March 21st, 2012
As it was on the DVD sales chart, there was a battle for first place on the Blu-ray sales chart between two new releases. Immortals beat Game of Thrones: Season Two in terms of units, 927,000 units to 680,000 units. However, Game comes out ahead in terms of revenue at $29.89 million to $21.31 million. As far as the two releases opening week Blu-ray share, Immortals managed 59% while Game earned 57%. Both of those results are fantastic.
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March 14th, 2012
Hugo led a limited number of new releases on top of the Blu-ray sales chart. It sold 523,000 units while generating $14.37 million in sales. This is a good result compared to its theatrical run, but not great given the film's production budget. Its opening week Blu-ray share was 51%, which is fantastic for a family film, although this is not your typical family film.
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March 13th, 2012
Puss in Boots remained in first place on the DVD sales chart during its first full week of release. It sold an additional 798,000 units and generating $12.16 million in revenue for totals of 1.65 million units / $26.74 million so far.
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March 7th, 2012
It was a slow week on the international chart with only three films that topped $10 million. Journey 2: The Mysterious Island was the best, earning $15.7 million on 6,381 screens in 52 markets for a total of 185.6 million internationally and $270.8 million worldwide. It has now topped the original worldwide as well as internationally. The film opened in Germany with a mediocre total of $1.68 million on 424 screens. However, it is already a success, so the studio shouldn't complain about that result. The film has yet to open in Japan, but when it does, it should be above $300 million worldwide.
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February 29th, 2012
Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance rose to first place with $21.44 million on 4,889 screens in 28 markets for a two-week total of $45.74 million. This week it opened in a trio of major markets, starting with Russia where it debuted in first place with $8.18 million on 913 screens. By comparison, Ghost Rider made $7.77 million in total in that market, so this is a great start. On the other hand, it had to settle for second place in Germany with $2.32 million on 428, which is roughly on par with its predecessor's opening. But it only managed third place in Spain with $1.16 million on 439. By comparison, the film made $3.12 million during its opening there. Mixed results make it difficult to predict the film's final box office number, but I think it is safe to say there won't be a Ghost Rider 3 any time soon.
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February 27th, 2012
There are not a lot of new releases this week, but it includes four-time Oscar winner Hugo. The DVD, Blu-ray Combo Pack, or 3D Blu-ray Combo are clearly contenders for Pick of the Week, but so is My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic: The Friendship Express. I'm going with the former, but it is close.
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February 26th, 2012
We have received all the votes now in our annual Predict the Oscars contest, and the big
prize of the night is predicted to go to The Artist, which
scored a remarkable 86% of all votes, making it the hottest favorite to win the prize since
Slumdog Millionaire won 91% of the votes in 2009.
Several other categories have overwhelming favorites, with Rango
winning 86% support for Best Animated Feature, Christopher Plummer
scoring 88% for Supporting Actor, and Octavia Spencer 84% for
Supporting Actress. Numbers readers seem very confident in their predictions this year in general, with the winner in 21
out of 24 categories receiving more than half of the votes.
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February 26th, 2012
It's Oscars night. (Actually, it's 3:43 in the morning as I'm typing this, but I thought I would get a jump on the celebration.) As I do every year, I will follow the announcements live and update our list of Oscar winners. However, this year I will be doing it a little differently and the list of nominees below will include the favorites as picked by our readers in Italics and as picked by me in Bold. So you can watch live and tell when I'm out of the running for our Oscar contest. (I figure it will take at least 17 wins out of 24 to come out on top. Maybe even 18 or 19 wins.) So, will The Artist be the big winner tonight as our readers predict? Or will Hugo score the upset? Stay tuned to fine out.
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February 25th, 2012
Hugo is Martin Scorsese's first family film and the first film he's made in 3D. It is certainly a risk for a director to branch out in such a radical way. On the other hand, the last time Martin Scorcese directed a film that didn't earn overall positive reviews was Boxcar Bertha, which he made back in 1972. Because of this, expectations are really high. Can the director live up to his past success in this new genre / format?
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February 23rd, 2012
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. We wrap up our look at the prestigious categories with the most prestigious of them all: Best Picture. This year there were nine nominees, but not all of them really have a shot at winning. (One of the nominations generated more outrage than anything else.) Is there a favorite? And are there any that have a legitimate shot at the upset?
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February 23rd, 2012
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. Today we will look at the Best Director, which is one of the closer races, at least among the high prestige categories, with the two leading contenders splitting previous major awards.
