May 8th, 2012
Contraband benefited from a really weak slate of new releases and this helped it earn first place on the DVD sales chart. During its first week of release, it sold 470,000 units and generated $7.52 million, which is good given its box office numbers.
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May 2nd, 2012
Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol led all new releases topping the Blu-ray sales chart with an impressive debut of 1.34 million units / $29.51 million. Its opening week Blu-ray share was an outstanding 67%. As a result of this fantastic opening, I'm making a bold prediction. By the end of the year, a summer blockbuster will open with a Blu-ray share of 75%.
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May 2nd, 2012
There were not a lot of new releases to reach the top 30 on the DVD sales chart this week and only one of them reached the top five. We did have a new number one film, as Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol easily topped the chart with 661,000 units / $10.24 million. This is a disappointing start for a film that made $200 million in theaters. Fortunately, it did better on Blu-ray.
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April 25th, 2012
This literally could turn out to be the worst week of the year on the Blu-ray sales chart. The best-selling new release was The Darkest Hour, which only managed 158,000 units / $3.17 million. The only good news is the film's opening week Blu-ray share, which was an impressive 54%.
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April 25th, 2012
It was a bad week for DVD, which is common at this time of year. The Iron Lady was the best of the new releases, but it only managed second place. War Horse climbed into top spot with 244,000 units / $4.67 million over the week for totals of 830,000 units / $14.62 million after two.
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April 18th, 2012
This is becoming a pattern on the Blu-ray sales chart. Just like it has been for the past few weeks, new releases were soft. Granted, War Horse did top the Blu-ray sales chart, but with just 314,000 units / $7.84 million. Its opening week Blu-ray share was 36%, which is about average for the format.
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April 18th, 2012
There were not a lot of new releases to reach the top 30 on this week's DVD Sales Chart, but at least there was some action on top. Hop overtook Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chip-Wrecked for first place with 729,000 units / $10.52 million for the week and 2.04 million units / $33.51 million after three. It is now just the third DVD of 2012 to sell 2 million units.
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April 10th, 2012
There were not many new releases on the Blu-ray sales chart and many of the top selling DVDs were family films, which tend to struggle on high definition. Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chip-Wrecked did grab first place, but with just 270,000 units / $6.29 million. Its opening week Blu-ray Share was just 23%, which is weak for the format as a whole and only average for the genre.
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April 3rd, 2012
It wasn't a busy week on the home market with only a few first run releases of note. Both War Horse on Four-Disc Blu-ray Combo Pack and We Bought a Zoo on Blu-ray Combo Pack are worth picking, but not Pick of the Week material. For that we have to look to Chinatown on Blu-ray. It is shovelware, but it is such a great movie that I'm willing to overlook this.
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April 2nd, 2012
War Horse opened right at the peak of Awards Season and was clearly made to win awards. However, while it earned a number of major nominations, including six Oscars, it wasn't able to convert them into awards. Did the film get shut out because it was good, but not great? Or was it robbed during the ceremonies?
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February 26th, 2012
It's Oscars night. (Actually, it's 3:43 in the morning as I'm typing this, but I thought I would get a jump on the celebration.) As I do every year, I will follow the announcements live and update our list of Oscar winners. However, this year I will be doing it a little differently and the list of nominees below will include the favorites as picked by our readers in Italics and as picked by me in Bold. So you can watch live and tell when I'm out of the running for our Oscar contest. (I figure it will take at least 17 wins out of 24 to come out on top. Maybe even 18 or 19 wins.) So, will The Artist be the big winner tonight as our readers predict? Or will Hugo score the upset? Stay tuned to fine out.
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February 23rd, 2012
With our annual Oscar Prediction contest underway, now is the best time to look at the nominees and try and figure out who the favorites are and which films should just feel honored to be nominated. We wrap up our look at the prestigious categories with the most prestigious of them all: Best Picture. This year there were nine nominees, but not all of them really have a shot at winning. (One of the nominations generated more outrage than anything else.) Is there a favorite? And are there any that have a legitimate shot at the upset?
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February 5th, 2012
The industry's healthy start to 2012 will continue this weekend thanks to two more good opening weekends. Chronicle is currently favorite to win the weekend, with Fox predicting a $22 million opening. CBS Films is pegging The Woman in Black at $21 million (a record for the fledgling studio). Both figures are predicated on historical models for SuperBowl Sunday, which can be a difficult day to predict, so the final order between the two could yet switch, although Chronicle is heavily favored to win at this point. Overall box office will be up about 35% from last year, although that reflects the very weak start to 2011. This weekend looks as though it will be about average for a SuperBowl weekend overall.
