When it comes to evaluating the financial performance of top movies, it isn't about what a film grosses at the box office. The true tale is told when production budgets, P&A, talent participations and other costs collide with box office grosses, and ancillary revenues from VOD to DVD and TV. To get close to that myster…

3RD UPDATE, TUESDAY, 4PM: Fifty Shades of Grey is now counting an overseas bow of $173.6M through Monday.  Updates for Universal, Warner Bros., Lionsgate  and Fox have been made below. 2ND UPDATE, MONDAY, 10:45 AM PT: Universal’s Fifty Shades Of Grey is coming in slightly lower with an international bow of $156M (for…

2ND UPDATE, TUESDAY 4 AM PT: Actuals are in for the international weekend with no major discrepancies save for a big drop on Taken 3. After Sunday’s report of a $57.2M total in non-Fox markets, the confirmed total came in at $39.8M. The difference was down to an incorrect cume provided to Fox by EuropaCorp for those…

2Nd UPDATE: : International actuals are in from most of the studios with a few figure shifts. The Hobbit: The Battle Of The Five Armies came in higher than projected with a total $54M weekend and a cume of $504.65M. Disney's Into The Woods, previously at a projected $1M for the weekend, nearly doubled that to take a…

Update,  Monday Jan. 5: And with the turn of the New Year, the domestic box office is up 6.5% for the first four days of 2015 with $210.2M versus the same period in 2014 which counted $197.4M according to Rentrak.  The post-New Year’s FSS clocked in with $154.6M, down 26% from the post Christmas frame of $209M — but…

Warner Bros Pictures International had a record year in 2014, grossing $3.17 billion. The studio said today that it beat its previous best of $3.14B in 2013 by 1%. The haul was led by Interstellar with $472M, which became Christopher Nolan’s biggest film ever in more than 1o territories including an eye-popping $74M…

UPDATED WITH MORE ANALYSIS: Warner Bros’ The Hobbit: The Battle Of The Five Armies, not surprisingly, came out on top at the New Year’s Day domestic box office. It is leading No. 2 Into The Woods and No. 3 Unbroken by comfortable margins, placing it easily in reach of $200M today. Five Armies grossed $9.33M Thursday…

With some extra days off built into moviegoers’ holiday vacations, distribs can be rest assured that multiplex traffic isn’t going to slow. The weekend following Christmas –which is sometimes the first full non-holiday FSS of January or like this year has the New Year’s holiday built into it for four-day frame– is not…

FINAL UPDATE, MONDAY 4:49 PM PT: Across the Top 10 major studio releases internationally there's reason for some holiday cheer. This weekend's figures are up 19.4% over last frame with The Hobbit: The Battle Of The Five Armies leading the pack at $89M, plus strong perfs from Exodus: Gods And Kings in new key markets…

With the last-minute brouhaha over The Interview’s play in an estimated 300+ indie engagements,  it would seem that the Christmas Day box office is all about the Sony political comedy and nothing less. While rival studios expressed alarm last week about The Interview’s presence in the market, they’re rather apathetic…

FINAL UPDATE, 4:35 PM PT: Actuals are in from the studios with The Hobbit: The Battle Of The Five Armies once again charging ahead of its Sunday projections. The final installment in Peter Jackson’s trilogy came in at $109M versus the previously estimated $105.5M. The international cume after Sunday is $269M. Also…

3RD UPDATE, MONDAY, 3:15 PM: The Hobbit: The Battle Of The Five Armies dropped some gold coins on its way to the bank today to deposit its actual results. The finale of Peter Jackson’s epic trilogy was off 1.7% from its Sunday five-day estimate of $90.6M, for a current reported cume of $89.1M.  That figure still beats…