December 16th, 2011
The Hollywood Foreign Press Association announced their nominations and the Awards Season picture started to look a whole lot clearer. The Artist led the way with six nominations, while The Descendents and The Help were right behind with five apiece.
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November 16th, 2011
Not only did Cars 2 lead the way on the DVD sales chart, it led the way on the Blu-ray sales chart as well. It dominated new releases and holdovers alike, selling 1.76 million units and generating $44.57 million in opening week sales. Its opening Blu-ray ratio was 47%, which is very good for a kids movie and an unexpected boon for the format.
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November 16th, 2011
While there were only four new releases to reach the top 30 on this week's DVD Sales Chart, three of them took the top three spots. Cars 2 earned first place with ease, selling 1.98 million units and generating $31.24 million in opening week sales.
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November 1st, 2011
The selection of home market releases is rather soft this week. Sure, Cars 2 was a major hit at the box office, but it is the only major hit on this week's list. The best selling TV on DVD release is Californication, which is a cable show, while the top ten selling titles according to Amazon.com include limited releases, catalogue titles and direct-to-DVD releases. There are more second-tier Christmas releases than any other type of release. There are far fewer titles that are worth picking up than last week, and the the Pick of the Week contenders are even more limited. Transformers: Beast Wars comes out on a Complete Series Collection and that could be Pick of the Week material, but I'm still waiting for the screener.
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August 8th, 2011
It seems summer is still around as the box office was stronger than expected. Not only did Rise of the Planet of the Apes earn more than last year's number one film, The Other Guys, by a large margin, but the rest of the box office was also able to gain ground on 2010. Granted, with a total haul of $167 million, it was down 7% from last weekend. But more importantly, it was up by 26% from last year. Year-to-date 2011 has pulled in $6.68 billion, which is still 5% lower than this point last year, but we are closing the gap and if the fall is as strong as the summer was, we could still squeeze out a win.
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August 1st, 2011
It was a very, very close race for top spot at box office this weekend with the top two films separated by less than $1 million. In the end, it was Cowboys and Aliens that came out on top, even though it finished on the low end of predictions. However, with The Smurfs earning much more than expected, the overall box office take was a surprisingly brisk $180 million. This was still 6% lower than last weekend, but more importantly, 24% higher than the same weekend last year. Year-to-date, 2011 has brought in $6.42 billion, or about 6% less than last year's pace. With a little luck, 2011 will be able to close that gap a bit more before the end of summer.
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July 31st, 2011
Universal and Sony showed how compromise is done on Sunday, as each studio settled on an identical weekend estimate, with Cowboys & Aliens and The Smurfs tied on an estimated $36,206,250. That's a slight disappointment for Cowboys (although certainly up from the worst fears of a few weeks ago) and above expectations for Smurfs, which showed the resilience of kids movies to weak reviews and gave 3D a needed boost.
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July 28th, 2011
Summer is starting to wind down and while there are no sure-fire monster hits opening from now until November, there are still a few more potential $100 million hits coming out before we can close the book on the summer. Cowboys and Aliens is one of these films, and while it is clearly the biggest new release of the week, it still has competition from Captain America: The First Avenger during its opening weekend. On the high end, the film could earn more than the combined openings of last year's three wide releases. Even on the low end, it should have no trouble topping last year's number one film. This should help 2011 win over 2010 for the third week in a row, which is enough to be considered a streak.
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June 28th, 2011
July starts with one of the most important holidays of the year, which is good news for the industry, as June was a little weaker than expected, at least on average. None of the films were shockingly bad at the box office, even if a few missed early predictions by significant degrees. But conversely, none really shocked analysts with their box office prowess. As such, 2011 continued to slide a little further behind 2010's pace, a trend the movie industry hopes will end this month. Fortunately, that is a reasonable goal. Last July was home to two $100 million movies, two $200 million movies, and a one $300 million movie, assuming you count The Twilight Saga: Eclipse as a July film. This time around, we could see two films top $300 million, assuming you count Transformers: Dark of the Moon as a July release. Meanwhile, there are several potential $100 million films. I count up to six films with a statistically significant shot at reaching the century mark, but I would be amazed if more than half of them got there.
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