April 8th, 2006
King Kong was the best of
this week's batch as it easily took top spot on the rental charts with $10.31 million in DVD rentals. This is higher than expected as I had assumed the vast majority of people who were interested in seeing it would buy it, but instead the buyers lead the renters by only a 2 - 1 margin.
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April 2nd, 2006
Two openings in two major markets helped
Hostel climb into sixth place with $4.03 million on 1120 screens in 27 markets for a running tally of $15.42 million. Its best opening was in the U.K. where it debuted in second place with $2.12 million on 304 screens while it struggled in Spain with just $1.01 million on 250. The film has already earned enough to show a profit even after taking into account P&A budget, exhibitor's share, etc. and should be able to double its current international total before its run is over.
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March 27th, 2006
Pretty good list this week with several contenders for the DVD Pick of the Week. The obvious one is
King Kong 2-Disc Special Edition, but I think there will be a super-special edition coming out in November, so you might want to hold off. The Masters of Horror -
package deal, Robot Chicken - Volume 1 -
Buy from Amazon, and others were also in contention, but in the end I went with Degrassi The Next Generation -
Season 3.
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December 18th, 2005
Just Like Heaven dipped at the box office falling out of the top five with $4.53 million on 1609 screens in 30 markets over the weekend for an early total of $18.04 million internationally. Its best opening was in Belgium where it debuted in second place with $252,000 on 40 screens over the weekend and $290,000 in total. It also had debuts in Holland with $139,000 on 57 screens over the weekend and $167,000 overall, and in Greece with $116,000 on 24 and Norway with $113,000 on 26. Holdovers include Germany where the film dropped 24% to $890,000 on 273 screens for a total of $2.41 million so far, while in Spain the film fell 39% to 718,000 on 200 screens for a two-week total of $3.09 million.
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December 11th, 2005
Flightplan fell out of the top five with $5.13 million on 2,430 screens in 38 markets for a total of $94.65 million on the international scene.
It did fall from second to sixth on this week's charts, but it should still reach $100 million by this time next week. Its best market of the weekend was the U.K. where it remained in second place with $2.14 million on 416 screens for a two-week total of $6.59 million.
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December 4th, 2005
Here's this week's round-up of international box office numbers.
In Her Shoes fell out of the top five this week with $3.95 million on 2,050 screens in 23 markets for a $30.60 million international box office.
The film held up amazingly well in Spain, dropping just 8% to $810,000 on 290 screens, but it wasn't as fortunate in France where it lost more than half its opening, earning $400,000 on 293 screens, falling out of the top ten in the process.
It suffered a similar fate during its third weekend in the U.K. where it was down 55% to $736,000 on 268 screens, but the film already has $7.06 million there, which is better than its domestic run if you take into account the relative sizes of the two markets.
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September 25th, 2005
Marrying the Mafia 2 again led its native market of
South Korean with $4.81 million over the weekend and $12.78 million during its two-week run. And like
last week, this was enough for the film to secure a place in the top five overall just beating out
Pride and Prejudice.
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September 18th, 2005
Marrying the Mafia 2 is the latest local film to lead the South Korean box office as it opened with $5.555 million on 449 screens, $7.515 million including Thursday.
Not only was that easily enough for first place in its home market, but also put the film in third place on the overall international box office charts.
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September 11th, 2005
The 40-Year Old Virgin topped the U.K. marked with an impressive $3.26 million on 394 screens in the U.K., but this is probably not indicative of its potential in other international markets. The film should do well in the U.K., Australia, and New Zealand, but will likely struggle in non-English speaking markets. (Germany may be an exception.)
