October 5th, 2010
It was another week where new releases dominated the DVD sales chart with ten of them placing in the top 30. This includes Tinker Bell and the Great Fairy Rescue, which took top spot with 920,000 units sold, while its opening week sales of $16.80 million were actually second best. This is a drop from The Lost Treasure; however, it did much, much better on Blu-ray than either of the previous releases.
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September 28th, 2010
New releases flooded the sales chart this week, taking the top nine spots, plus a couple more in the top 30. Leading the way was Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time with a disappointing opening week of 664,000 units and consumer spending at retail of $15.05 million.
It was relatively better on Blu-ray, however.
Letters to Juliet opened in second place with 486,000 units and $8.26 million, which is fine given the film's theatrical run. Barbie: A Fashion Fairytale opened in third place with $283,000 units / $3.95 million, which is huge for a direct-to-DVD franchise.
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September 13th, 2010
TV on DVD season continues, which is great news for fans who want to relive last season, or missed many episodes of their favorite shows. It's bad news for these people's wallets, as they are quite expensive compared to first run releases. (Although TV on DVD releases tend to be inexpensive entertainment on a per-minute basis.) It's worse news for critics, as trying to review several full season releases in one week is tough to pull off. That's not to say there were no first run releases, but the ones that did come out were second-tier, or lower, leaving them out of competition for Pick of the Week. I'm going with The Big Bang Theory: Season Three for Pick of the Week, with both DVD and Blu-ray worth picking up, but the High Definition release is arguably the better deal.
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September 11th, 2010
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time was set to become one of the biggest blockbusters of the summer. It cost $200 million to make, it was produced by Jerry Bruckheimer who has made countless $100 million hits, and it was opening on the Memorial Day long weekend. It had all of the right ingredients, so how could it possibly fail to become a huge hit?
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July 11th, 2010
In an age of day-and-date global releases, Shrek Forever After is taking the slow route. This week it opened in a number of major markets, which propelled it into second place with $42.57 million on 4,484 screens in 25 markets for a total of $137.12 million internationally and $369.40 million worldwide.
In the U.K. it opened with $13.56 million on 539 screens, which was easily enough for first place.
However, its predecessor made $33.45 million during its opening three years ago. Ouch. In France it made $10.77 million on 842 screens, down from $13.05 million. South Korea produced $6.37 million on 627 screens, including midweek numbers, down from $10.74 million. Finally, in Germany it made $5.11 million on 767 screens, down from $7.84 million. The film is still a major hit and will have no trouble earning a profit; however, it is still the weakest in the franchise when you look at ticket sales.
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July 4th, 2010
Knight and Day started its international run in second place with $12.42 million on 2241 screens in 12 markets. It opened in first place in Russia with $3.33 million on 949 screens, while it also took top spot in South Korea with $3.04 million on 565 screens over the weekend and $3.76 million in total. Next up for the film is the U.K. this weekend, while it has major market openings right till October when it debuts in Japan.
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June 26th, 2010
The A-Team climbed to second place with $13.97 million on 4929 screens in 48 markets for a total of $34.74 million. New openings this past weekend include France, where it made $3.05 million on 621 screens. On the one hand, that was enough for first place. On the other hand, that's not a particularly strong start, especially for a summer blockbuster. It was only half has much as Prince of Persia opened with, for instance. In Italy it had a similar result with a first place, $1.11 million opening on 354 screens. That said, if it can earn half of what Prince of Persia does, then The A-Team will end its run with more than $100 million internationally and close to $200 million worldwide. As long as it is a hit on the home market, that will be enough to show a profit eventually, particularly if you take into account increased DVD sales for the TV series it is based on.
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June 20th, 2010
As expected, Toy Story 3 is dominating this weekend at the box office, and it is heading for a record opening for Pixar.
Disney is projecting a $109 million opening weekend, which is significantly ahead of the $70 million opening posted by The Incredibles back in 2004.
3D tickets sales and general ticket price inflation helped the cause, of course, but it's still a very impressive result, to go with Disney's success with Alice in Wonderland earlier in the year.
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June 16th, 2010
There were no new releases that dominated the international box office, which allowed Sex and the City 2 to remain in first place with $23.86 million on 7204 screens in 58 markets for a total of $133.04 million internationally and $217.70 million worldwide. The film opened in South Korea, but bombed with just $676,000 on 303 screens over the weekend and $856,000 in total. On the other hand, it remained in first place in the U.K. with $2.19 million on 542 screens over the weekend for a total of $25.59 million after three weeks of release. This film might not make as much worldwide as the original made internationally, but $250 million at the global box office should still be enough to show a profit sometime during the home market. However, don't expect the franchise to be stretched to a trilogy.
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June 9th, 2010
Sex and the City 2 expanded worldwide this week, climbing into top spot with $40.04 million on 7010 screens in 51 markets for a total of $88.68 million internationally. It's biggest opening was in Australia where it earned an easy first place with $7.6 million on 562 screens, including previews. This may seem impressive at first glance; after all, it's equivalent to an $80 million opening here. However, the original made as much when it opened there two years ago, so this is weaker than expected, as internationally the film had been showing strong growth compared to its predecessor in many markets.
