December 21st, 2009
Talk about last minute gift ideas. In fact, if you buy gifts online, it will be too late to grab these, because it would take too long to ship them to you. As such, there are a number of prime releases as studios hope to attract last minute gift givers, but also a few that feel like they are being dumped here as an early Boxing Week sales. At the top of the list we have (500) Days of Summer on DVD or Blu-ray + Digital Copy and District 9 on Blu-ray. (The latter is also coming out on DVD, but the Blu-ray is by far the best deal.) Both are worthy of the DVD Pick of the Week. Meanwhile, if you are Canadian, or a fan of Canadian culture, grab Trailer Park Boys 2 - Countdown to Liquor Day on Blu-ray, which is the ever-popular DVD Puck of the Week.
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December 17th, 2009
Mike Judge has not had an easy time at the box office.
His only film that you could call a real hit was Beavis and Butt-head Do America, and that came out more than a decade ago.
Office Space barely made a dent at the box office, but it became a major cult hit on the home market.
Idiocracy barely made it to theaters at all, but it too found a more favorable reception on the home market.
That brings us to Extract, which was released in just 1,600 theaters in September.
Needless to say, it was not a major box office hit.
But was this a result of poor marketing or weak studio support?
Did it deserve better and will it find an audience on the home market?
Or will this be a film that even fans of Mike Judge would rather forget?
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September 15th, 2009
The first official weekend of Autumn was not great at the box office, as every single new release missed expectations, some by small margins, others quite dramatically.
This was enough to push the total box office down to $92 million, off 6.7% from last weekend and 8.7% lower than the same weekend last year.
Year-to-date, 2009 is still up on 2008 by a significant margin, leading $7.53 billion to $7.00 billion.
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September 8th, 2009
Labor Day long weekend is over and, as we already knew, the summer of 2009 set records.
Over the summer months, the box office earned $4.31 billion, which was well ahead of 2007's previous record of $4.16 billion.
Granted, as mentioned before, this summer not only had two years of inflation, but also one additional weekend.
Even so, there's a lot to cheer about.
This past weekend, the industry pulled in $99 million over three days and $125 million over four.
This is a huge amount compared to same weekend last year; however, because summer lasted one week longer, this weekend last year was the weekend after the Labor Day long weekend, so the comparison falls apart.
Year-to-date, 2009 has earned $7.41 billion, which is 7.8% more than at the same point in 2008.
The lead in terms of raw dollars is more than $500 million, and it would take a massive collapse for this lead to evaporate.
Hopefully that will not happen, but given the performance of the three new releases this week, it is not impossible.
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September 4th, 2009
September 3rd, 2009
It's the final weekend of summer 2009, and already we've broken the record for the season.
The previous record was set in 2007 when the total summer box office was $4.16 billion.
In comparison, at the end of last weekend, 2009 had earned $4.17 billion and there's one more weekend to go.
Granted, 2009 is a rare year where the summer had 18 weekends instead of 17, and 2009 also has two years worth of inflation to help, but this is still worth celebrating.
Looking at the final weekend of the summer, we should end the season on a high note as this time last year was, well, terrible.
It would be nearly medically impossible for the summer to end weaker than last year, but there is a chance none of the three wide releases will come out on top, which would be a bit of a disappointing end.
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September 1st, 2009
Summer ended on a strong note with three films from August that have the potential to cross $100 million at the box office. But I don't think there's a single film coming out this month that has the potential to do the same.
Then again, we're not concerned with keeping up with August, we are concerned with keeping up with September last year, and that will be an easier task most weeks.
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August 23rd, 2008
This week's round of new casting information contains updates for Extract, Gnomeo and Juliet, My Life in Ruins, and more!
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July 10th, 2008
This week's round of new casting information contains updates for Angels & Demons, Extract, The Rocker, and more!
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July 10th, 2008
This week another number of upcoming movies, new stars and directors have been added to our archive!
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