November 25th, 2014
It is the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, which means there are only a few days before Black Friday, which is one of the busiest shopping days of the season. At first glance, this might seem like a great day to release a DVD or Blu-ray; however, the massive sales will instead overshadow anything that comes out this week. This explains why there are so few interesting releases. The biggest release of the week is The Expendables 3 on DVD or Blu-ray Combo Pack, but it might be so bad it killed the franchise. The best release is Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Turkey Day Collection (XXXI), which is the Pick of the Week. We also have a Puck of the Week for Rhymes for Young Ghouls on DVD, a Canadian film that deserves a wider audience.
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December 16th, 2013
It's a good news / bad news weekend at the box office. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug earned first place with ease earning the fourth biggest December opening weekend of all time. On the other hand, it was a little weaker than expected opening on the low end of predictions. Tyler Perry's A Madea Christmas also underperformed by a significant degree, which didn't help the overall box office. The overall box office rose 59% to $147 million, which seems like a huge amount, till you realize last weekend was the weekend after Thanksgiving, which is historically one of the worst weekends of the year. If there wasn't a massive jump at the box office, it would have been fatal for the month. This was also higher than the same weekend last year, albeit by a smaller margin of 6%. Year-to-date, 2013 is still ahead of 2012, but by less than 0.5% at $9.90 million to $9.85 million.
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December 12th, 2013
There are four noteworthy releases this week, although a couple of them are opening in limited release and expanding wide over the next couple of weeks. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug expected to be the biggest hit of the month, but not as big as An Unexpected Journey. Meanwhile Tyler Perry's A Madea Christmas should be solid as counter-programming and better legs than most Tyler Perry. This weekend last year, An Unexpected Journey opened with $84.62 million. Most expect The Desolation of Smaug to miss that figure, perhaps by more than $10 million. However, the second best film last year was Rise of the Guardians, which only made $7.14 million. 2013 likely won't be as strong at the top, but it will certainly have better depth.
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December 6th, 2013
Next week there are two wide releases, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug and Tyler Perry's A Madea Christmas. The Desolation of Smaug is clearly going to be the winner and it is the only real choice for the target film for this week's box office prediction contest. In order to win, one must simply predict the opening weekend box office number for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.
On the other hand, there's no clear prize for this week's winner. We have something a little different this time around. Whoever comes the closest to predicting the film's opening 3-day weekend box office (Friday to Sunday), regardless if they go over or not, will win a random Blu-ray from the following list...
Just look at the app...
There are 21 possibly Blu-rays on that list, and the winner won't know which one they won till it arrives. I think this is kind of fun.
Entries must be received by 10 a.m., Pacific Time on Friday to be eligible, so don't delay!
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December 1st, 2013
We had some good news and some bad news in November. The bad news is the overall weakness at the box office continued and 2013 lost its lead over 2012. Strong runs by The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and Frozen did help it bounce back in the end, but 2013 is still going to have a tough time topping 2012. Looking forward to December, we find about a dozen wide releases, sort of. There are several films that are opening in limited release that are expected to expand wide by the end of the month, but I'm not sure that will be the case for all of them. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug should be the easy winner this month and if it is a little lucky, it might even top its predecessor at the box office. There is a huge amount of hype surrounding Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues and it could double the first film's box office numbers. On the other hand, those two films might be the only two December wide releases to reach $100 million. There are a few that have the potential to get to the century mark, if they are big players during Awards Season. Obviously some of the films coming out this month will win awards, but there's already a lot of competition in theaters before the month begins. There were three $100 million movies last December, led by The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, so while it could be close, it looks like December will lose in the year-over-year comparison. This is really bad news, as 2013 can't afford to go out on a losing streak if it wants to top 2012.
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