January 28th, 2006
Lord of War won the weekly race on the rental charts, taking in $7.40 million, or just over 30% of what it earned during its theatrical release.
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January 16th, 2006
It is a deceptively slow week for DVD releases.
There are five wide releases coming out tomorrow, if you are willing to stretch the definition of wide a little bit, but of those five films only one earned a Tomatometer reading of above 50%, while the other four combined couldn't score that high.
So it comes as no surprise that the DVD Pick of the Week came from the TV on DVD category as Titus - The Complete Third Season was clearly the best of the bunch, although Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room - Buy from Amazon and Junebug - Buy from Amazon are also worth checking out.
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October 9th, 2005
Company 9 opened in its native market of Russia with a stunning $5.0 million over the weekend and $6.25 million including the midweek numbers, which is better than Revenge of the Sith's opening in that market.
This also means there were two films that did so well in their local markets that they managed to place in the top five overall.
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September 6th, 2005
Most films were able to beat expectations over the weekend and that meant that Summer 2005 was able to end on a high note, sort of. The 3-day weekend was down by 3.9% from last weekend, which is no surprise given the nature of the Labor Day long weekend, but it was up 5.4% from last year. Over the four day weekend 2005 was still higher, but by just 1.0% meaning ticket sales were down from last year. Overall Summer 2005 was a massive disappointment bringing in just $3.53 billion, down 9% from last year and the lowest level since 2001's $3.34 billion. While there are a lot of possible reasons being floated around for the slump, the most likely reason is the huge number of really bad movies, several of which were released in the past few weeks.
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September 5th, 2005
The Labor Day long-weekend is historically the slowest long-weekend of the year when it comes to box office numbers. However, it's still a long-weekend and that means there will be a one day delay in the weekend warp-up and the per theatre charts. In the meantime here are the studio estimates for the top five, plus the two other new releases.
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September 2nd, 2005
For the third weekend in a row we have a contender for worst movie of the year contest.
In fact, this weekend there are two such movies.
(And next weekend it looks like we'll have another.)
Even so, there should be enough moviegoers interested in the other two releases that the weekend could show significant growth, maybe not compared to last weekend, but certainly compared to last year.
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September 1st, 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,
Serenity -
Official Site.
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September 1st, 2005
September is the prime dumping ground for movie studios, where the films that just didn't work get ditched to die an undignified death. So why are there no less than five movies opening wide that look like they should be reasonably good? Either the studios are trying to counteract the poor reputation September has, or I have really bad taste in movies.
This month is very difficult to predict for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the fluidity of the release schedule with several films on the bubble for wide releases.
In fact, there are almost as many films that may or may not open wide in September than there are films with a solid release schedule.
Predicting what a film will earn without knowing if it will open wide is tricky because you have to figure out how much it would earn if it opens wide, how much it will earn if it goes the limited route, and what are the odds it will open wide versus a limited release.
This resulting weighted average is lower than a similar prediction for a movie that is known to be opening wide, which makes the month look even worse that it otherwise would.
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July 28th, 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,
Sky High -
Official Site.
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July 14th, 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,
Skeleton Key -
Official Site.
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January 1st, 2005
January is one of two main dumping grounds for bad movies on the calendar, September being the other one. And while the average box office is lower in September the quality of films has been dropping for a while so by comparison September's entries don't feel so bad. January, on the other hand, comes after the best month in terms of Box Office and Award Season combined. Throughout December the quality of films builds to a crescendo and then it suddenly falls flat.
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