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January 24th, 2012
Yesterday was one of the biggest days during Awards Season as The Oscar nominations were announced in the morning. It was a two horse race for top spot as far as the big winners are concerned. Hugo earned the most nominations with eleven, while The Artist was right behind with ten. However, one could argue The Artist is the bigger winner, as more of its nominations were in the more prestigious categories.
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January 4th, 2012
The nominees for this year's Producers Guild of America were announced and there were not a lot of surprises. For instance, nine of the ten nominees for Theatrical Motion Pictures also earned Golden Globe Nominations for either Best Drama or Best Musical / Comedy. Four of the five Animated films also did the same. It does make the Awards Season picture a lot clearer going forward, but it makes coming up with something to say much harder.
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January 3rd, 2012
2011 ends and 2012 begins, but the new beginnings didn't change. The overall box office rose to $155 million over the weekend, $200 million if you include Monday. This is higher than last weekend, but since Christmas landed on the weekend, this was to be expected. It is troubling that for the three-day portion of the weekend, the box office was 3% lower than last year, which is weaker than expected. 2011 ended with $10.22 billion, which was 3% lower than 2010. Attendance was down 4%, meaning the year had the lowest tickets sales since 1995. We can only hope the next 52 weeks are better than the last 52 weeks were.
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January 1st, 2012
Mission: Impossible will enjoy another weekend at the top of the chart, according to studio estimates released on Sunday, and 2011 will end on a small uptick from 2010, but a lackluster Holiday Season overall will cap a year where the total box office will fall around 3% and ticket sales will be down 4%, making the year as a whole the worst for ticket sales since 1995 (full historical analysis here).
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December 29th, 2011
The New Year's Eve weekend is one of the most prosperous at the box office, but it also usually has no wide releases. This is the case this year, for the most part. War Horse and The Darkest Hour will have their first full weekends at the box office, but that's as close as we have to a new release. This means it is unlikely there will be many major changes in the ranking of the top five films and Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol has a clear shot at first place. Also, because Christmas Eve fell on Saturday, we should see strong growth across the board. Anything less than double-digit growth by any film will be considered a disappointment. This means we could actually end 2011 on a winning note compared to 2010. It wouldn't be enough to make a difference in the big picture, but a win is a win.
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December 27th, 2011
Due to the placement of Christmas Day, we are still dealing with mostly studio estimates for weekend numbers. However, while we wait for the final numbers, we can look at some of these early results and compare them to expectations and in some cases use them predict how these films will end their theatrical runs. (In some cases, there's not enough information to guess where it will go in the future.) As for the overall box office numbers, we don't know if the final tally will be higher or lower than last year, but I'm not optimistic.
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December 26th, 2011
A mess of Wednesday, Friday and Sunday openings makes for a somewhat confusing picture at the box office over Christmas weekend, but Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol came out the clear-cut winner according to studio estimates released on Sunday and Monday. Its weekend haul of approximately $29.5 million left it $9 million clear of Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, which is the only other movie that can claim to be really strong at the box office at this point in time.
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December 21st, 2011
This year Christmas is a mess, when it comes to the box office. There are six films opening or expanding wide spread over six days. This includes The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which was bumped up at the last minute and opened on Tuesday. At the other end of the time frame, War Horse and The Darkest Hour don't open till Sunday. The number of films virtually guarantees at least two will struggle at the box office, but hopefully by spreading out the releases, moviegoers will be able to spread their daily movie contact among the new releases. That is if people will bother going to the movies. The longer the slump continues, the more likely it is due to a systemic issue. When people stop going to the movies, they don't see as many trailers and posters for upcoming releases and they are less excited about upcoming releases and, therefore, they are less likely to see movies in the future. It's a vicious cycle. Last year wasn't a great weekend at the box office, because Christmas Eve, which is a dead zone at the box office, landed on a Friday. This year it lands on a Saturday, so it could be even worse.
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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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December 1st, 2011
Well... game over. At the beginning of November, 2011's total box office was $340 million behind 2010's pace. We needed that gap to be closed significantly by the end of the month, but it actually grew wider. So now that there's virtually no chance that 2011 will avoid a year-over-year decline at the box office, not unless there's a surprise Avatar coming out this month. But is there at least some hope for the next four weeks? Last December six films reach $100 million, including one that opened in limited release and expanded wide, but none reached $200 million. This year, four are practically sure bets at $100 million, including one or two that could reach $200 million. Plus, there are four others that should make between $75 million and $100 million. I doubt all of them will reach the century mark, but if one did, it wouldn't be a shock. Then there's a couple of limited releases that should expand wide and, maybe, if one of them becomes the big play during Awards Season, it could reach $100 million as well. Even if every film beat expectations, 2011 won't come out ahead. But maybe if enough do, we can at least end the year on a high note. Unfortunately it has come down to that. Instead of talking about the box office record being broken, we are hoping 2011 doesn't end on yet another sour note.
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