Universal/DreamWorks' The Croods: A New Age captured first place at the box office for a second week in a row, generating $4.4M in estimated ticket sales. The animated family comedy stands at $20.3M after 10 days, making it one of the top performers of the year after two weeks in theatres. Focus Features' road trip comedy Half Brothers opened at #2, with $720K in weekend ticket sales.  Tenet still ranked in the top 10, with the much-talked-about Christopher Nolan's thriller grossing a total of $57.6M since its debut 15 weeks ago on Labor Day weekend. 

Click watch this week's Popcorn Previews BOX OFFICE BUZZ video, looking at Universal/ Playtone's News of the World starring Tom Hanks...braving an unforgiving wilderness to bring a young girl back to her home.  News of the World opens in theatres in three weeks, on Friday 12/25.

This week, much of the industry was focused on Warner Bros.' surprise announcement that it would release its entire 2021 slate of films simultaneously to theatres and on HBO Max streaming. Some of the initial reaction proclaimed this shift as the beginning of the end for movie theatres. Upon further reflection, it could be that it will instead be seen as an important step in the recovery for exhibition, since it amounts to one of the leading Hollywood studio re-committing to theatrical releases for its full slate of 2021 films.  Our industry news summary also points to an extensive interview by The Verge with Alamo Drafthouse CEO Shelli Taylor.

Gower Street Analytics provides a review of worldwide box office results for November. While these results do not indicate any upward trend from the doldrums of the last few months, neither do they show any further erosion. The industry appears to be looking past 2020 and setting its sights on a bounce back year for 2021.  In the Hollywood Report, Martin Grove turns his attention on the beginning of the annual awards season. In a typical year, the Hollywood Foreign Press would be announcing its nominees for the Golden Globes this week, with winners to be announced in the first week in January. This year the awards calendar has been pushed back by 2-3 months, so the first stirrings of awards talk are just beginning.

We conclude with our regular film data tables. The Weekly Film Calendar provides a detailed list of film releases over the upcoming three months, out to the end February 2021.  We also publish the most recent studio release changes, MPAA film ratings and important new trailers.