August 18th, 2020
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The release of two major new movies in Canada at the weekend gave us a first chance to see how the box office might recover in North America as theaters open up. The results are not particularly encouraging, although they are in line with our analysis earlier this month.
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August 13th, 2020
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For the first time in a long, long time there are wide releases to talk about. That is, two films are opening wide... in Canada: The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run and Unhinged. While Canada is a lot smaller than the United States, it is still a large enough part of the domestic box office that we should see the best domestic weekend since the pandemic caused theaters to be shut down in March.
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November 27th, 2015
It's Thanksgiving weekend, which means Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and of course the first installment of our Holiday Gift Guide. This week we will tackle first run releases, as well as franchise box sets. I'm going to try to keep it to a dozen or so releases, as these columns are notorious for getting out of hand. Also, while there were a record number of $1 billion box office hits, there were not as many first run releases that earned stellar reviews this year.
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July 4th, 2015
It was a busy week in real life, with the July Preview, Canada Day, and July 4th holidays messing with schedules. Because of that, the home market numbers were late this week. However, this week's numbers will be up in the next two days, so it was a very short disruption. That said, there's not much to talk about when it comes to new releases on the home video sales charts for the week ending June 14. Sure, The Kingsman: Secret Service earned first place on the home market chart, but there was only one other new release in the top five and only a few others in the top 30. The number one release of the week sold 591,000 units and generated $10.29 million in consumer spending. This includes an opening week Blu-ray share of 51%. Anything above 50% is worth celebrating; however, the overall numbers are still lower than anticipated.
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June 3rd, 2015
Welcome to the column formerly known as the DVD and Blu-ray release report! In response to the changing home market landscape, we have renamed it the Home Market Release Report, and will now be including Video-on-Demand releases. It was a bad week to try and change the format, as there were a ton of great releases contending for Pick of the Week. Most of these contenders are TV on DVD releases, including Parks & Recreation: Season 7. There is also one limited release, Spring on Blu-ray, and one first-run releases, The SpongeBob Movie: A Sponge Out of Water on 3D Combo Pack. It was a close race, but I choose SpongeBob in the end.
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June 1st, 2015
On Friday, I got a package of half-a-dozen Nickelodeon releases ... all of which come out on Tuesday. Needless to say, I won't be reviewing all of them, but that's why the current box office prediction contest features Nickelodeon releases. The one I'm definitely reviewing is The SpongeBob Movie: A Sponge Out of Water, which earned great reviews and was a surprise hit at the box office. Did it deserve this success? Or will I be one of the dissenting voices?
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March 3rd, 2015
As expected, Focus led the way at the box office, but sadly did so with a much lower opening weekend result than predicted. The rest of the top five were a little stronger than predicted each earning between $10 million and $12 million. That said, the overall box office was still weak, down 10% from last week to $107 million. It was also down 13% from last year. This caused 2015's lead over 2014 to drop. Granted, 2015 is still ahead of 2014 by $110 million or 6.8% at $1.74 billion to $1.63 billion, so it would take a while to lose that lead at this pace.
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