March 29th, 2016
There are a huge number of new releases on Amazon this week. Unfortunately, they go from Oscar contenders to stuff that would be filler on a slow week really, really quickly, so I will be skipping over most of them. Almost half of the releases on this week's list are contenders for Pick of the Week, so it is really hard to narrow that list. In the end, I couldn't chose between any of the movies / TV shows, so I went BabyMetal Metal Resistance, which comes out on CD on Friday.
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March 15th, 2016
There are several top-notch releases coming out this week, including a trio of Awards Season contenders: The Big Short, Brooklyn, and Carol. All three are Pick of the Week contenders. However, the winner of that title is Game of Thrones: Season Five on Blu-ray.
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February 28th, 2016
Voting in our annual Predict the Academy Awards contest is now closed, and we can reveal the final vote totals in each category, along with the rough probability for which film will win each award. This is a year where readers are very confident about the outcomes in many of the categories. In fact, there isn’t a single major category where less than 50% of readers picked the same winner, and there are five Oscars where 90% or more of readers agreed on the outcome, including a massive 97% of the vote for Inside Out for Best Animated Feature. That makes The Revenant a rather more uncertain bet, with 70% of readers favoring it for Best Picture. That’s actually theoretically the closest call among all the major prizes…
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February 28th, 2016
This is shaping up to be a triumphant weekend for 20th Century Fox. The studio will take three out of the top five spots at the box office this weekend, with Deadpool claiming a third straight win with $31.5 million, taking it to a huge (for the time of year) $285.6 million by close of business on Sunday. The studio’s Kung Fu Panda 3 will be down just 28% to $9 million in third place, for $128.5 million to date, and their new release Eddie the Eagle will land in fifth with a slightly disappointing, but not horrible, $6.3 million. Oh, and The Revenant is still in the top ten in its tenth weekend in release, and is the hot favorite to win Best Picture at the Oscars this evening (more on that in a moment).
All of which is a roundabout way of saying that Gods of Egypt had a horrible opening weekend…
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February 28th, 2016
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It’s Oscar day and, if all goes to plan, I will be live-blogging the ceremony tonight. Here is the list of nominees marked according to predictions from our readers, and my personal wishes. Nominees in Bold are the ones predicted to win by our readers (we’ll have a full rundown of the predictions at noon, after the contest ends). If I am predicting a different film, those are in Italics. Meanwhile, the nominees I want to win, but don’t think will win, are Underlined. There are a few categories where the film I really think deserves the award was not even nominated, plus a few I don’t have a real opinion on.
If you haven’t done so already, it’s not too late to enter our Oscar competition, and win all Best Picture nominees on Blu-ray or DVD.
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February 24th, 2016
With our annual Oscar Prediction contest underway, 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. This year, Best Supporting Actress is a two-horse race, making it one of the more competitive categories of the ones we are going to look at.
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February 15th, 2016
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The BAFTA awards were handed out over the weekend. There were two main winners, The Revenant, which won most of its five awards in the high-prestige categories, and Mad Max: Fury Road, which earn all four of its awards in technical categories. It appears the Oscars will be very similar in that breakdown.
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February 10th, 2016
The Revenant returned to first place with $24.0 million in 67 markets over the weekend for totals of $176.4 million internationally and $325.9 million worldwide. By this time next week, the film will very likely be above $200 million internationally, while $400 million worldwide is within reach.
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January 15th, 2016
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The Oscar nominations were announced at 5:30 am Pacific time. Nothing is good that early in the morning. Worse still, this was a terrible year for snubs, especially when it comes to diversity of the nominees. The voters for the Oscars are 94% white and 77% male... but that's still more diverse than the list of nominees. The Revenant led the way with 12 nominations and it is expected to win a few of those, while it is a serious contender in most of the categories it was nominated in.
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January 13th, 2016
Last weekend, Star Wars: The Force Awakens was the only Hollywood film in the top five on the International Chart. This week, there were four Hollywood titles in the top five, again led by The Force Awakens. The film earned $104.3 million over the weekend for a total of $921.4 million internationally and $1.734 billion worldwide. It is now the biggest release of 2015 worldwide, but it is fourth on the yearly international chart. This past weekend, the film opened in first place in China with $53.17 million, but that was only over two days. This includes a record Saturday opening of $32.16 million. Meanwhile, the film has climbed into first place on the all-time chart in the U.K. with $162.03 million, putting it ahead of Skyfall.