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February 22nd, 2012
With our annual Oscar Prediction contest underway, 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. Today we will look at the two writing categories, starting with Best Adapted Screenplay. This is not a particularly close race with one obvious favorite and a couple that are long shots with a shot.
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February 19th, 2012
A tight battle is brewing for box office honors this weekend, based on the studios' Sunday estimates. Safe House is currently ahead, with Universal predicting a $24 million 3-day weekend. The Vow runs in second place with $23.6 million according to Sony, which also has Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance in third place with $22 million. Adding to the uncertainty, the most family-friendly film in the top ten, Journey 2: Mysterious Island is only a few million back, with Warner Bros. projecting it will make $20.1 million through Sunday. Overall, it looks as though Safe House will win both the 3-day and 4-day races, although Journey 2 could win Monday.
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February 5th, 2012
The industry's healthy start to 2012 will continue this weekend thanks to two more good opening weekends. Chronicle is currently favorite to win the weekend, with Fox predicting a $22 million opening. CBS Films is pegging The Woman in Black at $21 million (a record for the fledgling studio). Both figures are predicated on historical models for SuperBowl Sunday, which can be a difficult day to predict, so the final order between the two could yet switch, although Chronicle is heavily favored to win at this point. Overall box office will be up about 35% from last year, although that reflects the very weak start to 2011. This weekend looks as though it will be about average for a SuperBowl weekend overall.
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January 29th, 2012
The industry will enjoy another weekend of increased revenue compared to last year, based on studio estimates released on Sunday, with The Grey starting out on the high end of expectations with $20 million, according to Open Road -- comfortably beating the $9.3 million of their previous film, The Killer Elite. In third place, One for the Money will post a surprisingly strong $11.75 million, according to Lionsgate, which will get to claim bragging rights over its new division Summit Entertainment, which is predicting $8.25 million for its new release, Man on a Ledge. The two films would most likely have ended up on different weekends if the combined studio had have had longer to rearrange their schedules.
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January 24th, 2012
Yesterday was one of the biggest days during Awards Season as The Oscar nominations were announced in the morning. It was a two horse race for top spot as far as the big winners are concerned. Hugo earned the most nominations with eleven, while The Artist was right behind with ten. However, one could argue The Artist is the bigger winner, as more of its nominations were in the more prestigious categories.
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January 16th, 2012
The Hollywood Foreign Press Association handed out the Golden Globes last night, and after an Awards Season most notable for the lack of surprises, there were not a lot of surprises either. In fact, the biggest storyline of the night was how many different movies earned wins. The Artist led the way with just three, while The Descendents was the only other film to win more than once.
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January 12th, 2012
After previously announcing Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film, the Directors Guild of America announced the nominations for the Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentary category. This is the final major award we track before the Oscars and, at this point, there are definitely favorites for the big night.
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January 5th, 2012
The latest round of major nominations were released today with the WGA nominations. Like much of the rest of the previous announcements, the only surprise was the lack of surprises. Four of the five Original Screenplays earned other nominations in that category or other guild nominations. That number rises to five out of five for Adapted Screenplays. There's little doubt about what films are Oscar contenders at this point. The Documentary films category is a little more contentious, but it usually is.
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January 4th, 2012
The nominees for this year's Producers Guild of America were announced and there were not a lot of surprises. For instance, nine of the ten nominees for Theatrical Motion Pictures also earned Golden Globe Nominations for either Best Drama or Best Musical / Comedy. Four of the five Animated films also did the same. It does make the Awards Season picture a lot clearer going forward, but it makes coming up with something to say much harder.
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December 16th, 2011
The Hollywood Foreign Press Association announced their nominations and the Awards Season picture started to look a whole lot clearer. The Artist led the way with six nominations, while The Descendents and The Help were right behind with five apiece.
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December 13th, 2011
After an extended slump with only a few bright spots over the past couple months, expectations for this weekend were lowered. Unfortunately, the new releases managed to fail to live up to lowered expectations and we had the worst weekend of the year. That can't be right. It's the worst weekend in three years. The overall box office was down 7% from last weekend to just $75 million, while it was down 18% when compared with last year. With only a few weeks left in the year, 2011 is down by 4% to 2010 at $9.57 billion to $9.95 billion. At this point, 2011 has virtually no chance of catching up to 2010. In fact, the box office is so weak, I think it is wise to reduce all predictions by at least 10%. ... Maybe 20%.
