February 28th, 2016
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It’s Oscar day and, if all goes to plan, I will be live-blogging the ceremony tonight. Here is the list of nominees marked according to predictions from our readers, and my personal wishes. Nominees in Bold are the ones predicted to win by our readers (we’ll have a full rundown of the predictions at noon, after the contest ends). If I am predicting a different film, those are in Italics. Meanwhile, the nominees I want to win, but don’t think will win, are Underlined. There are a few categories where the film I really think deserves the award was not even nominated, plus a few I don’t have a real opinion on.
If you haven’t done so already, it’s not too late to enter our Oscar competition, and win all Best Picture nominees on Blu-ray or DVD.
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February 27th, 2016
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With our annual Oscar Prediction contest closing at noon tomorrow, now is the best time to look at the nominees and try to figure out who the favorites are and which films should just feel honored to be nominated. This morning, we get to the final category, Best Picture. The film I think should win, Inside Out, wasn't even nominated. Of the movies on this list, I think The Martian is the best. If you look at the odds makers, it isn’t even in the top three. I’m going to be doubly disappointed tomorrow.
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February 24th, 2016
With our annual Oscar Prediction contest underway, now is the best time to look at the nominees and try and figure out who the favorites are and which films should just feel honored to be nominated. Like the Best Supporting Actress, Best Supporting Actor is a two-horse race, making it one of the more competitive categories of the ones we are going to look at.
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February 20th, 2016
With our annual Oscar Prediction contest underway, now is the best time to look at the nominees and try and figure out who the favorites are and which films should just feel honored to be nominated. The Best Original Screenplay category isn't the most lop-sided category we will highlight, but it is also not very competitive.
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February 15th, 2016
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The BAFTA awards were handed out over the weekend. There were two main winners, The Revenant, which won most of its five awards in the high-prestige categories, and Mad Max: Fury Road, which earn all four of its awards in technical categories. It appears the Oscars will be very similar in that breakdown.
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February 2nd, 2016
This week the home market is led by a Blu-ray double-dip, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, while there is also an Oscar contender, Bridge of Spies, on the top. After that, the list is filled with bombs and weaker limited releases. It was an easy choice to select Snow White as Pick of the Week.
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January 15th, 2016
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The Oscar nominations were announced at 5:30 am Pacific time. Nothing is good that early in the morning. Worse still, this was a terrible year for snubs, especially when it comes to diversity of the nominees. The voters for the Oscars are 94% white and 77% male... but that's still more diverse than the list of nominees. The Revenant led the way with 12 nominations and it is expected to win a few of those, while it is a serious contender in most of the categories it was nominated in.
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January 9th, 2016
The BAFTA nominations were announced and you can read them on their site... in alphabetical order. Alphabetical order is very useful in most circumstances, but not here. On the other hand, the nominees within each category are not presented in alphabetical order. ... Are the BAFTAs trolling us? As for the actual nominees, the big winners here are Bridge of Spies and Carol, both of which earned nine nominations. For Carol, this is just another impressive score, but this was a pleasant surprise for Bridge of Spies.
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January 6th, 2016
The Writers Guild of America nominees were announced and there are only a few surprises here. Additionally, one of these three races seems too close to call at this point.
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December 10th, 2015
The Golden Globes nominations were announced this morning and we are already beginning to see a trend for this year's Awards Season. For the most part, the same films are coming up over and over again. Carol led the way with five awards, while there was a three-way tie for second place with The Big Short, The Revenant and Steve Jobs each picking up four.
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December 9th, 2015
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The Screen Actors Guild nominations were announced today and there are at least a few surprises to talk about. Trumbo led the way with three nominations, but there were six films with two nods apiece. Six!
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December 2nd, 2015
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2 remained in first place with $62.0 million in 93 markets for totals of $242.4 million internationally and $440.9 million worldwide. The film's only major market opening came from Spain where it had to settle for second place with a total opening of $4.52 million on 449 screens. Its biggest market overall is the U.K. where it pulled in $6.78 million in 579 theaters over the weekend for a total of $28.88 million after two weeks of release. At this pace, the film will finish with between $600 million and $700 million, which is amazing, but below average for the Hunger Games franchise.
