July 9th, 2007
Another slow week with little in the way of top-notch DVD releases. The best of the bunch is Extras - The Complete Second Season, but I'm a little worried about the inside nature of the humor. That said, it is still worth picking up, especially if you are the kind of person into movies enough to check out box office numbers, and I think that includes most people reading this column right now. On a side note, we only have two spotlight reviews this week, both of them for DVDs that were released last week. However, the double-shot of Canada and Independence Day meant they didn't arrive until it was too late for last week's column.
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September 3rd, 2005
This week there were three new releases ranking in the top five on the rental charts led by
The Ring Two with $7.45 million, $6.99 million of that coming from DVD rentals. On a side note, many rental places are phasing out VHS rentals and it won't be long before the industry stop tracking these numbers entirely.
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August 27th, 2005
It's no surprise that
Sin City led the rental market this weekend, but it was a little surprising that it was the top seller as well. During its opening week the film earned $8.61 million in DVD rentals and $480,000 in VHS rentals for a grand total of $9.09 million, which is lower than I would have thought.
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August 15th, 2005
Every week films get a second chance at success from the home market; or, in some cases, a first chance at success. Here is a list of wide releases, limited releases, classics and a few from the growing TV on DVD section. There's been quite a slump for high quality wide releases the DVD front, mainly because there wasn't a single wide release that earned overwhelmingly positive reviews during the first three months of the year. This week the first such film is hitting the home market, but the DVD release is crap, so it's up to the TV on DVD section to bail us out once again. Fortunately there are two amazing sets coming out tomorrow, one was a critically acclaimed but short-lived series and the other is a critically acclaimed and incredible enduring show. The first is Undeclared - The Complete Series -
Buy from Amazon, which is coming out just in time for the release of
The 40 Year-Old Virgin, both of which were created by Judd Apatow. And the second is
The Simpsons - The Complete Sixth Season -
Buy from Amazon, which needs no other explanation. Lastly we have Ryan -
Buy from Amazon, which was released earlier in the month, but should be part of everyone's collection.
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June 12th, 2005
The Longest Yard opened in second place in Australia with $2.5 million. On the other hand, the film could only manage $750,000 on 260 screens in Mexico, not surprising since
Adam Sandler has never been a big draw internationally, especially outside English speaking markets.
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June 5th, 2005
It was a slightly busier weekend as several studios were brave enough, or foolhardy enough to try and sandwich their film between the worldwide release of
Revenge of the Sith and
Batman Begins, which debuts in just 10 days. With
War of the Worlds' worldwide release just two weeks after that, there's very little room for smaller films to survive.
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May 22nd, 2005
It was another slow weekend for international details as few studios were brave enough, or foolish enough to try and squeeze in a release between
Kingdom of Heaven and
Revenge of the Sith. It was hard to find many films that earned more than $1 million over the weekend and most of the activity came from smaller releases in midlevel markets. Next weekend there could be even fewer details as
Revenge of the Sith should dominate every market, but after that the summer blockbuster season should be in full swing and things should pick up.
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May 16th, 2005
The summer got off to a really, really slow start international this week and while
Kingdom of Heaven didn't wasn't quite the blockbuster most people were looking for, it did cannibalized what little box office there was. There were a few local films to make noise, including Negotiator: Bayside Shakedown 3, which easily topped the Japanese market with $5,275,685 on just 280 for a huge $18,842 per screen average.
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May 8th, 2005
Golden Week helped
Shall We Dance? climb 19% to $2,250,195 for the weekend and $7,270,348 during its run. The film now has $90.3 million internationally and could break $100 million if it continues to show strong legs in Japan.
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May 1st, 2005
It was a good news, bad news kind of weekend for
Constantine. The film remained in top spot in Japan with $2,330,027 on 349 screens for a $9,011,671 running tally in the market. Bad news, it dropped 37% during its second weekend in the market, which is really steep for Japan. Overall the film brought in $3 million on 1,200 screens in 40 markets for a international box office of $136.4 million.