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December 11th, 2011
A dismal weekend is predicted all round this weekend, and the total box office is set to record its poorest score in three years, and its worst December weekend in over a decade. With Breaking Dawn, Part 1 continuing its rapid decline, and no hits coming out since, the top of the chart has a decidedly anemic look to it. New Year's Eve will be top with around $13.7 million, a number that is miles behind last year's $56.3 million debut for Valentine's Day. The Sitter will come second with $10 million, which is less of an embarrassment, given its edgier nature, but still well below par.
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December 8th, 2011
We could be in for a bad weekend. Then again, most weekends this year have been bad. Neither New Year's Eve nor The Sitter are winning over many critics, while their box office potential might be even lower than previously expected. The only good news is that this time last year wasn't a great weekend at the box office either and, if one new release can be a pleasant surprise, there's still a chance 2011 can pull out a win. However, there are not many reasons to feel optimistic at this point. On the one hand, there is a chance the extended box office slump is just the new norm and the two back-to-back years of $10 billion were a fluke. On the other hand, maybe there is a pent up demand and as soon as a the big releases come out next week, we will see an explosion at the box office. We will know more after next week.
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December 5th, 2011
Well that was depressing. No one was expecting a huge boom at the box office this weekend, but the overall results were even weaker than expected. In fact, at just $81 million it was the worst weekend of the entire year. Needless to say, the box office was down on a week-to-week basis plummeting 51%. Year-over-year there were also declines, albeit by a softer margin of 6%. Year-to-date, 2011 has pulled in $9.47 billion and it is now 4% behind last year's pace. There's almost no chance to close the gap in just four weeks and the only hope we have is to build momentum over the next four weeks, so that 2012 doesn't continue the year-over-year declines we've been suffering through for most of 2011.
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December 1st, 2011
There are no wide releases opening this week, but that doesn't mean there definitely won't be a change at the top of the box office. The Fangirl Factor for The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 1 will likely eat away at its box office much more than the three family films, and this could leave The Muppets on top over the weekend. This is what happened last year with Tangled. Unfortunately for this year, Tangled started out much better and even if The Muppets holds on better as a percentage of its opening, that likely won't be enough to for the total box office to earn a win in the year-over-year comparison.
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November 28th, 2011
November ended the same way it began, on a losing note. Of the three wide releases, only The Muppets really made an impact at the box office. Hugo was able to top expectations and it was the only film in the top five to do so, but it was also the smallest of the three new releases in the top five. This meant the overall box office was down 26% from last weekend to $164 million. That was behind last year's haul by 9% leaving 2011 further behind last year's pace. At the moment, the gap is close to 4% at $9.35 billion to $9.71 billion.
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November 23rd, 2011
It's the Thanksgiving long weekend and that means families should be flooding theaters. Fortunately, there's plenty of choices, as there are three family films opening tonight: The Muppets, Arthur Chrstmas, and Hugo. Unfortunately, this direct competition will likely mean one or two of them won't be able to match their box office potential and the studio will end up disappointed. Also, it will be nearly impossible for any of them to top The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 1 over the weekend. This weekend last year, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 was the number one film, but Tangled came very, very close to overtaking it as both films came within $2 million of $50 million. I don't think any film will do that well this year, so we will likely see a sharp decline on the year-over-year comparison.
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November 1st, 2011
October was a bit of a write-off. After the last weekend of September, the 2011 box office was about $280 million behind 2010's pace, but after the final weekend in October, that gap increased to $340 million. November will obviously bring in more box office dollars than October did. After all, it has one of the most important long holiday weekends of the year, Thanksgiving. However, the important question is not, "Can this November top last month?" It's, "Can this November top last year?" The biggest hit of last November was Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part I, which earned just shy of $300 million. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 1 should match that figure. Tangled reached $200 million and maybe Happy Feet 2 will match that figure, but that's far less certain. There's a chance The Muppets will match Megamind while Tower Heist should top Due Date. If Jack and Jill and / or Hugo can become surprise $100 million hits and one of the limited releases can become a monster hit, like The King's Speech was able to, then suddenly the box office looks whole lot rosier going into the final month of the year. It's possible, but it's kind of like getting a backdoor full house in Texas Hold'em to beat a straight. I wouldn't bet on it. On the other hand, there doesn't appear to be many Skyline, The Next Three Days or Faster films that bombed at the box office. So while we might not be as strong at the top, there is better depth this year and hopefully that will be enough.
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May 9th, 2008
This week's round of new casting information contains updates for The Avengers, Iron Man 2, Push, and more!
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February 26th, 2008
This week another number of upcoming movies, new stars and directors have been added to our archive!
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February 24th, 2008
This week's round of new casting information contains updates for Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, Hoodwinked 2, Shanghai, and more!
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