May 2nd, 2020
The Half of It leads the way when it comes to streaming releases. The coming-of-age teenage romance movie should please most viewers. On the other hand, Hollywood has the loudest buzz when it comes to the TV series end of the list, but its reviews are disappointing.
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June 14th, 2015
The Duff opened in February, which isn't a good time of the year to release a film. It earned good reviews and topped its meager expectations. Now that it is out on the home market, is it worth picking up? Was it unfairly overlooked by moviegoers the first time around?
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June 8th, 2015
It is a good week, but not a great week on the home market. There's really only one major release to talk about, Kingsman: The Secret Service. It is also one of the best releases of the week and one of a trio of Pick of the Week contenders that earned between 70% and 80% positive reviews. The other two are The Duff and The Sisterhood of Night. All three are worth picking up, but the winner of the Pick of the Week title is Red Army on DVD or Blu-ray / Video on Demand.
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June 1st, 2015
May turned out to be softer than anticipated with The Avengers: Age of Ultron missing expectations by about $100 million. Additionally, only Pitch Perfect 2 really topped expectations. May 2015 kept pace with May of 2014, more or less. June doesn't have any films as strong as Age of Ultron, but there are two films that should have no trouble getting to $200 million. Those two films are Jurassic World and Inside Out and I'm not sure which one will turn out to be the biggest hit of the month. Last June, the biggest hit was Transformers: Age of Extinction, but both Jurassic World and Inside Out should top that film, albeit by small margins. On the other hand, last June had four other films that reached $100 million, while this time around only Spy! and Ted 2 have a real shot at that milestone. 2015 is stronger at the top, but has weaker depth. It will be interesting to see if 2015 will keep pace with 2014 over the course of the full month.
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February 1st, 2015
It was a record-breaking January thanks entirely to American Sniper, which set records, both during its limited release run and especially when it expanded wide. There were a couple of other films that did well, but for the most part, it was a typical January. The question is, will American Sniper boost the overall box office, which would help February, or will its effects fade as it does? There are ten wide releases in February; there are a few films that may or may not open in the top ten. Of these, there are only two that have a real shot at true box office success. The biggest film in terms of buzz is Fifty Shades of Grey, which looks so, so bad. Personally, I would rather watch The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water a hundred times than sit through just the trailer for Fifty Shades of Grey. If Fifty Shades of Grey becomes the biggest hit of the month, it will mrean the end of civilization. Because. I. Will. End. Civilization. Last February was mostly mediocre, except for The LEGO Movie which was a huge early year hit. There's no chance any film opening this month will match The LEGO Movie; the top two films likely won't match The LEGO Movie. Because of this, 2015 will need to rely on depth to come out ahead. I'm not sure how likely that will be.
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