April 18th, 2011
This year's big Oscar winner, The King's Speech, is hitting the home market this week. It leads the way in terms of quality and is likely to be the best-selling new release. It's certainly the Pick of the Week, with neither the DVD nor the Blu-ray being a substantially better deal than the other. The only other real contender is the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part I Blu-ray / DVD Combo Pack, but that came out on Friday.
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February 1st, 2011
There's was only one film able to top $10,000 on the per theater chart and that film was Kaboom, which made $13,714 in one theater.
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January 25th, 2011
The Oscar nominations were announced this morning, thus ending months of speculation. Along with a (very) few surprises, the list of nominees is mostly a case of Deja Vu. Leading the way, as it has so often this year, was The King's Speech, with 12 nominations, including six in seven of the most prestigious categories (Best Picture, Director, Screenplay, and the four acting categories). But it was far from the only multi-nominated film on the list.
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January 25th, 2011
There's a bit of a controversy on the per theater chart with The Housemaid and Barney's Version in position to claim top spot. The latter made $143,000 in 16 theaters for an average of $8,938, in the United States. Adding it what it made in Canada, and it earned almost $500,000 in 77 theaters for an average of $6,217. That was a great weekend, but only third best on the chart. The winner was The Housemaid with an average of $8,335 in two theaters. This suggests it will be able to find more theaters willing to play it, but it is unlikely that it will expand significantly.
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January 23rd, 2011
A decent $20.3 million estimated opening for No Strings Attached and some surprisingly good holds in the top four wasn't enough to halt 2011's early box office slump.
Overall, the weekend's box office take looks like it will be about $35 million below last year's total, once more uncannily close to the haul of Avatar in the equivalent period.
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January 21st, 2011
There are a large number of limited releases this week, including a few that are opening in a large number of theaters. One might even sneak its way into the top ten, as The Way Back is opening in more than 600 theaters.
It is also possible that we could have an Oscar winner on this week's list, as Incendies is on the short list of nine films up for Best Foreign Language Film.
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January 1st, 2011
Well, 2010 is over and while it started amazingly, it ended on a real down note. I'm not saying December was a disaster. ... Actually I am. There were only ten wide releases, and of those, eight missed expectations, some by very wide margins. Despite having a $200 million lead going into the month, 2010 still managed to lose out to 2009. The bad news continues in 2011, as Avatar made $300 million during January alone. With no strong holdovers to help power the box office, and only one or two potential solid hits among the new releases, 2011 will likely get off to a very weak start.
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December 31st, 2010
If you are interested in winning Oscars, this is the last chance for a theatrical release to qualify for the awards this year. So it comes as no surprise that there are a handful of Oscar hopefuls coming out this weekend. One of them, Blue Valentine, has already earned some success during Awards Season and it looks like that will translate into at least some success theatrically.
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