December 29th, 2008
This week is a mess because we are dealing with DVDs released on the 26th, the 27th, and the 30th. Additionally, we are dealing with the latest two waves of Paramount Blu-rays, so there are a lot of spotlight reviews this week. (Although when it comes to those particular Blu-rays, I have previously reviewed nearly half of them previously, and I have seen more than half of the rest, so it was easy to review.) It was so easy, in fact, I was able to get a couple reviews done in advance, which lead to a record number of spotlight reviews. There are more spotlight reviews this week than the previous four weeks combined. Needless to say, the column had to be split into two, with the second part found here. As for the best of the best, Serenity - Blu-ray easily won the DVD Pick of the Week, while Duckman - Season Three and Four is the DVD Pick of Next Week. Also worth grabbing are Event Horizon on Blu-ray, Ghost Town on either DVD or Blu-ray, Greek - Chapter Two, and The Truman Show on Blu-ray
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December 16th, 2008
This week is a confusing one on the home market as there are DVDs coming out on Tuesday the 16th, as usual, and on Friday the 19th, and Sunday the 21st as well. While there are a number of great releases that are spread out over three days, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is the best on any day, and worthy of the DVD Pick of the Week.
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September 4th, 2005
War of the Worlds opened in its last international market over the weekend making $3.0 million on 583 screens in China. That's about 10% more money that
Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith earned, but
War of the Worlds needed nearly double the number of screens. Overall the film added $4.5 million to its $345 million international total, easily the second best of the year so far.
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August 28th, 2005
The Skeleton Key opened in 10- more markets over the weekend and in now playing on 1400 screens, however, it still hasn't found the success the studio was hoping for. It did open in first place in Germany, but it still had a very soft opening with $1.6 million. It also opened in first place in Russia with $625,000 over the weekend and $780,000 since Thursday, but in Australia and New Zealand it had to settle for a distant second place with $760,000 and $110,000 respectively.
The Skeleton Key also open in Austria with $230,000 for the week, but its placing is unknown at the moment. Add in holdovers in France, ($250,000 for $2.2 million) and the U.K., ($130,000 for $4.5 million) and you have roughly $4 million for the weekend and $16.5 million so far.
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July 17th, 2005
Mr. and Mrs. Smith continues its excellent run in Asia with a $2.2 million opening in 450 theatres in China. The film also added $1.8 million in South Korea for an $18 million running total in that market, (although it was pushed out of the top spot in that market. Overall the film made $4 million pushing its total to $117 million internationally and $275 million worldwide.
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July 9th, 2005
The Pacifier took the lead on the Rental Charts on the Home Market and was the only new release in the to five.
Vin Diesel's first foray into
comedies led the DVD charts with $9.48 million, the VHS charts with $1.29 million, and the combined charts with $10.77 million. It was also the best selling DVD for the week, but as usual there were no sales numbers released.
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July 2nd, 2005
Hitch held onto top spot on the rental charts this week despite four new releases making the top five, and it wasn't even a close contest. The film added $10.58 million in combined rentals, down just 16% from
last week for a $23.21 million two-week total.
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June 20th, 2005
Every week films get a second chance at success from the home market; or, in some cases, a first chance at success. Here is a list of wide releases, limited releases, classics and a few from the growing TV on DVD section. It's another bad week for first-run releases; this is hardly surprising when you consider the low quality of wide releases earlier in the year. But unlike
last week there's little in the way of older releases, special editions and TV on DVD to pick up the slack. Just one release stood out as a must have, the fantastic Degrassi The Next Generation - Season 2 -
Buy from Amazon making this the third week in a row I've picked a release from this long running series as my DVD pick of the week. That's a record that probably won't be broken for a long, long time.
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June 19th, 2005
Just when the International Details column was getting back to normal we have another film dominating the international scene. Mr. and Mrs. Smith led in nearly every major / midlevel market and those it didn't were mostly owned by Revenge of the Sith. Because of that there isn't as much news to tell as usual, and with Batman Begins opening worldwide this weekend and in two weeks, War of the Worlds doing the same, this trend will last until mid-July at the earliest.
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June 12th, 2005
The Longest Yard opened in second place in Australia with $2.5 million. On the other hand, the film could only manage $750,000 on 260 screens in Mexico, not surprising since
Adam Sandler has never been a big draw internationally, especially outside English speaking markets.
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June 5th, 2005
It was a slightly busier weekend as several studios were brave enough, or foolhardy enough to try and sandwich their film between the worldwide release of
Revenge of the Sith and
Batman Begins, which debuts in just 10 days. With
War of the Worlds' worldwide release just two weeks after that, there's very little room for smaller films to survive.
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May 22nd, 2005
It was another slow weekend for international details as few studios were brave enough, or foolish enough to try and squeeze in a release between
Kingdom of Heaven and
Revenge of the Sith. It was hard to find many films that earned more than $1 million over the weekend and most of the activity came from smaller releases in midlevel markets. Next weekend there could be even fewer details as
Revenge of the Sith should dominate every market, but after that the summer blockbuster season should be in full swing and things should pick up.
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May 1st, 2005
It was a good news, bad news kind of weekend for
Constantine. The film remained in top spot in Japan with $2,330,027 on 349 screens for a $9,011,671 running tally in the market. Bad news, it dropped 37% during its second weekend in the market, which is really steep for Japan. Overall the film brought in $3 million on 1,200 screens in 40 markets for a international box office of $136.4 million.
