December 14th, 2009
Plenty of new releases reached the top 30 on this week's rental chart, including the three at the top.
Angels & Demons was numbers one, beating out Four Christmases with roughly 50% more rentals.
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December 12th, 2009
Black Friday sales gave a decidedly retro look to the DVD sales chart for the week ending November 29.
All major retailers were offering deeply discounted prices of catalog titles, including $4 deals at Target for Elf, Sex and the City and Forgetting Sarah Marshall, among others, and Best Buy offering Hellboy 2: The Golden Army, Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor and Forgetting Sarah Marshall at the same price.
Walmart wasn't going to be outdone though, and offered some DVD titles, including Hellboy 2, Mummy 3, I am Legend and Casino Royale in limited quantities at just $2.
The real champion of the bargain basement, however, was The Dark Knight, which was available for $5 at Walmart, and $4 at both Target and Best Buy.
With low, low prices, the unit volumes for the week were astronomical, but overall spending was actually down from 2008 thanks to the price cuts.
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November 23rd, 2009
It's the week before Black Friday, which is widely reported as the busiest shopping day of the year. (It's not. Christmas Eve is the busiest shopping day of the year; however, on Christmas Eve a lot of the purchases are last minute food items.) If a studio wants its product to be part of Black Friday, this is the last Tuesday they can release the DVD or Blu-ray. Because of this, I'm a little surprised the week isn't busier than it is. The biggest release of the week is Angels & Demons, while there are a couple of Christmas releases that are also selling well. However, none of those come close to being the DVD Pick of the Week. Arguably the best of the best is Funny People, which isn't the best movie coming out this week, but it is a good movie and its Blu-ray is absolutely loaded.
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August 31st, 2009
It was a great weekend at the box office as all but one film in the top five films met or exceeded expectations, some by large margins. This helped the box office pull in a very healthy total of $125 million over the weekend, which was just 1.7% lower than last week. More importantly, it was a stunning 28% higher than the same weekend last year. Wow. Granted, this weekend last year was Labor Day weekend, which is a terrible time at the box office, but this is still a fantastic result. Year-to-date, 2009 has pulled in $7.24 billion, which is 7.4% higher than last year's pace.
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August 27th, 2009
The winners of our For the Kids contest were determined and they are...
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August 24th, 2009
Overall the box office was weaker than expected this weekend with only one of four releases meeting expectations, while the holdovers were not able to completely compensate. This led a 10.5% drop-off in ticket sales from last weekend; however, the $127 million total box office take is still 20% higher than the same weekend last year.
2009 stretched its year-to-date lead over 2008 to 6.9%, earning $7.06 billion to $6.60 billion so far.
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August 23rd, 2009
Quentin Tarantino enjoyed the best opening of his career over the weekend, according to Weinstein Co.'s estimate released on Sunday morning.
With $37.6 million, the movie tops his previous best, which is either Sin City (if you count his single scene as a legitimate directing credit) or Kill Bill: Volume 2, depending on your perspective.
Either way, it's an impressive debut for a late Summer movie.
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August 21st, 2009
This week we have two saturation level releases and two releases that don't even qualify as truly wide but could still reach the top ten. Realistically, even with four wide-ish releases, only one of them has a real shot at top spot and that will hurt the overall box office. On the other hand, this week last year was much worse in terms of high powered releases and 2009 should continue its winning ways.
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August 20th, 2009
August 14th, 2009
As summer winds down we have the last kids movie of the summer coming out with Shorts, which is this week's target film. And to go with the film's target audience, we will be giving away four animated DVDs. In order to win, one must simply predict the opening weekend box office of Shorts.
Whoever comes the closest to predicting the film's opening 3-day weekend box office (Friday to Sunday), without going over, will win a copy of X-Men - Volume 1 and Volume 2.
Meanwhile, whoever comes the closest to predicting the film's opening 3-day weekend box office (Friday to Sunday), without going under, will win a copy of Kung Fu Panda - Secrets of the Furious Five on DVD and Alvin and the Chipmunks - The Mystery of the Easter Chipmunk on DVD.
Entries must be received by 10 a.m., Pacific Time on Friday to be eligible, so don't delay!
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August 1st, 2009
July was a mixed month with several of the big hits failing to live up to great expectations, while still being big hits. There were no surprise hits, but no outright bombs either. No outright bombs is what the industry is hoping for August, but that seems less likely. We could see a monster hit opening on the first week, but that potential hit, G.I.Joe, could also be a monster bomb. There is at least one movie opening each week that I'm personally interested in, although for the most part it is not the widest release of the week that piques my interest.
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August 7th, 2008
This week's round of new casting information contains updates for Edge of Darkness, Inglorious Bastards, Rachel Getting Married, and more!
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June 22nd, 2008
This week's round of new movie release information contains release dates for The Accidental Husband, Bruno, The Box and more!
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June 19th, 2008
This week's round of new casting information contains updates for 2012, Public Enemies, Transformers 2, and more!
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June 17th, 2008
The last couple of weeks another number of upcoming movies, new stars and directors have been added to our archive!
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