June 26th, 2018
As long time readers know, summer is the worst time of the year for the home market. Summer blockbusters are taking up everyone’s attention and it is still too soon for the rush of TV on DVD releases. The biggest first-run release of the week is Acrimony, which is only for Tyler Perry fans. As for the best of the rest, there are a handful of Pick of the Week contenders, including two Anime titles. To be more accurate, only one of them came out this week, as it took a couple of weeks for my screener of My Hero Academia: Season Two, Volume Two: Limited Edition Combo Pack to arrive. It is the Pick of the Week.
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April 20th, 2014
Monsters is a horror anthology show that ran for three seasons and was a sequel of sorts to Tales from the Darkside, which I previously reviewed. The final season of that show was weak, but can this series perform better throughout its three-year run?
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July 12th, 2013
Next week is a busy week with four films coming out: Turbo, The Conjuring, Red 2, and R.I.P.D. All four films should make $20 million over the weekend, more or less, (less in the case of R.I.P.D.). This makes it really hard to choose the target film. R.I.P.D. is the least likely to be a hit, so it is eliminated. Turbo is the most likely, but it opens on Wednesday, so it is eliminated. I really want The Conjuring to be a hit, because there are several actors in the movie that I like. (Lili Taylor doesn't get enough work in my opinion.) However, I think Red 2 will have the biggest opening of the weekend. As such, it is the target film for this week's box office prediction contest. In order to win, one must simply predict the opening weekend box office number for Red 2.
Whoever comes the closest to predicting the film's opening 3-day weekend box office (Friday to Sunday), without going over, will win a copy of Femme Fatales: The Complete Second Season on DVD.
Meanwhile, whoever comes the closest to predicting the film's opening 3-day weekend box office (Friday to Sunday), without going under, will also win a copy of Femme Fatales: The Complete Second Season on DVD.
Entries must be received by 10 a.m., Pacific Time on Friday to be eligible, so don't delay!
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July 1st, 2013
For the most part, June was a really strong month at the box office with nearly every film either matching expectations, or at least coming close enough to call it a victory. Looking forward, there are a dozen films opening wide in July, more or less. One of them, The Smurfs 2, is opening on a Wednesday, so I'm going to hold off talking about that movie till the August preview. Kevin Hart: Let Me Explain is opening in less than 1000 theaters, but it has a shot at reaching the top ten during its opening weekend. If we include both of them, there are twelve films, but I think it is better to stick with the ten truly wide, truly July openings. Of these, Despicable Me 2 is clearly going to be the biggest hit at the box office. It could become the second biggest hit of the year so far. It is not the only film that could be a $100 million hit. In fact, there are six films opening in July that I think have a better than 50% chance of reaching that level. There is currently only one film that I think won't at least become a midlevel hit. By comparison in 2012, there were three $100 million movies, led by The Dark Knight Rises, but the rest of the new releases struggled. There's no chance any movie opening this month will top $400 million, in fact, it is quite possible no film will get to $300 million. That said, 2013 has a lot better depth, so it might come out on top in the end.
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