Home Market Releases for December 13th, 2016

December 12th, 2016

This is a strange week on the home market. We have one of the biggest domestic hits of the year, Suicide Squad, but it is one of the worst movies I’ve seen this year. (Granted, I’ve done fewer reviews this year and skipped a lot of terrible looking movies, like Independence Day: Resurgence, Warcraft, Gods of Egypt, Allegiant... Ben Hur, The Huntsman, The Legend of Tarzan. I could keep going. Wow! It was a bad year for $100 million movies.) After Suicide Squad, the next biggest release according to Amazon is the Chicago Cubs 2016 World Series Collector's Edition Blu-ray. That’s a huge drop in sales. As far as quality is concerned, I have to give a shout out to that World Series Blu-ray. Real fans want full games and this one provides them. On the other hand, I personally find baseball boring to watch. Unfortunately, there’s no one release that stands out as an obvious Pick of the Week, but instead we have a lot of releases that are close, but wouldn’t be close enough during a good week. The Twilight Zone: The Complete Series on Blu-ray is the best, assuming you didn’t grab the individual seasons when they came out. More...

Home Market Releases for November 29th, 2016

November 28th, 2016

Last week was the week of Black Friday / Cyber Monday, so the massive sales scared away top-notch releases. This week is the week after Black Friday / Cyber Monday and the new releases are even worse. There are a few midlevel releases, like Don’t Breathe or Pete’s Dragon, but the the size of the release quickly drops from there. Fortunately, both of those releases are very good and on even really busy weeks would be contenders for Pick of the Week. It was a close pick between the two, but in the end, I went with Don’t Breathe as Pick of the Week. More...

Theater Averages: White Girl Starts in the Black with Average of $10,155

September 7th, 2016

There were only two films to earn more than $10,000 on the theater average chart. White Girl lead the way with an average of $11,353 in three theaters. Meanwhile, No Manches Frida earned an average $10,155 in 362 theaters, which is even more impressive. More...

Theater Averages: Howard Ends up on Top with $11,920

August 30th, 2016

There was only one film in the $10,000 club this week and it was a re-release. Howards End pulled in nearly $24,000 in two theaters for an average of $11,920. The best true new release was The Hollars, which earned an average of $9.553 in four theaters. More...

Weekend Estimates: Don’t Breathe Launches with Impressive $26.1 Million

August 28th, 2016

Fall season begins in earnest this weekend with the low-budget suspense flick Don’t Breathe taking over at the top of the box office chart. Sony is predicting a $26.1 million debut for the film, which will be the best debut for a horror or suspense film since The Purge: Election Year’s $31.5 million in July, and the best for a non-sequel since Annabelle’s $37.1 million in October, 2014. Don’t Breathe has the advantage of really good reviews (currently running at 84% positive on Rotten Tomatoes), although it will have a lot of competition over the next few weeks, with films aimed at a broadly similar audience coming out every week for the next three weeks (not to mention a truckload more arriving in October). More...

Friday Estimates: Don’t Breathe Inhales $10.02 million

August 27th, 2016

Don’t Breathe earned a stunning $10.02 million on Friday, which isn’t that much less than some people predicted it would earn over the entire weekend. Its reviews are among the best of any wide release to come out this year. Its CinemaScore was a B+, which is better than most horror films manage. (Like I’ve said in the past, there are two schools of horror fans: gorehounds and those who demand high tension. It is nearly impossible to appeal to both groups, so these movies have a hard time doing well in this metric.) Horror films tend to have a low internal multiplier, but the film is still on pace for $23 million, which is ahead of predictions. More...

Limited and VOD Releases: Stone Cold Releases

August 26th, 2016

While there are a lot of films on this week’s list, none of them look like they will be box office hits. Southside with You is one of the best releases this week, but it is playing in over 800 theaters, which is likely too many. There are a number of other films that are worth seeing, like Floyd Norman: An Animated Life, but most of them are playing on Video on Demand, so their box office chances are nearly zero. More...