February 5th, 2020
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Our annual Oscar Prediction contest is underway so 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 are continuing our shortened schedule with Best Leading Actress. In this category, there is an absolute favorite and I will be so pissed if she doesn’t finally win.
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January 30th, 2020
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The big winter releases are starting to come out, but the overall quantity of releases is still rather soft. Terminator: Dark Fate is the biggest release of the week, but it isn’t the best. As for the best, it was a close two-way race between Fail Safe and Parasite, with the latter winning by the tiniest of margins.
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January 13th, 2020
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The Oscar nominations were announced on Monday, and the results were... well, there were some puzzling results. Joker led the way with eleven nominations. ... A film with 69% positive reviews earned the most nominations. It’s not the worst-reviewed movie to earn a Best Picture Nomination—after all, Bohemian Rhapsody was nominated just last year. However, this film is arguably the worst-reviewed movie to ever earn the most nominations in a single year.
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January 13th, 2020
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It’s a really bad week on the home market. Granted, there are three wide releases on this week’s list, which is better than most weeks. However, Maleficent: Mistress of Evil is the biggest and the best of these three releases. That’s not a good sign. There are not even a lot of smaller releases to make up for the weakness at the top.
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December 12th, 2019
The Screen Actors Guild announced their nominations this week and we are starting to see some patterns with similar names appearing over and over again. This time Bombshell led the way, earning four nominations, but four other films earned two or more nominations.
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December 11th, 2019
The Golden Globes nominations are the second major Awards Season set to come out. It is still very early in the year and the predictive value of the Golden Globes is a little suspect, but there are still some things to learn here. (This is especially true on the TV end, as there’s talk about how strange the nominations are this year.) Marriage Story led the way with six nominations, just ahead of The Irishman and Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood, both of which picked up five nods.
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November 12th, 2019
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It was a weekend to forget with the four new releases earning significantly less than The Grinch opened with last year. Still, the four new releases took the to four spots, meaning there were no powerful holdovers to make up the difference. Midway was the best of the bunch, while Playing with Fire was the biggest positive surprise. Unfortunately, Doctor Sleep missed expectations by a larger margin than those two films beat our predictions, so the good news was drowned out by the bad. Overall, the box office was 5.9% higher than last weekend at $121 million. This is not a reason to celebrate, as last weekend was arguably Halloween weekend, which is one of the worst weekends of the year. More importantly, the weekend was behind the same weekend last year by 28%. 2019 is now behind 2018’s pace by 5.9% or $580 million at $9.32 billion to $9.90 billion. However, and this is important, as bad as 2019 has been doing, we are still ahead of 2017’s pace, both in terms of raw dollars and ticket sales, so there’s no need to panic. While we would prefer to set records every year, being the second best year at the box office is still worth celebrating.
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November 5th, 2019
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It was a bad weekend at the box office, with Terminator: Dark Fate missing expectations by a significant degree. Harriet was able to beat expectations, but it wasn’t enough to truly compensate. Furthermore, Arctic Dogs and Motherless Brooklyn were practically non-factors at the box office. The box office did grow 9.5% from last weekend reaching $115 million. More importantly, this was 21% lower than this weekend last year. 2019’s deficit grew to 5.6% or $540 million and is now behind 2018’s pace by $9.15 billion to $9.70 billion. It is important to point out that while 2019 is being crushed by 2018, it is still on pace to be the second largest box office of all time, while its ticket sales are better than 2017’s pace, so as disappointing as the year as been so far, there are still reasons to celebrate.
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November 3rd, 2019
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As expected, Terminator: Dark Fate is going to open in first place over the weekend. Unfortunately, it is failing to match even the low end of expectations with an estimate of $29 million during its opening weekend. Its reviews and its B plus from CinemaScore are not great, but they are better than this opening. The film is doing much better internationally with an estimated $$72.9 million debut, including an estimated $30 million opening in China. However, that’s not enough. The film needs close to $500 million worldwide to break even and since the only major market left to debut in is Japan, it’s not going to get there.
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November 2nd, 2019
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Terminator: Dark Fate opened in first place on Friday, but it only made $10.6 million, well below expectations. Its reviews and its B plus from CinemaScore are good, but not great, meaning it won’t have the legs needed to overcome this slow start. Look for about $28 million domestically this weekend. Early reports have it performing better internationally with a likely $30 million debut in China, but again, this is below expectations and not enough given the film’s $185 million production budget.
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November 1st, 2019
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Terminator: Dark Fate managed $2.35 million from its previews on Thursday. Normally, this wouldn’t be enough to kick-start a strong weekend, but yesterday was Halloween, which is far from a normal day at the box office. Furthermore, its reviews are better than most of the rest of the Terminator franchise, and good enough to have decent legs. It is still too early to tell where it will finish its opening weekend. Halloween is just too big a wildcard to make an accurate guess at this point. We will know more this time tomorrow when the Friday estimates come out.
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November 1st, 2019
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Joker single-handedly saved October. Had the film merely matched expectations, then the month would had suffered a major loss in the year-over-year competition. We sill lost a little ground, but not so much that we will look to October as the reason 2019 missed last year’s pace. As for November, we have some potential monster hits with Frozen II leading the way. If that film doesn’t earn at least $1 billion worldwide, I will be shocked. Additionally, every week has at least one movie coming out that has a somewhat realistic shot at $100 million, although not all of them will get there. Unfortunately, last November was much better, with five films that topped $100 million, including three that earned more than $200 million. I think 2019 will be better at the top, but it just won’t have the depth to keep pace with last year.
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October 31st, 2019
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It’s the first weekend of November, which is the unofficial start of both the Christmas blockbuster season and of Awards Season. There are four films hoping to take advantage of time of year to create some box office success. Of these, only Terminator: Dark Fate is expected to be a true box office hit. It will likely earn more during its opening weekend than any of the rest of the new releases earn in total. I think Harriet will do okay and could even crack $10 million during the weekend. On the other hand, Arctic Dogs still has no reviews and that’s a really bad sign. Finally there’s Motherless Brooklyn, which is opening in well under 2,000 theaters. This weekend last year, Bohemian Rhapsody opened with more than $50 million and even the high end predictions don’t have Terminator: Dark Fate earning that much. It’s going to be another bad week for 2019 in the year-over-year competition.
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July 24th, 2019
Real-life drama starring Cynthia Erivo opens November 1 ... Full Movie Details.
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