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April 10th, 2005
It was a slow week at the international box office, the slowest of the year, and without much activity at the box office hit there were little in the way of details published by the studios. Therefore this week's column is much shorter than usual. Leading the best of the rest was
Be Cool with an estimated $5 million for a disappointing $12.7 million international tally. Its best single market was the U.K. where the film finished second with $2.2 million on 336 screens after an exclusive engagement last weekend. The film also did well in the Netherlands with $190,000 on 43 screens but really struggles in Germany opening in fifth place with just $930,000 on 321 screens, a result mirrored in Austria, (fifth place, $165,948.)
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April 3rd, 2005
Million Dollar Baby performed brilliantly this week earning $8.8 million for an international total of $60 million, placing fourth on the international box office charts. In France the film dominated the marketplace with $4.94 million on 450 screens and in Germany the film earned $760,000 in semi-limited release (120 screens) for the best per screen average in the market. On the other hand, the film flopped in Slovakia where it missed the top ten in its debut. On the holdover front, the multi-
Oscar winning front saw its weekend haul climb by 20% in Spain to $980,000 and it's still doing well in Australia, Italy and South Korea.
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March 27th, 2005
Million Dollar Baby has again slipped off the radar screen, but we do know it hit $52 million internationally, which means it made $9 million during the week. The film didn't earn $1 million in any single market, but is still doing strong in South Korea, ($970,000), Spain, ($840,000), Italy, ($600,000) and Australia, ($350,000.) Best estimate has the film earning just shy of $5 million of that over the weekend and taking sixth place on the international box office charts.
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February 14th, 2005
Valentine's Day brought a lot of love to both Will Smith and Sony, as records were set. This led to a massive 16.6% increase from last weekend, however, the box office was down 3.6% from last year. But the latter comparison isn't completely accurate since this time last year was the President's Day Long Weekend. Year to date 2005 is up on 2004 by 9%, but before the industry starts to celebrate, 2004 got off to a very slow start before taking off mid-way through the month, so the race is far from over.
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February 11th, 2005
It's Valentine's Day weekend, sort of. Valentine's Day is actually on Monday, but I don't think that's going to stop a lot of people from seeing a date movie this weekend. With that extra boost we should have a first mega-hit of the year as romantic comedies should reign supreme.
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February 7th, 2005
With two new releases going up against the media juggernaut that is the Super Bowl, everyone was expecting at least one movie to flop hard, but that didn't happen. Granted, the weekend box office was down 16.8% from last weekend, but that wasn't as steep a drop as expected.
Comparisons to last year are a less accurate as Super Bowl happened a weekend earlier.
Compared the last year this weekend was down 8.3%, but compared to last Super Bowl weekend, it was up 8.0%
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February 4th, 2005
Super Bowl weekend is usually a horror story for theaters as most people stay at home to watch the game, or at least soak in the hype surrounding the game.
The big game is such a threat to the box office that the Super Bowl Weekend is historically the third worst weekend of the year, (the Post Labor Day and Post Thanksgiving weekends being numbers one and two respectively).
This year, two films are being released with two different strategies for success.
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February 3rd, 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, Dear Wendy -
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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February 1st, 2005
Just one look at February and it feels like it's a worse month than January was. Maybe it's the fact that January was stronger than expected so February's releases look weaker by comparison. Or maybe it's the lack of a massive hit like we had last year. Regardless of the reason, there's little to be enthusiastic about this month.
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January 27th, 2005
Hide & Seek makes the biggest debut this weekend, opening in an impressive 3,005 theaters.
Whether that's enough to secure top spot depends largely on the performance of The Aviator.
The Oscar front-runner expands into 2,503 theaters, and should get a nice bounce from its nominations earlier this week.
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January 27th, 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 a few updates, including this week's winner, The Wedding Date - 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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December 2nd, 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 this week's winner
Ocean's Twelve -
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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