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November 9th, 2015
It was a good weekend at the box office, but not a great weekend. Both Spectre and The Peanuts Movie opened well enough to be considered hits, but didn't quite reach the high marks I had expected. Call it irrational exuberance. Even though Spectre didn't break the record for the Bond franchise, it still did almost as well as all of the box office did last weekend. Additionally, The Peanuts Movie opened with more than $40 million, which is a great start, while its target audience should help its legs. The overall box office was $162 million, which is 115% more than last weekend. It was also 3.0% more than the same weekend last week, so the slump we've been in is officially over. Year-to-date, 2015 is now ahead of 2014 by a 4.9% margin at $8.89 billion to $8.48 billion. A $415 million lead with less than two months to go seems really safe, especially with a few more potential monster hits on the way.
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November 5th, 2015
I've been working at The Numbers for 13 years. The past two weekends were worst back-to-back weekends that I can recall and the numbers back that up. So thank goodness October is over and November has officially begun and with that, the Holiday Box Office season has begun. There are two potential monster hits opening wide this week: Spectre and The Peanuts Movie. Both are the latest installments of long running franchises. Spectre is the 26th Bond movie (not all of which are part of the official Bond franchise). The Peanuts Movie is based on a comic strip that started officially in the 1950s and has been turned into countless TV cartoons and a handful of TV specials over the years, but it hasn't had a theatrical release for decades. These two films should dominate the market and combined they might earn twice as much as all of the films last weekend earned. There should be huge growth compared to last year, when Big Hero 6 and Interstellar earned just over $100 million combined. We've had a really bad couple of weeks, but things should really turn around this weekend.
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November 2nd, 2015
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Most people expected the box office to be really weak this past weekend, but I don't think anyone anticipated this. How bad was this past weekend? All three new releases missed the Mendoza line* and there were no new releases in the top five. The overall box office was just $75 million, which was the lowest for the year and the fourth worst weekend in the past decade. This represents a 28% drop-off from last week and a 21% drop-off from the same weekend last year. 2015's overall lead over 2014 shrunk from 5.2% to 4.7%. The overall lead fell by $40 million at $8.69 billion to $8.31 billion. This is reason to panic, or it would be if Spectre wasn't opening on Friday. The film is breaking records in the U.K. and should be an explosive hit here. Hopefully it will do well enough that we can pretend the past two weeks never happened.
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October 31st, 2015
Because Halloween is a dead zone for the box office when it lands during the weekend, it has a major effect on the box office. Therefore, it is important for box office analysts to compare weekends where the holiday lands on the same day. This is a problem, because the last time Halloween landed on a Saturday was 2009. The only film to open wide that weekend was Michael Jackson's This is It, which is in no way similar to any of the movies that opened wide this weekend. The previous similar weekend was in 1998, but while Vampires is a closer match to Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse, the box office has changed too much to compare the films. We're flying blind this weekend. Fortunately, even flying blind, it is easy to make one declaration: All three wide releases bombed.
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October 29th, 2015
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Halloween is a dead zone for the box office, for the most part, and this year it lands on Saturday. Unless we are dealing with a horror film, it's going to be a bad weekend. There are two truly wide openings this weekend, Burnt and Our Brand is Crisis, neither of which are horror films. There is also one semi-wide release, Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse, which is a horror movie, but the buzz is so quiet I don't think it will matter. All three movies are earning bad reviews and it looks like the top three this weekend will be the same as they were last weekend. (There's a chance Goosebumps gets a big enough Halloween boost to climb into first place.) This weekend last year, there was only one new release in the top ten, Nightcrawler, which earned second place with just over $10 million. That's better than any one of the new releases will do this year; however, there's better depth this year, so I think 2015 will come out on top on the year-over-year comparison.
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October 26th, 2015
Most of the new releases were not expected to do well at the box office. ... Almost no one saw this coming. We had some near-record bombs this weekend and even the best of the new releases were terrible. This left The Martian in first place; in fact, the top three spots and four of the top five were held by holdovers. The best new release, The Last Witch Hunter, barely cracked the $10 million mark. The overall box office fell 14% from last weekend to $105 million. This was also 9.5% lower than the same weekend last year. Midweek numbers were better this year than last year, so the year-over-year actually improved and 2015 now has a 5.2% lead over 2014 at $8.60 billion to $8.18 billion.
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October 25th, 2015
Dismal is about the politest word that can be applied to the box office performance of new releases this weekend. None of the five films new in wide release managed to make the top three on the chart, and two of them didn’t even crack the top ten. That leaves The Martian and Goosebumps to battle it out for first place, and a fourth-week decline of just 25% for The Martian looks virtually certain to give it the win. Fox projects it will make $15.9 million for a total by the end of the weekend of $166 million or so. Its performance to date falls neatly between that of Interstellar and Gravity, which puts the sci-fi adventure on course for a final domestic box office of $230 million (see full comps here).
