October 24th, 2016
It’s not a great week on the home market, as the biggest release of the week is the low-budget horror film, Lights Out. It is worth picking up on Blu-ray, but it is not worth the Pick of the Week title. The best film on this week’s list is Finding Dory, but it is only coming out on Video on Demand and it is worth waiting for the Blu-ray. That said, there’s no top-notch competition, so it is the Pick of the Week.
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October 11th, 2016
Ghostbusters is the biggest release of the week and the best first run release. Combined with its fully-loaded Blu-ray (extended edition), it is a Pick of the Week contender. There’s not much competition. The main competition is a new Collector's Edition Blu-ray for The Thing, but this is at least a double-dip, which hurts its value. There are a couple of smaller releases as well. In the end it was a literal coin toss to decide the Pick of the Week and Ghostbusters won.
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August 2nd, 2016
There was no surprise at the top of the weekend box office chart, as Jason Bourne easily won with $59.22 million. This was on the high end of expectations, but not quite as strong as Star Trek Beyond’s opening last weekend. Both of the other two new releases, Bad Moms and Nerve, also did well. In fact, none of the films we talked about before the weekend missed expectations. The overall box office was down a little compared to last weekend, but a 3.1% decline is hardly noteworthy. More importantly, the box office was 30% higher than the same weekend last year. Year-to-date, 2016 saw its lead over 2015 nearly double to $260 million or 4.0%. Being ahead $6.84 billion to $6.58 billion at this point of the year is a good position to be in, but it wouldn’t take a major collapse for 2016 to fall behind 2015 by year’s end.
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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 30th, 2016
Jason Bourne dominated the Friday box office chart, earning $22.71 million. I’ve seen reports that this is the biggest opening day for a Matt Damon movie, but The Bourne Ultimatum did better with $24.67 million. That film also earned much better reviews than this film did, so it likely won’t have the same legs. It did earn an A- with CinemaScore, so that will help a little. It will likely have similar legs to Star Trek Beyond. Beyond did earn better reviews, but Star Trek has a bigger fanboy factor, which hurt its legs. That will give the film $60 million over the weekend, more or less.
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July 28th, 2016
The month of July comes to an end this weekend and there are three wide releases hoping the month goes out on a high note. Jason Bourne is the only one with a shot at first place, while Bad Moms is looking to become a solid counter-programming hit. Meanwhile, Nerve opened on Wednesday and it just doesn’t want to slip between the cracks. As far as holdovers are concerned, Star Trek Beyond's daily numbers are average for the summer, but that will still be enough to hit the century mark over the weekend. It won’t be the only film to reach $100 million over the weekend. This weekend last year was led by Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation with $55.52 million. I don’t think Jason Bourne will top that, but since the second best film, Vacation, made less than $15 million, I think 2016 will win on depth.
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July 1st, 2016
It's July 1st, which is Canada Day. To celebrate, I wanted to give a gift to my American readers down south, so here's a bunch of "u"s. U, u, u, u, u, u, u, u, u, u, u, u, u, u, u, u, u, u, u, u, u, u, u, u, u, u, u, u, u, u, u, u, u, u, u, u, u, u, u, u, u, u, u, u. Now you can spell words like "colour" and "neighbour" correctly. As for the July preview... June wasn't a good month, despite Finding Dory being on pace to become the biggest hit of the year so far. Most other films failed to match expectations and as a result, 2016's lead over 2015 has nearly evaporated. In fact, ticket sales are below last year's pace. So how does July look in comparison? Well, last July, there were five films that earned more than $100 million, led by Minions, which earned more than $300 million. This July, there are five films that should earn more than $100 million, led by The Secret Life of Pets, which should earned around $250 million. I don't think July 2016 will live up to July 2015, but it should be close. Maybe if one of the expected midlevel hits is a surprise $100 million hit, or if two more of the $100 million hits crack $200 million, then the month will look great. Or one of the expected $100 million hits could flop and 2016 will actually fall behind 2015, even without taking into account ticket price inflation.
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