December 12th, 2016
This is a strange week on the home market. We have one of the biggest domestic hits of the year, Suicide Squad, but it is one of the worst movies I’ve seen this year. (Granted, I’ve done fewer reviews this year and skipped a lot of terrible looking movies, like Independence Day: Resurgence, Warcraft, Gods of Egypt, Allegiant... Ben Hur, The Huntsman, The Legend of Tarzan. I could keep going. Wow! It was a bad year for $100 million movies.) After Suicide Squad, the next biggest release according to Amazon is the Chicago Cubs 2016 World Series Collector's Edition Blu-ray. That’s a huge drop in sales. As far as quality is concerned, I have to give a shout out to that World Series Blu-ray. Real fans want full games and this one provides them. On the other hand, I personally find baseball boring to watch. Unfortunately, there’s no one release that stands out as an obvious Pick of the Week, but instead we have a lot of releases that are close, but wouldn’t be close enough during a good week. The Twilight Zone: The Complete Series on Blu-ray is the best, assuming you didn’t grab the individual seasons when they came out.
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September 7th, 2016
There were only two films to earn more than $10,000 on the theater average chart. White Girl lead the way with an average of $11,353 in three theaters. Meanwhile, No Manches Frida earned an average $10,155 in 362 theaters, which is even more impressive.
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August 9th, 2016
Operation Chromite, the South Korean war movie, opened on first place on the theater average chart with $31,662. This put it just ahead of the overall box office champion, Suicide Squad, which earned an average of $31,418. Little Men was next with an average of $15,184 in two theaters. The re-release of Elevator to the Gallows was close behind with $14,334 in its lone theater. The final film in the $10,000 club was Equity, with an average of $13,629 in four theaters during its second weekend of release.
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August 7th, 2016
One of the most talked-about debuts of the year is shaping up to be one of the better ones. Suicide Squad will open with about $135 million, according to Warner Bros., easily the biggest weekend in August, beating Guardians of the Galaxy’s $94.3 million in 2014. It’s also the 3rd-best weekend in 2016, and should earn a little more than Deadpool’s $132 million debut. In spite of these awesome stats, there’s about as much negative press for the film as positive, and some of it not entirely fair.
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August 3rd, 2016
Don’t Think Twice repeated as champion of the theater average chart. It expanded from 1 to 5 theaters but still earned a very healthy average of $31,022. It will expand further. Indignation was the best of the new limited releases, earning an average of $23,281 in 4 theaters, while Equity was close behind with an average of $20,609 in 4 theaters. The overall number one film, Jason Bourne, was next with an average of $14,708. Hieronymus Bosch, Touched by the Devil earned $12,064 in 1 theater over the weekend and $19,076 from Wednesday through Sunday. A couple of documentaries rounded out the $10,000 club. Miss Sharon Jones earned $10,323 in 1 theater, while Gleason managed an average of $10,176 in 9 theaters.
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July 31st, 2016
When it comes to “star power” in Hollywood, I’ve been a skeptic ever since we launched our Bankability Index, and started looking at the real influence a single actor has on the performance of a film. With some notable exceptions (Tom Cruise and Sandra Bullock chief among them these days), actors generally don’t move the box office dial much when they appear in a generic film. But this weekend’s opening of Jason Bourne shows what the combination of the right actor in the right role can do. In spite of virtually identical reviews to 2012’s The Bourne Legacy, the new film, a franchise un-re-boot if you will, starring Matt Damon in the role he made iconic, will post a very solid $60 million this weekend. To be fair, that’s a bit behind the inflation-adjusted openings of The Bourne Ultimatum and The Bourne Supremacy, but it’s far better than the $38 million earned by Legacy when it debuted.
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July 29th, 2016
It’s a week of “good, but not great” movies as there are a number of films earning Tomatometer Scores in the 70s. Generally speaking, films usually need 80% positive reviews or better to survive in limited release. There are a couple of films with amazing reviews, Gleason and Miss Sharon Jones, but both are documentaries, so they don’t have a lot of box office potential. The film I’m most interested in is Into the Forest, which is playing on Video on Demand.
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July 21st, 2016
Drama starring Anna Gunn, directed by Meera Menon, opens July 29 ... Full Movie Details.
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