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January 12th, 2016
Star Wars: The Force Awakens earned first place on the weekend chart for the fourth time and likely the last time. It was a close race, as The Revenant beat expectations; meanwhile, The Forest was very solid as counter-programming. The overall box office was $159 million, which is 28% less than last weekend, but 26% more than the same weekend last year. After just two weeks, 2016 is 19% / $70 million above 2015's pace. Granted, it is way too early to make any long terms predictions and next weekend will be brutal for 2016 in the year-over-year comparison, but every little bit now will help at the end of the year.
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January 11th, 2016
The Golden Globes were handed out on Sunday evening. There were a few minor surprises and some infuriating results. On the other hand, no one film truly dominated, with The Revenant leading the way with just three wins. Only two other movies earned more than one win, The Martian and Steve Jobs.
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January 9th, 2016
The BAFTA nominations were announced and you can read them on their site... in alphabetical order. Alphabetical order is very useful in most circumstances, but not here. On the other hand, the nominees within each category are not presented in alphabetical order. ... Are the BAFTAs trolling us? As for the actual nominees, the big winners here are Bridge of Spies and Carol, both of which earned nine nominations. For Carol, this is just another impressive score, but this was a pleasant surprise for Bridge of Spies.
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January 7th, 2016
The big news this week was Star Wars: The Force Awakens being officially crowned the All-Time Domestic Box Office champion. It should follow-up that news with yet another first place finish on the weekend box office. There are two films trying to take its crown: The Forest and The Revenant. The Revenant is a very likely Oscar winner and has performed phenomenally well in limited release, so it has a real shot at box office success this weekend. On the other hand, The Forest is a low-budget horror film that is just hoping to land in the top five. This weekend last year was led by Taken 3 with just under $40 million over the weekend, while Selma earned second place with $11 million. The Force Awakens might make more than those two films combined, but even if it doesn't, the one-two punch of The Force Awakens plus The Revenant will give 2016 an easy win in the year-over-year comparison.
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January 4th, 2016
As expected, Star Wars: The Force Awakens dominated the weekend box office earning $90.24 million, breaking several records along the way. However, it did fall 40% over the weekend, which is a lot for this time of year. It appears The Force Awakens is acting more like a typical blockbuster hit and less like the typically leggy December release. That said, I don't think Disney is disappointed with the results so far. On the other hand, The Hateful Eight got off to a disappointing start earning third place with just a fraction of Django Unchained's opening weekend. The overall box office was down from last week, but was still an incredible $219 million. This was 26% lower than last week, but 41% higher than the same weekend last year. Year-to-date is a little less useful, as 2016 is only 3 days old, but it is 27% higher than 2015 was after the first weekend. This is even more impressive, as 2015 had an extra day before the weekend.
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January 3rd, 2016
This weekend sees the first signs of a slow-down at the box office for The Force Awakens, which will be down 41% from last weekend, according to Disney’s Sunday morning estimate. That’s the worst comparative performance in the top ten, and much weaker than Avatar’s 9% decline the same weekend in 2010. Such statistics are fairly academic when you already have $700 million in the bank domestically, though, and Star Wars’ momentum coming out of the holidays is such that it will register the biggest ever New Year’s weekend, and the biggest-ever 3rd weekend, overtaking Avatar’s $68.5 million. With $770.5 million overseas so far, its global total is now over $1.5 billion, putting it in the top six all time, and guaranteeing it will end in the top three, with only Titanic and Avatar left to shoot for.
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January 2nd, 2016
It took just 15 days for Star Wars: The Force Awakens to overtake Jurassic World’s final domestic box office. On Friday, the film earned an easy first place with $34.46 million to push its running tally to $686.43 million. Not only is this the best domestic box office for a film released in 2015, it is more than enough to overtake Titanic and push it into second place All-Time. As for the film’s weekend projection, we are looking at a $95 million weekend, plus or minus $5 million. It is possible the film could crack $100 million over the weekend, but very unlikely. That said, it has already broken a couple of major records—Fastest to $650 million and Biggest Domestic Hit of 2015—and will likely break a few more over the weekend (Fastest to $700 million, Biggest third weekend, and Biggest January weekend).
