November 20th, 2025
Two newcomers placed one and two at the weekend box office, with Now You See Me Now You Don’t grabbing the box office honors with a three-day haul of just over $21 million, outperforming second-place finisher, The Running Man, picking up $16.5 million in its opening foray. Neither film will get close to touching the top spot for a second weekend, however, as a Wicked storm is brewing and about to blow onto the big screen.
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November 16th, 2025
Now You See: Now You Don’t will pull off an unusual trick this weekend. It’s is recording the worst opening weekend for the franchise, while simultaneously being the first Now You See Me film to come top at the box office. Back in May 2013, Fast and Furious 6, in its second weekend, topped Now You See Me’s $29.4-million opening. In June 2016, The Conjuring 2 debuted with $40.4 million, which, along with Warcraft’s (disappointing) $24.2 million, pushed Now You See Me 2 into third place with $22.4 million. This weekend, $21.3 million will be enough for Now You See Me 3 to claim the crown. Alas, that’s partly a story of the changing nature of the theatrical business over the past 12 years.
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November 13th, 2025
The weekend box office was all Predator: Badlands, as the latest in the franchise gobbled up just over $40 million in its opening volley. The film remains the widest release in the land, but will have a much steeper test in its second frame, as three newcomers are set to challenge the current leader.
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June 21st, 2016
In our prediction column, I said I wanted the top two films to earn a combined total of $150 million to $170 million. Finding Dory's and Central Intelligence's combined opening weekend was $170.60 million. The overall box office was 53% higher than last weekend at $233 million. However, this was still 6.3% lower than the same weekend last year. Finding Dory did do better than either Jurassic World or Inside Out individually, but couldn't compete with their combined totals. 2016 is still ahead of 2015, but its lead was cut by a third at $150 million or 3.1%. That said, 2016 hit $5 billion a week faster than 2015 did and its lead of $5.06 billion to $4.91 billion is still substantial.
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June 9th, 2016
If this weekend is as bad as some fear it will be, it could begin to cause a panic among some studio executives. Two of the three wide releases are sequels and there are some who expect both to fail to match their predecessors by significant margins. If this happens, we will have six sequels failing to match expectations during a four-week stretch. Worse still, there are more than six additional sequels left to open before the end of summer. (Finding Dory seems safe, but the rest could flop as well.) The Conjuring 2: The Enfield Poltergeist should come out on top at the box office, but with less than the original made. Now You See Me 2 will likely continue Lionsgate's losing streak. Meanwhile, Warcraft could do well enough in China to justify a sequel, which is great news, because it will likely bomb here. This weekend last year, Jurassic World opened with $208 million. There's no way the entire box office will make that much this year. 2016 is going to get pummeled in the year-over-year comparison.
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June 1st, 2016
May was great, as long as you don't compare it to last May. Captain America: Civil War was a monster hit and is closing in on $400 million, while both X-Men: Apocalypse and The Angry Birds Movie will earn over $100 million. Looking ahead, every week in June, there is one movie that should top $100 million; however, only Finding Dory is expected to make more than $200 million. In fact, that film is expected to make close to $400 million domestically and over $1 billion worldwide. Last June, there were two monster hits, Inside Out and Jurassic World, plus one $100 million hit, Spy. I don't see how 2016 will top that. Even if every film with a shot at $100 million gets to that milestone, 2016 still might not top last year's pace. Fortunately, 2016 does have a large lead and that could be enough to keep 2016 ahead of 2015's pace in the year-over-year competition. It could be really close at the end of the month, on the other hand.
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