese investors—and arguably there is no precedent for how well it might do. High profile movies about U.S. presidents tend to always be posthumous (Stone’s Nixon, HBO’s John Adams, Spielberg’s planned Lincoln), and the political climate has only grown nastier and nuttier since Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 grossed $119 mil domestic in 2004 (seems longer ago). American Carol, anyone? With the election too close to call and the economy exposing [...]

The big surprise this weekend at the box office was a small budget ($500,000) limited release called Fireproof, which made over $6.5 million on only 839 screens. The film beat Spike Lee’s latest - Miracle at St. Anna! So how evangelical actor Kirk Cameron’s firefighter faith-based film become the year’s second highest grossing opening weekend released on lass than 1,000 screens (Hannah Montana’s 3D concert film is #1).
Provident Films’ grassroots marketing and outreach targeted churches, and organizations like American Family Association and Focus on the Family. Nikki Finke reports that “Faith-based “Action Squads” bought up blocks of tickets.” The film sold out a lot of screenings over the weekend, making [...]

Box Office analysts are predicting that The Dark Knight will finish with $530-$540 million domestically, about one Forgetting Sarah Marshall away from breaking Titanic’s $600.7 million record. But I believe they are wrong - and here’s why.
I’m sure that Warner Bros will rerelease the film in theaters eventually. The film has made a record $55 million on IMAX screens alone, and IMAX Filmed Entertainment chief Greg Foster tells The Hollywood Reporter that there is “a real possibility” of an IMAX rerelease in future years. Robert Zemeckis’ The Polar Express 3-D has been rereleased in IMAX theaters every holiday season, resulting in a four year total of $70 million. “Ultimately, [...]

The Dark Knight surpassed the $500 million mark early Sunday morning, which is a new record, as no film has ever accomplished this particular feat in just 45 days. It probably helps that only one other film has even accomplished that feat. Titanic hit $500 million in 91 days. Industry Analysts still predict a $520-$535 million domestic total, which would be $60 plus million shy of Titanic’s $600.8 million record.

Film Junk is reporting some fairly surprising news–The Dark Knight is not doing so well in Japan. And by not so well, I mean that it’s only pulled in $8.7 million after being in theaters for three weeks. Of course, part of the problem is that it’s competing against Hayao Miyazaki’s latest opus, Ponyo on a Cliff, which raked in $14.8 million during its opening weekend, and an astonishing $93.2 million in its first four weeks of release.
But I don’t think Miyazaki is entirely to blame. Looking at the top films in the Japanese box office for the past few weeks, it’s clear that Japan seems to have no love [...]

While Peter is on the record questioning Anna Faris’s cute-ranking, I have continuously defended her on the site as one of the funniest chicks working in Hollywood. My first ever item for Slashfilm was shot down, even. It was to be an essay on Faris’s stoned character in Smiley Face, with a paragraph dedicated to her lime green Sex Wax t-shirt and brilliant application of zit cream. This weekend, Faris finally became a star, and the bandwagon is zooming all over the Internet.
The House Bunny, a rather quiet $25 million Happy Madison comedy, surprised at the box office, grossing $15 million this weekend for the runner-up spot behind Tropic Thunder. [...]

Legendary Japanese Anime director Hayao Miyazaki’s latest film is a huge box office success in Japan. Ponyo on the Cliff has surpassed 10 billion YEN (or about $93.2 million) in just 31 days of release. That means that over 8.43 million tickets have been purchased so far. The film which is tracking closely to Miyazaki’s 2001 hit Spirited Away, will likely sell around 25 million tickets by the end of it’s Japanese theatrical run. That’s almost the same amount of tickets as Pixar’s Ratatouille or WALL-E sold in America. And you have to remember that Japan has less than half the population of the United States (about 41%). It’s also [...]