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December 31st, 2015
There are two questions that are being asked about this weekend. Firstly, will Star Wars: The Force Awakens become the first film to earn $100 million three weekends in a row? Secondly, will The Hateful Eight live up to Django Unchained? I'm going to say no to both, but the former is much more likely than the latter. The rest of the top five should look the same as last time, with Daddy's Home being the best of the holdovers. The Force Awakens should earn more than the top five did last year, giving 2016 a fast start on the year-over-year comparison.
One last note, there are only two limited releases this week, including Anomalisa, which we previously talked about. The only other limited release is Devil and Angel, which has no reviews, so there's not much to talk about. Because of this, there will be no Limited Release Report this week.
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December 29th, 2015
The Revenant had the best theater average of the week and the second best opening theater average of the year with $474,560 in four theaters for an average of $118,640. The only film to open in 2015 with a better theater average was Steve Jobs with an average of $130,381. It struggled during its wide expansion. Hopefully that won't happen here. The Hateful Eight was next with an average of $46,107 in 100 theaters. The overall number one film, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, was next with an average of $36,092. This would have been the fourth best opening weekend average for a wide release all year. 45 Years opened with an average of $21,925 in three theaters over the weekend and an average of $30,119 over its five-day opening. Daddy's Home was the second wide release in the $10,000 club with an average of $11,844. Mr. Six just missed the $10,000 club over the weekend with an average of $9,562 in 30 theaters; however, it earned an average of $12,500 over its four-day opening.
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December 28th, 2015
Star Wars: The Force Awakens easily won the weekend race, but not by as much as anticipated. On the other hand, Daddy's Home was a surprise hit and should cruise to $100 million. None of the rest of the new releases really bombed and most will end their runs as midlevel hits. Overall, the box office fell just 5.1% from last weekend to $295 million, which is the second biggest combined weekend of all time. It was also 41% bigger than the same weekend last year and 2015's year-over-year lead grew to 7.0%. It looks like the 2015 box office will reach $11 billion when all is said and done, but we won't know for sure till we get the absolute final numbers.
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December 27th, 2015
The Star Wars juggernaut continues to roll through box office records all around the world this weekend. It will pass $1 billion globally today, Sunday, in just its 12th day in release—one day faster than Jurassic World. That blockbuster figure is largely thanks to an incredible $544 million after just ten days domestically, far ahead of Jurassic World’s $402 million at the same point in its run. The Force Awakens has now broken records for every milestone from $50 million to $500 million, with more to fall. The current record for fastest to $550 million is also Jurassic World, which reached the mark in 24 days. Star Wars will do it in eleven. After that, we will start looking at some serious all-time records.
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December 26th, 2015
Star Wars: The Force Awakens set another record by earning $49.34 million on Christmas Day. This more than doubles the previous record of $24.61 million held by Sherlock Holmes. However, this was only 79% more than it made on Christmas Eve, whereas Avatar rose 107% on the same day in its run. You can't even say Avatar had it easy due to weaker competition, so perhaps the explanation lies elsewhere. Perhaps a lot of people who were scared off by the crowds thus far decided to see the movie on Christmas Eve, because it is historically a slow day a the box office. That’s certainly what I was thinking. Because of this, I'm lowing my expectations for the weekend from $170 million to $160 million. This would have been a good opening weekend result for the film. It will be well above the current Record Second Weekend of $106.59 million by Jurassic World.
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December 25th, 2015
While there are a massive number of wide releases / wide expansions this week, there are very few limited releases. Generally by this time of year, the competition from previously released Awards Season contenders is just too much. The only type of film that can truly thrive is one that has a lot of pre-release buzz. This year, this includes The Hateful Eight, which has the widest opening on this week's list and expands truly wide next week, as well as The Revenant, which expands wide early in January.
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December 10th, 2015
The Golden Globes nominations were announced this morning and we are already beginning to see a trend for this year's Awards Season. For the most part, the same films are coming up over and over again. Carol led the way with five awards, while there was a three-way tie for second place with The Big Short, The Revenant and Steve Jobs each picking up four.
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