Box Office

UPDATE with amended pre-sale figures, writethru after Wednesday post: Long-rumored for a China re-release, James Cameron's Avatar suddenly popped onto the calendar this week. The erstwhile highest-grossing film of all time worldwide will hit Middle Kingdom cinemas on Friday, March 12. In so doing, it has a chance to…

Dalian Wanda, which acquired AMC Entertainment in 2012, surrendered control of the struggling exhibitor as it issued and sold tranches of new stock to raise cash — diluting the stake of the Chinese conglomerate. CEO Adam Aron confirmed the Wanda era was over although the company continues to be AMC largest single…

While the No. 1 exhibitor AMC has traditionally been flexible about theatrical windows despite their pubic uproar against Universal last year, the chain’s CEO Adam Aron speculated today what the landscape would look like when we come out of this pandemic. “What we learned from the Universal agreement, is that every…

AMC Entertainment revenue plunged last quarter to $162 million from close to $1.5 billion the year before as the global pandemic squeezed exhibition. That beat expectations, coming about $20 million above Wall Street's consensus estimates. The stock is up 3% in late trading. Net losses widened to $946 million…

Scoring another record with a local title in Japan, Imax has had its best opening day ever for a film there with Shin Evangelion. Overall, the movie, which is the fourth and final installment in the Rebuild of Evangelion series, grossed nearly 828 million yen ($7.6 million). Of that, the Imax portion was $740,000. The…

With Disney and key exhibitors at loggerheads over the rental terms for the studio’s latest theatrical day and date Disney+ PVOD of Raya and the Last Dragon, leave it to a Girl Scout to call Disney CEO Bob Chapek to the carpet on why her local theater wasn’t playing the movie. During the Q&A at Disney’s annual share…

Today at Disney’s annual shareholder meeting, CEO Bob Chapek continued to underscore that the release date for Marvel’s long-awaited feature Black Widow is May 7, and that the Cate Shortland-directed title will be seen in theaters. Chapek made the same confirmation back on Feb. 11 during the studio’s fiscal Q1…

It’s looking like movie theaters will be given the opportunity to finally reopen here in Los Angeles County as early as next week. Today, for the first time ever, LA County’s Covid-19 numbers dipped into the red tier of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Blueprint for a Safer Economy. Deadline’s Tom Tapp reports that if Los Angeles…

National CineMedia, operator of the nation's largest cinema advertising network, saw sales plunge and it swung into the red last quarter as more than half of all theaters were shuttered. On a conference call, execs noted recent agreements to expand outside of cinemas and said the company will be announcing another, a…

Amazon isn’t being transparent in the weekend viewership of Coming 2 America, the Eddie Murphy comedy sequel the streamer picked up for $125 million back in October, which we first told you about. Rather they’ve serviced a statement pointing to The Digital Entertainment Group/Screen Engine/ASI’s VOD weekend rankings…

EXCLUSIVE Update Monday: Thanks to the reopening of New York City movie theaters in the five boroughs, the overall New York DMA which includes outlying areas Long Island, Westchester County, Connecticut and New Jersey posted $1.07M at the box office, a 380% jump over last weekend according to B.O. sources. Those…

With Easter weekend less than a month away, Sony announced today that it will be opening the Evan Spiliotopoulos’ Screen Gems supernatural PG-13 horror movie The Unholy on April 2. The feature based on the James Herbert novel Shrine joins Warner Bros/Legendary’s theatrical release of Godzilla vs. Kong which is opening…