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June 8th, 2010
Well, that was bad. After the worst Memorial Day long weekend in nearly two decades (at least in terms of tickets sold) we had another weekend full of disappointing new releases. The overall box office was $129 million, which was down 15% from last weekend. Since it is a post-holiday weekend, this drop-off is not surprising. However, it was also down 22% from the same weekend last year, which is the third weekend in a row where we've seen double-digit declines year-over-year. Year-to-date, 2010 is still ahead of 2009, but the lead has shrunk to less than 4% at $4.47 billion to $4.31 billion.
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June 3rd, 2010
With May over and not a single wide release beating expectations, the beginning of June can be looked upon with joy or trepidation. On the one hand, maybe we can put May behind us and move on. On the other hand, perhaps the slump will just continue and make matters worse. It is unlikely that any of the new releases will keep up with last year's champion, The Hangover. But perhaps the combined efforts of all four new releases will top the combined efforts of the three wide releases from last year.
While there is no likely breakout hit like we had last year, four films have a legitimate shot at top spot.
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June 3rd, 2010
Prince of Persia expanded into a handful of major markets at the weekend and it did extremely well in a most of them. This helped the film storm into first place internationally, with $61.54 million on 10,297 screens in 47 markets for a still early total of $97.77 million. This is likely more than it will make domestically. Its worldwide haul is $127.87 million, which is rapidly closing in on its production budget.
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June 2nd, 2010
May is over, and not a moment too soon. I remember at the beginning of last month that a lot of people were suggesting this was going to be the highest grossing summer of all time and that May was going to be the highest grossing month of all time. Since this summer is a weekend shorter than most and this missing weekend was at the beginning of May, this was never going to happen. However, now that the month is over, we can see just how unrealistic those predictions were. Even Memorial Day long weekend wasn't enough as the total box office take was $152 million over three days and $193 million over four. Compared to last week, this was up just over 1%. While any increase is welcome, this it hardly a reason to celebrate. Compared to last Memorial Day, this was down 14% over three days and 13% over four. Not good. Year-to-date, 2010 is still ahead of 2009, but the lead has been cut to 4.7% at $4.30 billion to $4.10 billion. Perhaps it's not quite time to hit the panic button, but I'm starting to do warm up exercises for when running around in a panic will be required.
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May 30th, 2010
A weaker-than-expected debut by Sex and the City 2 will leave Shrek Forever After the comfortable winner over Memorial Day Weekend, according to studio estimates released on Sunday.
Shrek's 3-day projected gross is $43.345 million, which takes it to $133.1 million after ten days.
That's not, in itself, a spectacular result, since it's a decline of 39% from a soft-ish opening weekend on one of the biggest box office weekends of the year, but it puts the ogre movie over $10 million ahead of Sex over three days -- a lead that will get bigger once Monday's numbers are in.
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May 28th, 2010
Memorial Day long weekend started early with the midnight release of Sex and the City 2, but it's not the only saturation level release debuting this weekend. With the weakness shown last weekend by Shrek Forever After, the industry is looking forward with a bit of trepidation. Should both of these stumble, the narrative going forward will be quite negative, as none of the May releases will have excelled. This time last year, Up opened with close to $70 million. I don't think either film will match that, especially over three days. But their combined strength will hopefully give 2010 a boost at the box office.
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May 27th, 2010
Robin Hood remained in the top spot on the international chart, hitting the century mark over the weekend. It did show weakness in a lot of major markets and overall fell 57% to $30.09 million on 7,073 screens in 56 markets for a total of $125.37 million internationally and $191.53 million worldwide. Granted, it had no major openings this past weekend, but this is still troubling. Additionally, it only has two major openings left (China and Japan) so it is not like it has a lot of markets left to draw from. That said, it has made more globally than it cost to make, and it should add another $100 million or so to that final tally. It should eventually break even.
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May 1st, 2010
It's summertime! April started off okay, but ended with a thud. In fact, How to Train Your Dragon was arguably the biggest box office draw of the month, and it opened in March. That said, it's May, and that means there's a clean slate for the box office, as even under the best of circumstances holdovers mean very little at the beginning of the month. As long as the overall box office is healthy, we should be fine. And given the number of $100 million hits that have opened in 2010 so far, plus the $300 million hit that is Alice in Wonderland, I think it is fair to say that we will be fine. The real question is how well May 2010 will compare to last year, when we had six $100 million movies including two that reached $200 million. This time around there's one less weekend, so we will need help from some of the counter programming to match that number. Since there are only three films that you could call counter programming, this could be a problem.
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April 20th, 2010
During the past week, the IMAX corporation released further details on Avatar's IMAX run. The film reached $100 million internationally from 85 international screens to go with its more than $125 million domestic IMAX total. Worldwide it has now made $228 million on 262 screens. All these numbers are records, the international box office, the worldwide box office, the screen counts, everything.
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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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June 19th, 2008
This week's round of new casting information contains updates for 2012, Public Enemies, Transformers 2, and more!
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May 22nd, 2008
This week's round of new casting information contains updates for Doubt, The Go-Getter, Veronika Decides to Die, and more!
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February 24th, 2008
This week's round of new movie release information contains release dates for Old Dogs, Prince of Persia, Alice in Wonderland and more!
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November 15th, 2007
This week's round of new casting information contains updates for Cirque du Freak, Max Payne, Star Trek XI, and more!
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June 8th, 2007
This week's round of new movie release information contains release dates for Death Race, Prince of Persia, Narnia 3 and more.
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