Screendollars

January 6th.  As press time this Sunday evening, we are enjoying the celebrations from the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards Ceremony.  We hope that you are as well.

The top three films in this week's box office maintained their positions from last week. Disney's Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker has held the top spot for three weeks in a row, earning $33.7M this weekend which adds up to a North American cume of $450.8M. Sony's Jumanji: The Next Level earned $26.5M in its fourth week and Sony's Little Women earned $13.7M in its second week, off only slightly from its impressive $16.5M debut last weekend. The critically-acclaimed 1917 from Universal maintained for a second week its limited, 11-location release, earning $590K (which is actually more than the $570K it earned last week in its debut) and producing a fantastic per-theatre-average of $53,100.

Our roundup of Notable Industry News begins with a review of the 2019 box office results. After the final numbers have been tallied, 2019 will likely come in at $11.4B, the second highest grossing year of all time. We highlight one article from ScreenRant that goes over the numbers and a second article from Deadline that looks at studio performances, led by Disney which broke all records, outpacing results from any studio in any year in history. We point to an agreement that Apple announced with former HBO chief executive Richard Plepler to produce a slate of original films, documentaries and series for its Apple TV + service.  We also include a commentary from IndieWire's Eric Kohn on the challenges faced by exhibitors in the decade ahead, and some reasons to be optimistic.

In his Hollywood Report, Martin Grove analyzes the chances for the leading Best Picture nominees at next month's Academy Awards. This analysis looks at probabilities based on a film being nominated in multiple awards categories, both by the Academy as well as by other awards organizations.

Gower Street helps open the New Year with their Estimates for North American Box Office in 2020. Their analysts are predicting that 2020 will produce $11.1B in ticket sales, representing a modest 2% drop from the results of 2019.

This week we offer two new tables for your review: a list of all significant Family Films coming up in 2020 and a table showing the the next 6 weeks of features being released to Streaming, VOD and DVD.

We conclude with our regular film data and tables: the Weekly Film Calendar covering releases over the next six weeks, recently announced Studio Release Changes, a list of Upcoming Industry Screenings, the latest MPAA film ratings and a list of important new trailers released last week.