Screendollars

The tandem of Demon Slayer the Movie: Mugen Train and Mortal Kombat continued to lead all films at the weekend box office for a second week in a row. FUNImation's anime Demon Slayer took over top spot with $6.4M at 1,905 theatres. Warner Bros.' action fantasy Mortal Kombat slid back in to second place, grossing $6.2M at 3,114 locations.  After 10 days in theaters, both films have tallied a cume of $34M in the Domestic market.  Warner Bros.' Godzilla Vs. Kong continued to romp across theatre screens with $2.7M in its fifth week, having built up a cume of $90.3M since its debut on March 31st.

Our Boxoffice Buzz videos begin with a Preview of Summer 2021 Movies coming to a theatre near you.  We also conclude our four-part series celebrating Family Fun Films that have animated moviegoing over the past 20 years.

We begin this week's Industry News summary with an analysis of last Sunday's 93rd Oscars ceremony, and a suggestion to the Academy about how to solve the problem of the alarming decline in ratings for the broadcast.   We cover the Q1 earnings report from IMAX, which showed year-over-year growth in box office receipts for the first time since the pandemic struck.  These results may indicate a coming recovery for exhibition more generally.  The announcement of schedules for re-opening theatres in Europe and restrictions on max capacity easing in the U.S. would appear to support this trend.

In this week's Hollywood Report, Martin Grove reflects on the rationale for Studios and Exhibitors to work together to promote movies and moviegoing, to the benefit of the industry overall. As the pandemic eases, theatres reopen and studios are releasing their backlog of films, the benefit from working together is now even more apparent.

Our Studio Release Calendar provides the schedule for film releases through the end of July. We conclude with a list of the most recent studio release changes, MPAA film ratings announcements and important new trailers released last week.