June 22nd, 2013
New releases for this week were a little bit stronger than last week earning the top three spots on the DVD sales chart and three of the top four spots on the Blu-ray sales chart. Unfortunately, those three releases were the only new releases to chart. Additionally, while they finished higher than last week's new releases, they didn't sell that much more. The Silver Linings Playbook opened in first place with 379,000 units / $6.36 million on DVD and on Blu-ray with 210,000 units / $4.82 million. This is weaker than I was hoping for. Its opening week Blu-ray share was 36%, which is great for a dramedy. Since then, the film has sold 727,000 units / $12.04 million on DVD and 375,000 units / $8.57 million on Blu-ray. The film made more than $100 million domestically and earned an Oscar, so I was hoping for much more.
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April 30th, 2013
Like I mentioned last week, this week the biggest release on the home market is Silver Linings Playbook, while there are a couple other sizable releases, like Star Trek: The Next Generation: Season Three on Blu-ray. However, you quickly run into filler as you look down the list. Fortunately, Silver Linings Playbook is such a great movie that the Blu-ray Combo Pack would be Pick of the Week material, even during a busy week. It is not the only contender for that title. Even sight unseen, Kyatto-Ninden Teyandee Complete Series Megaset comes a close second, while Star Trek: The Next Generation: Season Three earned that title last week.
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April 28th, 2013
The Guilt Trip came out a week before Christmas, which is a great time of year to release a film. However, while it lived up to modest expectations, it was far from a hit at the box office. This is partially due to the huge amount of films released over the course of one week, but would it have thrived had it had the weekend to itself?
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January 3rd, 2013
All of the final box office numbers we're going to get are in, so let's take a look at the last two weeks at the box office. There were not a lot of changes with the final numbers and no film switched places, so there's not a lot to update. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey remained in top spot in both weeks with Django Unchained in close second this weekend and Jack Reacher a distant second the weekend before. The year ended with $10.76 billion, or about 5.8% higher than last year's total and just a hair above 2009's record total.
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December 27th, 2012
This year, Christmas fell on a really awkward day and compounded with the smart decision for some studios to close the entire week, dealing with the weekend box office numbers is a little trickier this year. We are still stuck with a mixture of final numbers and studio estimates, but since we won't get absolute final numbers till likely January 2nd, we should at least talk about the numbers we have. We won't be able to compare the full weekend to last week or last year, because we don't have the full weekend numbers. But since most of the films failed to match expectations, things look grim.
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December 19th, 2012
For the next week, starting tonight and running till Christmas day, there are eight films opening wide, or at least wide enough to predict they will enter the top ten. Despite that level of competition, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, will very likely remain in top spot. Jack Reacher looks to be the best of the new releases, at least for the weekend. Meanwhile, This is 40 probably won't start as fast, but Judd Apatow's films tend to have really good legs. Monsters, Inc. is debuting in 3D tonight, but is destined to be a midlevel hit and nothing more. The Guilt Trip is also opening tonight, but I'm not sure it has the buzz to even be a midlevel hit. The final new release of the weekend is Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away, but with an opening theater count of just 800, it will struggle just to reach to the top ten. And because Christmas lands on the Tuesday, and we won't have another weekend prediction column till Friday, we need to talk about the three Christmas day releases, Django Unchained, Les Miserables, and Parental Guidance. Last year, Christmas day landed on the Sunday, which makes the comparisons between weekends nearly impossible. I'm going to assume 2012 is going to come out ahead, mainly because they had nothing to compare to The Hobbit, so as long as this year's new releases are as strong as last years holdovers, victory is a safe bet.
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December 1st, 2012
November was a strong month and left 2012 with a very easy path to a new all time record. There was only one major miss the entire month, Rise of the Guardians, while The Silver Linings Playbook was pulled from wide release at the last minute, so it is a little hard to judge its box office performance. On the positive side, Skyfall might top original expectations by $100 million. All this December has to do is maintain pace with last December to ensure 2012 sets the new record. I would like to say that will be easy to do, but I really don't know. Last year, there was only one $200 million hit, Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, plus a few others that reached $100 million, so the bar isn't set too high. This year, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is expected to at least come close to $300 million. Some think it will earn more than $400 million. However, it could also be the last film to make $100 million till February. December is normally a very good month to release a film, but the release schedule is so messed up that it makes it very hard to predict what will happen. There appears to be just ten films opening truly wide this month (I'm getting mixed signals on a few of them). That's a really light schedule for a month and a light schedule tends to help maximize the box office potential for individual films. However, eight of these films open wide within a seven-day period. That's insane. There's no way all of those films will find an audience and there's a chance that due to the competition, none of them will. Let's hope the situation isn't as bad as that, but there are some serious reasons to be concerned for most new releases coming out this month.
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