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Thursday, November 26, 2009
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2009-11-16
There's an excellent mix of new releases this week, including Star Trek on DVD and Blu-ray.
There are a few TV on DVD releases, including Andy Barker, P.I. - The Complete Series, as well as several Blu-ray releases of note: Galaxy Quest, Gone With the Wind - The Ultimate Collector's Edition, and The Professional.
All of these are contenders for the DVD Pick of the Week, but if I were to narrow them down to one selection, it would be Star Trek on Blu-ray.
There are plenty of spotlight reviews this week, enough to split the column into two parts, with the second part found here.
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2009-10-19
Agora opened in first place in Spain and sixth place internationally with $7.90 million on 462 screens. This is great news, as the film cost $70 million to make and it will need a massive run to break even. It won't have to earn all of it in Spain, on the other hand, and should perform well throughout Europe and when it opens here.
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2009-09-19
Ice Age - Dawn of the Dinosaurs fell out of the top five this past weekend earning $7.08 million on 3521 screens in 35 markets for a total of $670.44 million internationally and $865.11 million worldwide. It is now the third highest grossing film internationally of all time, while it is 18th place worldwide. That's quite a gap. The film remained in first place in Italy earning $3.14 million on 690 screens over the weekend for a total of $33.63 million after three. So far the film has earned more than 77% of its worldwide box office internationally, which is a very high percentage, and it will keep creeping higher as its international run comes to a close.
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2009-09-05
G-Force just missed the top five with $7.09 million on 2964 screens in 30 markets for a total of $67.97 million. The film had no major market openings this week, but it did add $2.17 million on 409 screens in Russia for a total of $8.93 million after two weeks there. Up next is Spain this weekend, which means it could climb back into the top five, if it performs well there.
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2009-08-08
Ice Age - Dawn of the Dinosaurs became the all-time highest grossing animated film on the international scene during the past week. Over the weekend it earned $24.66 million on 8844 screens in 68 markets for a total of $551.39 million internationally, which tops the $526.88 million earned by Finding Nemo. On the other hand, that film made $866.59 million worldwide compared to this film's running tally of $733.45 million. Ice Age isn't done yet, and should reach a couple milestones before it is done. but the record is likely safe.
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2009-07-07
New releases were not as strong as expected, and Independence Day itself hurt a little more than I was expecting, but the overall box office was still solid at $162 million.
Granted, this was nearly 19% less than last weekend, but more importantly it was 1.4% higher than the same weekend last year.
Year-to-date, 2009 has made $5.44 billion, which is 11.6% ahead of last year's pace.
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2009-07-05
The Hangover climbed into second place with $11.14 million on 2091 screens in 28 markets for a total of $47.81 million. This was actually 2% lower than last week's performance. Its only major market opening came from France where it placed second with $3.31 million on 251 screens, but that was for the full week. (This is still impressive.) In the U.K. it was down just 15% to $3.15 million on 425 screens over the weekend and $18.50 million after three. It is a couple of weeks away from overtaking Terminator Salvation in that market. Over in Australia it managed to dip just 30% to $1.80 million on 227 screens over the weekend for a total of $9.07 million. It will also top Terminator Salvation in this market, and could beat out Angels and Demons as well. Massive. On the other hand, I'm not sure the film will do as well in most non-English speaking markets, as comedy tends to be harder to translate into other cultures.
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2009-06-29
The biggest opening of the year, and in some respects the biggest opening weekend ever, helped the overall box office recover from its mini-slump, with moviegoers spending just a hair shy of $200 million on tickets over the weekend.
This was up 32% from last weekend and 7.9% higher than the same weekend last year.
Year-to-date, 2009 has now amassed $5.13 billion in ticket sales, which is 12% higher than last year's pace.
It has been a long, long time since we've seen this kind of year-over-year growth, and while it is likely the box office will cool down over the rest of the summer, this is still an amazing performance.
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2009-06-28
For a weekend that features what could be the biggest movie of the year, the list of movie websites is merely average. Then again, I've noticed this trend for a few years that movie websites have stagnated in quality. I blame Running Scared. The website was so popular, that it crashed the server, but the movie itself bombed. It was at this point that I believe studios realized that having a popular website doesn't mean a movie will be a hit. Since then, the amount of effort put into websites has dropped off with more sites featuring less sound and animation; even sites for wide releases are rather cookie cutter at the moment lacking interactivity or creativity. This is part of the reason why I'm strongly considering phasing out this column. There's very few sites worth writing about, and it would give me more time to concentrate on reviewing DVDs, which takes up a considerable amount of my time already. I haven't finalized my decision, so if you have any thoughts, e-mail me.
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2009-06-26
It looks like the high end of expectations might not have been high enough as Transformers - Revenge of the Fallen opened with more than $60 million on Wednesday, including midnight showings. This bodes very week for its weekend haul, which should help the overall box office from last year. To put this into perspective, last year's number one film, WALL-E earned $63 million over the weekend, or barely more than Transformers - Revenge of the Fallen earned in one day.
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2009-06-01
So far we are one month into summer, and it looks like we will have six $100 million movies already (as I'm writing this, only two are confirmed, while three more should reach that milestone over the weekend.) However, June doesn't look as strong, either compared to last month, or the same month last year. It's not entirely bad, and we could have the bigget movie of the year opening this month, but don't expect six more $100 million movies. In fact, there's a chance we won't get half that many.
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2008-10-02
This week's round of new casting information contains updates for Paper Man, Sherlock Holmes, Kung Fu Panda 2, and more!
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2008-03-13
This week's round of new casting information contains updates for Confessions of a Shopaholic, Monsters vs Aliens, The Promotion, and more!
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2008-02-24
This week's round of new casting information contains updates for Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, Hoodwinked 2, Shanghai, and more!
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2007-12-20
This week's round of new casting information contains updates for Four Christmases, My Sister's Keeper, Quarantined, and more!
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2007-12-18
This week another number of upcoming movies, new stars and directors have been added to our archive!
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