Home Market Releases for February 4th, 2020

February 5th, 2020

It is a slow week for truly great releases. Both Doctor Sleep and The Nightingale are worth picking up, but not Pick of the Week contenders. Last Christmas is also worth picking up, but only if you like Romantic Comedies with magical realism. As for the Pick of the Week, I’m going with That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime: Season One, Part Two and if you really into Isekai Anime, grab Isekai Quartet: Season One as well. More...

Home Market Releases for January 28th, 2020

January 30th, 2020

The big winter releases are starting to come out, but the overall quantity of releases is still rather soft. Terminator: Dark Fate is the biggest release of the week, but it isn’t the best. As for the best, it was a close two-way race between Fail Safe and Parasite, with the latter winning by the tiniest of margins. More...

Weekend Wrap-Up: The Box Office is in a Deep Sleep

November 12th, 2019

It was a weekend to forget with the four new releases earning significantly less than The Grinch opened with last year. Still, the four new releases took the to four spots, meaning there were no powerful holdovers to make up the difference. Midway was the best of the bunch, while Playing with Fire was the biggest positive surprise. Unfortunately, Doctor Sleep missed expectations by a larger margin than those two films beat our predictions, so the good news was drowned out by the bad. Overall, the box office was 5.9% higher than last weekend at $121 million. This is not a reason to celebrate, as last weekend was arguably Halloween weekend, which is one of the worst weekends of the year. More importantly, the weekend was behind the same weekend last year by 28%. 2019 is now behind 2018’s pace by 5.9% or $580 million at $9.32 billion to $9.90 billion. However, and this is important, as bad as 2019 has been doing, we are still ahead of 2017’s pace, both in terms of raw dollars and ticket sales, so there’s no need to panic. While we would prefer to set records every year, being the second best year at the box office is still worth celebrating. More...

Weekend Wrap-Up: Dark Fate Might have Terminated the Franchise

November 5th, 2019

It was a bad weekend at the box office, with Terminator: Dark Fate missing expectations by a significant degree. Harriet was able to beat expectations, but it wasn’t enough to truly compensate. Furthermore, Arctic Dogs and Motherless Brooklyn were practically non-factors at the box office. The box office did grow 9.5% from last weekend reaching $115 million. More importantly, this was 21% lower than this weekend last year. 2019’s deficit grew to 5.6% or $540 million and is now behind 2018’s pace by $9.15 billion to $9.70 billion. It is important to point out that while 2019 is being crushed by 2018, it is still on pace to be the second largest box office of all time, while its ticket sales are better than 2017’s pace, so as disappointing as the year as been so far, there are still reasons to celebrate. More...

Weekend Estimates: Terminator Tops Chart, but is Far from Lethal

November 3rd, 2019

As expected, Terminator: Dark Fate is going to open in first place over the weekend. Unfortunately, it is failing to match even the low end of expectations with an estimate of $29 million during its opening weekend. Its reviews and its B plus from CinemaScore are not great, but they are better than this opening. The film is doing much better internationally with an estimated $$72.9 million debut, including an estimated $30 million opening in China. However, that’s not enough. The film needs close to $500 million worldwide to break even and since the only major market left to debut in is Japan, it’s not going to get there. More...

Friday Estimates: Holiday Season Starts Without a Lot of Cheer

November 2nd, 2019

Terminator: Dark Fate opened in first place on Friday, but it only made $10.6 million, well below expectations. Its reviews and its B plus from CinemaScore are good, but not great, meaning it won’t have the legs needed to overcome this slow start. Look for about $28 million domestically this weekend. Early reports have it performing better internationally with a likely $30 million debut in China, but again, this is below expectations and not enough given the film’s $185 million production budget. More...

Thursday Night Previews: Terminator Takes in $2.35 million

November 1st, 2019

Terminator: Dark Fate managed $2.35 million from its previews on Thursday. Normally, this wouldn’t be enough to kick-start a strong weekend, but yesterday was Halloween, which is far from a normal day at the box office. Furthermore, its reviews are better than most of the rest of the Terminator franchise, and good enough to have decent legs. It is still too early to tell where it will finish its opening weekend. Halloween is just too big a wildcard to make an accurate guess at this point. We will know more this time tomorrow when the Friday estimates come out. More...

2019 Preview: November

November 1st, 2019

Joker single-handedly saved October. Had the film merely matched expectations, then the month would had suffered a major loss in the year-over-year competition. We sill lost a little ground, but not so much that we will look to October as the reason 2019 missed last year’s pace. As for November, we have some potential monster hits with Frozen II leading the way. If that film doesn’t earn at least $1 billion worldwide, I will be shocked. Additionally, every week has at least one movie coming out that has a somewhat realistic shot at $100 million, although not all of them will get there. Unfortunately, last November was much better, with five films that topped $100 million, including three that earned more than $200 million. I think 2019 will be better at the top, but it just won’t have the depth to keep pace with last year. More...

Weekend Predictions: Halloween Gives Way to the Holiday Season

October 31st, 2019

It’s the first weekend of November, which is the unofficial start of both the Christmas blockbuster season and of Awards Season. There are four films hoping to take advantage of time of year to create some box office success. Of these, only Terminator: Dark Fate is expected to be a true box office hit. It will likely earn more during its opening weekend than any of the rest of the new releases earn in total. I think Harriet will do okay and could even crack $10 million during the weekend. On the other hand, Arctic Dogs still has no reviews and that’s a really bad sign. Finally there’s Motherless Brooklyn, which is opening in well under 2,000 theaters. This weekend last year, Bohemian Rhapsody opened with more than $50 million and even the high end predictions don’t have Terminator: Dark Fate earning that much. It’s going to be another bad week for 2019 in the year-over-year competition. More...