Universal takes top three spots at domestic box office

While that meets tracker and studios projections, it is also the lowest opening weekend ever for director M. Night Shyamalan, falling below the $18 million earned by "Lady in the Water" in 2006.

Marvel Studios is doomed! Movie theaters are going to disappear! The sky is falling! Okay, that’s just hyperbole. But if you look at the last week of box office news, starting with the surprising financial decline of “Black Widow” and the incredibly harsh words from the National Association of Theater Owners (NATO), there is some concern that maybe folks aren’t flocking back to cinemas as fast as we hoped.

FRIDAY AM Update: Refresh for updates Universal’s Old grossed $1.5M on Thursday night from 2,750 theaters that began showtimes at 7PM. This topped the Thursday night results for Paramount’s Snake Eyes which did $1.4M, also starting at 7PM at 2,662 theaters. Both titles are respecting a theatrical window.

Marvel‘s “Black Widow” had a pandemic-record opening making $80.3 million last weekend. However, in its second frame, the top spot has been usurped by LeBron James‘ “Space Jam: A New Legacy,” as the sequel has earned $31.6 million, which is still slightly less than WarnerMedia was hoping for, but the studio is also offering a home viewing option to HBO Max subscribers.

wrote with a grinning emoji.The sequel to 1996’s Michael Jordan-led “Space Jam” pulled in more than $13 million on Friday, according to multiple reports, despite poor reviews.

Space Jam: A New Legacy is having a successful weekend at the box office!

Guy Lodge Film CriticCANNES — At a banner ceremony for female filmmakers, Russian writer-director Kira Kovalenko’s sophomore feature “Unclenching the Fists” won the top prize for best film in the Un Certain Regard section at the Cannes Film Festival this evening, from a jury headed by British filmmaker Andrea Arnold.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media ReporterBlack Widow has faced down mad titans and genocidal robots, but can the veteran Avenger take down a band of scrappy Looney Toons?It’ll be a showdown between Disney’s and Marvel’s “Black Widow” and the Warner Bros.

The global entertainment business is in the midst of an “asymmetrical” recovery from the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, with box office one of the clearest indications of the pattern.

“Black Widow” at home, audiences went to the movie theater in pandemic record numbers this weekend to catch the first Marvel movie released in two years.The Walt Disney Co. said Sunday the superhero pic generated an estimated $80 million in ticket sales in North America.

For the first time since Presidents Day weekend 2020, the total domestic box office has finally exceeded $100M over three days, yes, thanks in part to Disney’s release of the long-awaited Marvel title Black Widow.

Gregg Goldstein With films from Lin-Manuel Miranda, Bill Murray, Todd Haynes, Leos Carax and others, the Cannes Film Festival, movie theaters and streamers are alive with the sound of music. “It might just be the shuffling of release dates as a result of the pandemic, but 2021 is shaping up to be an embarrassment of riches for fans of movie musicals,” Miranda says.And he should know.

It was a big weekend at the movies for Universal Pictures!

The studio boasts that this is the first time a studio has done a podium sweep on the weekend charts since Sony in February 2005 and the first time Universal has achieved it since the release of the Al Pacino thriller “Sea of Love” in September 1989. Such a feat is so uncommon because studios generally space out the releases of their films to avoid having them compete with each other for audience attention.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media ReporterAny “Fast” fan knows there’s nothing stronger than family. But the second weekend at the box office for “F9: The Fast Saga” will test the potency of the film’s big-screen appeal, as well as lingering skepticism from moviegoers as the cinema industry emerges from the pandemic.The ninth entry in Universal’s “Fast & Furious” saga opened last weekend to $70 million in North America, marking the best start for a Hollywood movie in more than a year.

It’s just the latest distribution experiment in a year full of them, and it could lead to some rare sights on this weekend’s charts. Universal notes that if its three current releases take the top three spots on the July 4 charts — and that is very likely considering both new releases are projected for openings of over $10 million — it would become the first studio since 2005 to do a podium sweep of the box office.

After raising the bar on what a movie can open to during the pandemic with F9‘s $70M weekend, Universal is adding a one-two wide release punch to the weekend with the debut of two titles geared at two different demos: DreamWorks Animation’s The Boss Baby: Family Business which is set to do $15M+ and Blumhouse’s The Forever Purge which is looking at $10M+ over 3-days.

COVID-19 lockdown.Thus comes an official declaration: “Cinema is back!,” the franchise’s lead thespian, Vin Diesel, has announced in an official statement. A delayed theatrical release turned out to be the right move for the “Fast and Furious” sequel, the ninth in the franchise’s 20-year run.