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September 6th, 2005
Most films were able to beat expectations over the weekend and that meant that Summer 2005 was able to end on a high note, sort of. The 3-day weekend was down by 3.9% from last weekend, which is no surprise given the nature of the Labor Day long weekend, but it was up 5.4% from last year. Over the four day weekend 2005 was still higher, but by just 1.0% meaning ticket sales were down from last year. Overall Summer 2005 was a massive disappointment bringing in just $3.53 billion, down 9% from last year and the lowest level since 2001's $3.34 billion. While there are a lot of possible reasons being floated around for the slump, the most likely reason is the huge number of really bad movies, several of which were released in the past few weeks.
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September 5th, 2005
The Labor Day long-weekend is historically the slowest long-weekend of the year when it comes to box office numbers. However, it's still a long-weekend and that means there will be a one day delay in the weekend warp-up and the per theatre charts. In the meantime here are the studio estimates for the top five, plus the two other new releases.
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September 4th, 2005
War of the Worlds opened in its last international market over the weekend making $3.0 million on 583 screens in China. That's about 10% more money that
Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith earned, but
War of the Worlds needed nearly double the number of screens. Overall the film added $4.5 million to its $345 million international total, easily the second best of the year so far.
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September 2nd, 2005
For the third weekend in a row we have a contender for worst movie of the year contest.
In fact, this weekend there are two such movies.
(And next weekend it looks like we'll have another.)
Even so, there should be enough moviegoers interested in the other two releases that the weekend could show significant growth, maybe not compared to last weekend, but certainly compared to last year.
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September 1st, 2005
During the past week promotional websites for several movies were launched and some older ones added additional content. Here the list of this week's releases, a couple of new sites and few updates, including this week's winner,
Serenity -
Official Site.
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September 1st, 2005
September is the prime dumping ground for movie studios, where the films that just didn't work get ditched to die an undignified death. So why are there no less than five movies opening wide that look like they should be reasonably good? Either the studios are trying to counteract the poor reputation September has, or I have really bad taste in movies.
This month is very difficult to predict for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the fluidity of the release schedule with several films on the bubble for wide releases.
In fact, there are almost as many films that may or may not open wide in September than there are films with a solid release schedule.
Predicting what a film will earn without knowing if it will open wide is tricky because you have to figure out how much it would earn if it opens wide, how much it will earn if it goes the limited route, and what are the odds it will open wide versus a limited release.
This resulting weighted average is lower than a similar prediction for a movie that is known to be opening wide, which makes the month look even worse that it otherwise would.
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August 25th, 2005
During the past week promotional websites for several movies were launched and some older ones added additional content. Here the list of this week's releases, a couple of new sites and few updates, including this week's winner,
Corpse Bride -
Official Site.
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August 11th, 2005
During the past week promotional websites for several movies were launched and some older ones added additional content. Here the list of this week's releases, a couple of new sites and few updates, including this week's winner,
The 40-Year-Old Virgin -
Official Site.
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July 29th, 2004
During the past week promotional websites for several movies were launched and some older ones added additional content. Here the list of this week's releases, a couple of new sites and few updates including the winner for the week,
The Manchurian Candidate -
Official Site. If you know of any new movie websites not on this list feel free to e-mail me with the details.
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April 8th, 2004
During the past week promotional websites for several movies were launched and some older ones added additional content. This week saw a deceptively poor crop of site as there were a lot of movie site launched / updated / released, more than 30 in fact. However, very few of them even came close to the being considered for this week's award. It's so bad I've spent the last 3 hours looking for a gem of movie site that I may have missed in previous weeks. In the end it was
Kill Bill: Volume 2 -
Official Site that won the award with only one or two other that were even briefly considered. If you know of any new movie websites not on this list feel free to e-mail me with the details.
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March 5th, 2004
This week's round of new movie release information includes the announcement of a big screen
adaptation of The Chronicles of Narnia:
The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, and new dates for Surviving Christmas and
The Polar Express
among many, many others.
If you hear of a change in date, please email us at releases@the-numbers.com.
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December 5th, 2003
This week sees new release dates announced for Taking Lives, Godsend, Laws of Attraction, The Notebook, A Sound of Thunder, Beyond the Sea and The Aviator.
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