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April 24th, 2005
Hitch is just coasting on holdovers now, and will be until it opens in Japan at the beginning of June. This week it added $5.1 million from 3000 screens in 55 markets to its already impressive $170.4 million international total and with soft week to week drop-offs and a good showing in Japan and it will have a $200 million future. This week the film added $643,359 in its fifth weekend in France for a $12,785,670 total in the market, $110,000 in its second weekend in Argentina, (rising to first place in the meantime) as well as other, smaller markets.
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April 17th, 2005
The Pacifier finally debut across Australia after playing in Queensland and Victoria for the past two weeks; the massive expansion allowed the film to climb to first place with $1.125 million on 267 screens. That lifted its total in the market to $3.41 million so far and the film should have strong legs. Add to that its $1.75 million opening in Spain and $590,000 in Belgium and the film managed $4.1 million over the weekend, which doubled its early total to $8.1 million.
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March 20th, 2005
After gathering in all the data the winner for the race for fifth place is
Million Dollar Baby, I think. It would need to lost more than 40% from last week's total and that's not taking into account its openings in South Korea at $1,515,672 and second place, its $110,000, third place debut in Finland, $86,000 in Russia, $50,000, second place debut in Hong Kong. Unfortunately, exact weekend totals are unknown but it is estimated at $6 million raising its international total to $43 million so far.
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March 13th, 2005
Shark Tale finished its international run with a second place $2.08 million opening in Japan on 485 screens. Its $4,296 per screen average it quite low for the market and generally means the film won't have the usual legs films in Japan have. The film performed much better in Italy where it finished first again with $3.0 million, down just 23% during its sophomore stint. Overall it took in $5.2 million to raise its international total to $181 million, but without any more openings it might struggle to hit $200 million.
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March 6th, 2005
The Aviator beat weekend estimates by a substantial margin leading to a $5.9 million box office on 3000 screens in 34 markets. The multi-
Oscar winning movie has hit $86.2 million internationally and will cross $200 million worldwide before too long. The film dropped a spot to fifth place in South Korea with $834,660 for the week and slipped to second in Australia with $798,000. The only market the film opened it was Argentina, where it easily took top spot with $232,000.
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January 31st, 2005
January ended on an amazing note, with most of the top five beating expectations.
This led to huge increases of 26.4% from last weekend and 29.6% from last year.
But there is some bad news.
Firstly, last weekend the box office was pushed down because of the snowstorm and secondly, last year the box office was pushed down because of the Super Bowl.
However, even taking those into account this was still a good weekend, and 2005 is off to a great start - up more than 12%, for an early $75 million lead on 2004.
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January 24th, 2005
A massive snowstorm hit the Midwest, mid-Atlantic and New England over the weekend, and while we're usually skeptical about the effects weather patterns have on the box office, this was a particularly widespread storm.
Even so, it alone cannot explain the 29.3% drop from last weekend, even after taking into account the post-holiday drop-off.
Comparing this weekend to last year we see a much smaller 3.4% drop.
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January 21st, 2005
The weekend after the Golden Globe Awards will not be remembered for the high quality of the new releases.
With most of the awards going to smaller films, the awards probably won't have any impact on the top five.
In fact, there probably won't be any change at the top spot and only one change in the top five.
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January 18th, 2005
The Martin Luther King Day long weekend was huge, with 6 films topping $10 million over the 3-day period.
Overall the weekend was up 18% from last year, putting 2005 ahead of 2004's pace so far.
In spite of this, two things should be kept in mind.
First, it is much too early in the year for those comparisons to be truly meaningful.
Second, 2004 started off very slowly, and didn't pick up until late February.
So the comparison is tilted in 2005's favor.
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January 17th, 2005
Much of the country is celebrating the life of the civil rights leader, which will lead to a one day delay in the weekend wrap-up, but shouldn't affect any of the other columns this week.
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January 14th, 2005
With three new films opening and two others expanding into wide release, there is a lot of competition for top spot. However, no film is standing out as the obvious choice for top spot, which makes for an exciting weekend. In fact, given the average reviews the race for top spot could be more entertaining than most of the movies in question.
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January 14th, 2005
Meet the Fockers continues as the most widely distributed movie this weekend, adding 25 theaters to reach a healthy 3,553 locations.
In spite of big expansions for In Good Company (to 1,565 theaters) and House of Flying Daggers (to 1,190), two movies have significant openings.
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January 13th, 2005
During the past week promotional websites for several movies were launched and some older ones added additional content.
Here's the list of this week's releases, including this week's winner, Racing Stripes (Official Site).
If you know of any new movie websites not on this list feel free to e-mail me with the details.
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January 7th, 2005
The weekend after Christmas is historically a very poor weekend to release a new film, as is the first weekend of the new year. Of course, normally these are the same weekend, but not this year. So by stretching out this down time we get two weekends in a row where's there's not much new to get bodies into theatres.
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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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December 16th, 2004
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
Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events -
Official Site and all subsidiaries. If you know of any new movie websites not on this list feel free to
e-mail me with the details.
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December 9th, 2004
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
In Good Company -
Official Site. If you know of any new movie websites not on this list feel free to
e-mail me with the details.
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December 2nd, 2004
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
Ocean's Twelve -
Official Site. If you know of any new movie websites not on this list feel free to
e-mail me with the details.
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November 18th, 2004
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
Electra -
Official Site . If you know of any new movie websites not on this list feel free to
e-mail me with the details.
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