August 3rd, 2011
During its first full week on the home market, Rango led the weekly DVD sales chart, holding off a few new releases in the process (very few new releases).It sold an additional 621,000 units / $9.93 million during the week for totals of 1.18 million units / $20.43 million after two. That's very close to Gnomeo & Juliet's running tally, and that DVD was released two months ago.
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July 19th, 2011
New releases were dead on arrival on this week's DVD sales chart. None reached the top five, while only three reached the top 30. This left Sucker Punch in top spot, but with only 105,000 units / $1.58 million units for the week giving it totals of 381,000 units / $5.71 million after two.
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July 12th, 2011
While plenty of new releases reached the top of this week's sales chart, none were exactly burning up the chart. Leading the way was Sucker Punch, but with only 275,000 units / $4.13 million during its opening week on the chart. Season of the Witch could claim a share of first place with $4.28 million in opening week sales from 265,000 units sold.
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July 7th, 2011
The Adjustment Bureau led the way on this week's Blu-ray sales chart, but with just a fraction of last week's winning total. It sold 122,000 units and generated $2.87 million in consumer spending, which is very low for the number one film. However, its Blu-ray ratio was 35%, which is good for this type of film. (At its heart it is a romance, with a slice of science fiction thrown in.)
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July 6th, 2011
Several new DVD releases charted this week, and new releases even earned the top three spots on the chart. However, sales were very weak and they only placed that well due to the lack of substantial competition. The number one film on this week's DVD sales chart was Diary of A Wimpy Kid: Rodick Rules with just 255,000 units sold and $5.01 million in opening week consumer spending at retail. To put this into perspective, that's on par with the original film's second week on the home market.
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June 21st, 2011
It's another busy week for DVD / Blu-ray with four first-run releases coming out this week. Five if you include Cedar Rapids, which was had surprisingly brisk ticket sales in limited release. Cedar Rapids is also the only one of the big releases that I would consider for Pick of the Week honors. Despite the number of wide releases on this week's list, I'm going with an unorthodox choice for Pick of the Week, "Weird Al" Yankovic - Alpocalypse, but Louie: Season One on Blu-ray earns an honorable mention.
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June 20th, 2011
Diary of a Wimpy Kid opened in 2010, became a solid midlevel hit and earned good reviews, for a kids movie. Just one year later, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Ruleswas released, but did this short turnaround time result in an inferior film?
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April 4th, 2011
It was mostly a good news start to the month as the top film, Hop, beat expectations with ease and nearly became the fastest opening film of the year. Meanwhile, most of the rest of the top five at least came close to matching expectations. This helped the box office grow 3% from last weekend to $125 million. Unfortunately, this was nearly 30% lower than the same weekend last year. This means 2011 continues to lose ground on 2010 and it is now off last year's pace by just over 20% at $2.34 billion to $2.93 billion. Things need to turn around very soon.
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March 31st, 2011
It's a new month and we are hoping for reasons to celebrate. So far 2011 has not brought a lot of big hits with it. Only once in three months did 2011 top 2010 in the year-over-year comparison, and even then it was due to a misalignment in holidays. Sadly, that won't turn around this weekend, as it is very likely that all three new releases combined won't make as much as Clash of the Titans opened with last year. On the other hand, perhaps Hop and the others will be bigger than expected hits and we can build on that success.
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March 31st, 2011
The winners of our Nothing Wimpy About These Prizes contest were determined and they are...
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March 28th, 2011
Diary of A Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules opened on the high end of expectations while Sucker Punch opened on the low end of expectations, which meant there wasn't a really tight race for top spot at the box office this weekend. The overall box office was healthy with a total haul of $121 million, which was close to 6% higher than last weekend, but it was also close to 6% lower than the same weekend last year. On the one hand, this is arguably the best performance 2011 has had so far, as the only time we've won on the year-over-year comparison was when 2011 has a holiday that didn't line up with 2010. On the other hand, 2011 is still half a billion dollars behind 2010's pace at $2.18 billion to $2.69 billion.
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March 27th, 2011
The last weekend in March have brought us another pair of movies opening in the high teens to low twenties. This time around Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules was the low-twenties movie, picking up a very respectable $24.4 million on debut, which is a shade ahead of the $22 million earned by the first film in the franchise this time last year. Sucker Punch produced a slightly disappointing $19 million opening weekend, which is a drop in the bucket compared to its $75 million budget. It'll need good international numbers and a strong home market performance to recoup costs.
Overall box office will be down about 7% from last year, continuing 2011's losing streak, although that makes this one of the better weekends of the year so far.
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March 24th, 2011
Predicting the winner at the box office this weekend could be tough, as there appears to be no real consensus on which film has the advantage. This is mostly due to uncertainty with one of the films, with just as many analysts predicting Sucker Punch will win with ease as are predicting that film will really struggle. On the other hand, there is a pretty strong consensus with regards to the overall box office when compared to last year and there's almost no chance 2011 will keep pace with 2010. Worse case scenario has Sucker Punch and Diary of A Wimpy Kid: Rodick Rules combined opening with less than How to Train Your Dragon opened with. This means March will end on a low note, which has happened far too often this year.
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March 17th, 2011
There are two saturation level releases coming out next week, and as much as I want Sucker Punch to be a huge hit, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules seems like a safer bet. Also, we have kids shows for prizes, so it makes more sense to go with the latter as the target film in this week's box office prediction contest. In order to win, one must simply predict the opening weekend box office number for Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules.
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 SpongeBob SquarePants: The Great Patty Caper on DVD.
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 Dora the Explorer: Dora's Big Birthday Adventure 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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March 1st, 2011
This is going to suck. February wasn't exactly a banner month at the box office and 2011 is already roughly $400 million behind 2010's pace. To make matters worse, last March broke records starting with the release of Alice in Wonderland. There is no movie coming out this month that will come close to Alice in Wonderland's performance; in fact, the number one film this March will likely not do as well as the second best film from last March. The best case scenario has the month producing three $100 million movies, plus a number of midlevel hits, while still failing to match last year's pace by about $100 million. The worst case scenario has two of the three potential $100 million hits missing that mark, plus the midlevel hits also struggling. In that case, we could end March about $300 million further behind 2010's pace. (Hopefully things will start to turn around in April.)
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