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October 24th, 2015
Where to start? There are so many new releases to talk about and none of them did well. Some did so poorly that talking about them seems mean. So, let’s start by saying that Friday’s box office chart was led by The Martian, while Goosebumps has a shot at repeating on top of the chart, with each film earning about $14 million to $15 million. Meanwhile, Bridge of Spies should earn third place over the weekend with between $11 million and $12 million.
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October 22nd, 2015
The box office prediction contests for the past few weeks have had a horror / "horror" theme. That is to say, two people won horror movies and the third won movies that were so bad it is scary they exist. There are four new releases this weekend and they all epitomize the latter. Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension has a review embargo, which is never a good sign, while the other three wide releases are all earning less than 20% positive reviews. Does that mean there's nothing worth seeing this week? Nope. Fortunately, Steve Jobs is expanding wide and should earn first place at the box office. It is the only film on this week's list with a shot at $20 million. This weekend last year, Ouija nearly reached $20 million and five other films earned $10 million. I don't think we will match that this year. It could be close and any gain or loss in the year-over-year comparison should be in single digits, so there's no reason to be overly concerned.
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October 20th, 2015
It is hard to get excited about the weekend box office results, as the top four films all missed predictions. (Granted, Bridge of Spies came within a rounding error of expectations.) Goosebumps did well for a live-action family film, but still not great. The Martian fell faster than anticipated, but it was Crimson Peak that was the biggest disappointment. Overall, the box office rose 2.5% from last weekend to $121 million. However, this was 7.6% lower than the same weekend last year. Had every film in the top five matched expectations, then this gap would have been reduced to just a percent or two. Despite this, 2015 is still ahead of 2014 by more than $400 million at $8.46 billion to $8.05 billion. It would take a few more weeks of year-over-year declines before I would be concerned.
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October 18th, 2015
A slightly-softer-than-expected (but still good) opening for Goosebumps will be enough to take the film to the top of the box office chart this weekend, according to studio projections released on Sunday morning. Sony expects the family horror adventure to come in with $23.5 million on opening weekend, which is a solid enough start, and sets the film up for a good run, helped by strong reviews and Halloween coming up in a couple of weeks. The Martian will land in second with a projected $21.5 million as of this morning, a slightly steeper-than-expected 42% decline from last weekend, and a total to date around $144 million. In general, we’re looking at quite a few steep drops from last weekend thanks to an unfavorable comparison with the Columbus Day long weekend and a batch of new releases.
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October 17th, 2015
It looks like it will be a very interesting weekend, as Goosebumps and The Martian appear to be in a close race for first place. Goosebumps led the way on Friday with $7.35 million. This is 40% more than Pan’s opening day last weekend. Add in the film’s better reviews and its family-friendly target audience and it should have a solid internal multiplier, perhaps in the vacinity of Alexander and the Blah, Blah, Blah. That puts Goosebumps on track for a $25 million opening. That’s a little lower than I would have liked and the film will need solid legs and a reasonable international run to break even. I wouldn’t bet against it breaking even, but I don't think it will be turned into a franchise.
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October 15th, 2015
We are getting closer to Halloween and there are two scary movies opening wide this weekend. Goosebumps is a live-action family film and as we saw with Pan, those are rarely big hits. On the other hand, this film is earning great reviews and cost about 60% less to make, so even if it just matches Pan's opening, it will still have a shot at profitability. Crimson Peak is an old-fashioned Haunted House horror film, similar to The Woman in Black, but with a $55 million production budget. That might be too much to recoup. Finally there's Bridge of Spies, a Cold War era Spy Thriller. Its reviews are the best for this week, but its target audience isn't known for rushing out to see a movie opening weekend. This weekend last year, there were five films with more than $10 million, but only one with more than $20 million. This year, we should have the same number of $10 million movies, but at least two $20 million movies and perhaps even a $30 million movie. I think 2015 has the edge in the year-over-year comparison, but unless the new releases are bigger hits than most anticipate, it could be close.
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October 1st, 2015
September ended on a record note with the debut of Hotel Transylvania 2. Additionally, there was great depth and 2015's lead over 2014 grew to nearly $500 million. How do things look going forward? The month starts out with The Martian, which should have no trouble becoming the biggest hit of the month and might even top $200 million. On the other hand, no other film is expected to get to $100 million. There's only one or two that will even come close. Fortunately, last October was very similar with one $100 million hit, Gone Girl, while two other films came close, Annabelle and Fury. It looks like it will be up to the depth films from both years to determine which year comes out on top.
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