March 26th, 2020
With the COVID-19 outbreak causing mass shutdowns of non-essential businesses in a lot of places, theatrical releases are, for the most part, non-existent. However, the movie industry is trying to rapidly adapt to this and so are we. They are fast-tracking lots of theatrical releases to VOD and we will be expanding our coverage of VOD releases. Like last week, there are a lot of fast-tracked theatrical releases coming out this week, but we also have the more typical VOD premieres to talk about. Of the former category, Bad Boys for Life is clearly leading the way, although Birds of Prey is coming out on Friday rather than Tuesday, so it gets a jump on the action. Of the latter category, Banana Split is the film that I’m most interested in seeing. Sadly, there are so many major VOD releases this week that I fear it will slip between the cracks.
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March 23rd, 2020
The COVID-19 outbreak had basically ended the theatrical market with most theaters closed. Only drive-ins are showing any signs of life. Unfortunately, this is having an effect on the home market as well, some of it positive, some of it very negative. There is a rush to get movies from theaters to the home market and that’s helping improve the list this week. On the other hand, uncertainty with supply chains and stores being open means we could have a very short list next weekend, and next month. There are some big releases this week, including 1917, while Birds of Prey leads the VOD list. However, for Pick of the Week, I went with a much older film, Leave Her to Heaven, which is getting a Criterion Collection release this week.
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January 2nd, 2020
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Only four limited release announced box office numbers for the final weekend of 2019, but all four were in the $10,000 club. 1917 led the way with an average of $52,383 in 11 theaters. That was over the three-day weekend. It earned over $1 million during its five-day debut. Just Mercy was well back with an estimated average of $27,250 in four theaters over the three-day weekend. Ip Man: The Finale will probably turn out to be poorly named, because the movie earned over $1 million over the three-day weekend and earned an average of $20,850. I’m sure someone is trying to figure out how to continue the franchise, despite the Finale part of the name. Clemency was next with an average of $17,682 in two theaters. The final film in the $10,000 club was Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, which earned an average of $16,430 during its second weekend of release.
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December 24th, 2019
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It’s a Tuesday Christmas Eve, and that makes for a challenging situation for box office prognosticators, with Wednesday releases adding to the difficulties. Because of that, I am going to combine the weekend predictions and the limited releases into one shorter column. I will talk about all new releases / expansions for this week without going into detail over their box office chances. Look for a more comprehensive prediction column Thursday as usual. The biggest of the Christmas Day releases should be Little Women; however, that film is making big push for awards, and will likely have very long legs as a result. Conversely, Spies in Disguise is a rare family film opening on Christmas, which makes it a real wild card.
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November 21st, 2019
The Independent Spirit Awards nominations were announced and thus the 2020 Awards Season begins. There are two changes to this year’s coverage of Awards Season. Firstly, we’re going back to using the year the awards are handed out and not the year the movie came out, even though the latter makes so much more sense. We are doing this, because every one else does this and being accurate takes a back seat to being easily understood. Secondly, since the Independent Spirit Awards are not particularly good indicators of Oscar success, we are just going to do summaries and not a full list of nominees.
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