July 15th, 2009
While 12 Rounds may have led all new releases to capture top spot on this week's sales chart, its performance is not one that will be fondly remembered. It sold just 209,000 units and generated $3.13 million in consumer spending at retail.
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July 15th, 2009
Gran Torino returned to the top of the rental chart with more than 50% more rentals than the second place release, 12 Rounds, which opened a tiny, tiny fraction ahead of Confessions of a Shopaholic.
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June 29th, 2009
Summer blockbuster might fill multiplexes at the moment, but the home market releases are terrible. None of the first run releases are that worthy, and there are few limited release, catalogue titles, and TV on DVD to back them up. The best of the best all came from that last category with Eureka - Season 3.0, The IT Crowd - The Complete Second Season, Parker Lewis Can't Lose - Season One, and Stargate - Atlantis - Season Five all being in consideration for DVD Pick of the Week. I can't decide which one deserves the title the most, and while four releases are a bit much to be called DVD Pick of the Week, I'm going to call them all co-winners.
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June 23rd, 2009
Seven spotlight reviews on this week's list, but only one for a DVD coming out on Tuesday. (Four are for screeners that arrived late, two are for ones that arrived early, while there are at least three on this week's list that may or may not show up shortly.)
The choices for DVD Pick of the Week are not plentiful, with Waltz with Bashir being the only real contender.
Despite coming out on both DVD and Blu-ray, the latter is overpriced compared to the former.
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March 10th, 2009
Watchmen opened with the biggest weekend box office of the year so far, but it was below the record-breaking levels some predicted. That said, the overall box office was still up 4% from last weekend, and more importantly, up 8% from the same weekend last year. Year-to-date, 2009 has brought in $1.96 billion, which is about 14% more than last year's pace. This is down from earlier in the year, but still very impressive nonetheless.
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March 8th, 2009
Watchmen opened big over the weekend, earning a mighty $55.655 million, according to Warner Bros.' Sunday estimate.
Impressive as that debut is, the movie did fade quite dramatically through the weekend after posting a $25.135 million opening day on Friday.
Saturday's estimate stands at $18.7 million, down 25% from the movie's opening day, although the decline is slightly artifical because Friday's total includes $4.55 million from midnight shows.
Sunday's projected of $11.8 million would be down 37% from Saturday, which is fairly typical for an opening weekend.
Overall, it's a debut that Warner Bros. (and Fox, who has a gross participation deal) will be happy with, but the long-term performance of the movie is very hard to judge at this point.
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March 5th, 2009
Is it ironic that a film called Watchmen is opening the same weekend we set our clocks ahead one hour? Perhaps this is part of some brilliant marketing strategy. Regardless, Watchmen is the only wide release of the week, and it has a lot of buzz surrounding it. So much so that it has a shot at breaking records, while earning more than all four big releases last year did combined.
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March 4th, 2009
The winners of our 3D Difficult contest were determined and they are...
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March 3rd, 2009
We had a surprise film at the top of the chart as The Jonas Brothers proved they were no competition for Miley Cyrus. In fact, they were no match for Tyler Perry in a dress. Fortunately, while there was severe weakness at the top, the overall box office was still strong at $111 million. Yes, that was down 22% from last weekend, but it was 15% head of the same weekend last year. Meanwhile, 2009 continues to lead 2008 by a sizable margin at $1.79 billion to $1.53 billion, a 17% gap.
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March 1st, 2009
It is fair to say that expectations were generally too high for Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience this weekend, but even so its opening weekend, estimated at $12.7 million, is a major disappointment.
The biggest surprise is that it didn't even take number one spot on the weekend chart, in spite of Madea Goes to Jail dropping nearly 60% from its opening weekend.
Madea finished with $16.5 million, for a two week total of $64.8 million.
Slumdog Millionaire earned an estimated $12.15 million on the back of its big Oscar wins.
That's the biggest weekend so far for the movie, and its box office take has actually grown for 13 out of the 16 weekends it has been in theaters.
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March 1st, 2009
One of the slowest weeks in a long, long time. Not only are there just five films on this week's list, none of the sites are even average. None even have all of the usual information presented in a boring way. Hopefully this is the worst week for the rest of the year.
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February 26th, 2009
There won't be much of a race for the top of the box office chart with The Jonas Brothers being the only film with a legitimate shot at number one.
There is a question whether the trio can live up to Miley Cyrus's box office triumph with Best of Both Worlds.
And then there's the question of 2009 maintaining its blistering pace over 2008.
I think the latter is more likely than the former.
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February 20th, 2009
It's another tough week for the box office prediction contest, as our target film is Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience. There are so many contradictory signals on this film: the low theater count, the high ticket price, the short run, etc. It all comes down to the popularity of the Jonas Brothers, and how much is real and how much is marketing hype. It could make more than $30 million. Or it could make less than $10 million. Or it could make any number in-between. I really have no clue. Fortunately, there are three prizes this week, so you don't have to have a clue either in order to win, but it helps. Order to win, one must simply predict the opening weekend box office of Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience.
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February 1st, 2009
2009 got off to a great start and February hopes to continue that run, but I don't think that's likely. First of all, none of the releases coming out this month look like they have what it takes to reach $100 million. Or even $80 million. This means the best film of this month will likely be lower than the biggest-earning film of last month and the biggest earner of this month last year.
Hopefully there will be fewer outright misses and more mid-level hits, which will help 2009 keep pace with 2008.
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August 7th, 2008
This week another number of upcoming movies, new stars and directors have been added to our archive!
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August 3rd, 2008
This week's round of new movie release information contains release dates for The Haunting of Molly Hartley, Nothing Like the Holidays, Not Easily Broken and more!
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