Just one week short of the official start of the summer movie season (Memorial Day Weekend), box-office revenue for the U.S. and Canada is down 21% season-to-date at $2.4 billion, according to Comscore.
Two wide-release new movies opened to modest starts in the most recent May three-day weekend period: Paramount Pictures’ “IF,” a family-oriented magical adventure film ($35 million) and the Lionsgate horror film “The Strangers: Chapter 1” ($12 million).
Two other limited-release movies also opened: Focus Features’ “Back to Black,” a biographical film about Amy Winehouse ($2.9 million) and Amazon MGM Studios’ “The Blue Angels” ($1.3 million).
20th Century Studios' “Kingdom of the Planet of The Apes” took in a strong $26 million in box-office revenues in its second week.
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The overall drop in box-office revenue of 21% roughly follows the decline in movie studios' national TV advertising spend for the year -- down 28% to $367 million, according to EDO Ad EnGage.
This has come from 72,120 airings, yielding 41.2 billion impressions. A year ago, movie spending was at $513.1 million -- 107,850 airings and 57.7 billion impressions.
This year, CBS leads all TV networks in estimated spend for movie studios, at $102.6 million -- largely because of the Super Bowl, the NFL, and NCAA Men’s College Basketball programming.
Farther back in second place is ABC at $35.5 million, followed by TNT with $24.2 million; TBS, $18.2 million; ESPN, $17.8 million; NBC, $17.6 million; and Fox with $14.4 million.
A year ago, Fox Television Network led all networks over the same time period, with nearly identical results to that of CBS at $100.5 million. Fox aired the Super Bowl a year ago, as well as major NFL regular and playoff season games.
THE STRANGERS made $11.5 million, not $26 million.