Despite dropping 82 locations this week, TAYLOR SWIFT | THE ERAS TOUR will remain the widest release for the third consecutive week, still available in a 3,773 theaters, outpacing a bevy of newcomers, including the supernatural horror, Five Nights at Freddy’s as it makes its way into theaters. The concert film will likely fall into second place at the box office, but there are still plenty of opportunities to see the mega event on the big screen.
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TAYLOR SWIFT | THE ERAS TOUR will handily win the weekend at the box office, according to studio projections released on Sunday morning. The concert movie will drop about 67% from its opening to $31 million. Killers of the Flower Moon will post an excellent opening in second place, but won’t hit the highs hoped for on Friday.
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Martin Scorsese or Taylor Swift? That’s the question facing moviegoers this weekend. After The Eras Tour smashed records last weekend, with a $92.8-million debut, it’s expected to fall substantially this weekend. Killers of the Flower Moon is expected to land Scorsese one of his best openings ever. But which one will top the chart is extremely hard to prediction, even with Thursday’s numbers for each film beginning to give us some clues.
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At the turn of the 20th century, oil brought a fortune to the Osage Nation, who became some of the richest people in the world overnight. The wealth of these Native Americans immediately attracted white interlopers, who manipulated, extorted, and stole as much Osage money as they could before resorting to murder.
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The absolutely spectacular performance of The Super Mario Bros. Movie at the box office, plus new announcements from Apple, among others, gives our 2023 market prediction a substantial power-up this month. Our overall market prediction currently stands at slightly over $10 billion, up a massive $800 million from last month.
Our annual Oscar Prediction contest closes at noon, Pacific Time, on Sunday, so 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 are continuing our shortened schedule with Best Director. We have yet another close race with two films that are practically a coin-toss away from being the winner.
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The Oscar nominations were announced on Monday, and the results were... well, there were some puzzling results. Joker led the way with eleven nominations. ... A film with 69% positive reviews earned the most nominations. It’s not the worst-reviewed movie to earn a Best Picture Nomination—after all, Bohemian Rhapsody was nominated just last year. However, this film is arguably the worst-reviewed movie to ever earn the most nominations in a single year.
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The Golden Globes nominations are the second major Awards Season set to come out. It is still very early in the year and the predictive value of the Golden Globes is a little suspect, but there are still some things to learn here. (This is especially true on the TV end, as there’s talk about how strange the nominations are this year.) Marriage Story led the way with six nominations, just ahead of The Irishman and Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood, both of which picked up five nods.
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There are not many limited releases on this week’s list and even fewer of them are earning overwhelmingly positive reviews. The best of these is The Irishman, which is also earning the loudest buzz. It should get off to a fantastic start, but it has less than a month before it hits Netflix, so it won’t have great legs in theaters.
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It’s a good week for Pick of the Week contenders, as there are seven such releases on this week’s list. Unfortunately, none of them really scream out as The Pick of the Week. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is by far the biggest, but it is only out on Video on Demand right now, while Hidden Figures is the best, but again, it is only on VOD this week. There are also a couple of busted Oscar-bait films, Archer: Season Seven is only getting a DVD release, while the previous seasons came out on Blu-ray. In the end, I went with Mystery Science Theater 3000: Volume XXXVIII, partially to celebrate the return of the show.
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As expected, Hidden Figures remained in first place as the box office was dominated by holdovers. The best of the new releases / wide expansions was The Bye Bye Man, which earned fifth place with $15.20 million. On the positive side, while there was only one film to earn more than $20 million over the weekend, there were seven that earned $10 million or more. That’s really good depth. It’s good enough for an 8.5% increase from last weekend reaching $149 million. However, this is still 10% lower than the same weekend last year. Year-to-date, 2017 is behind 2016 by 15% at $562 million to $659 million, but again, it is way too soon to make any predictions.
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December box office numbers helped 2016 end on ... a note. The good news and the bad news almost exactly balance out. On the one hand, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story will finish the year with more than $400 million after just 16 days of release. That’s a stunning amount of money that helped 2016 earn a record box office at the domestic market. However, Star Wars: The Force Awakens earned $650 million during December of 2015, so the month lost a lot of its lead over 2015, so much so that ticket sales fell behind last year’s total. The weakness at the end of the year will spill over into 2017, which is terrible news. A slow start could result in the dominant box office story being 2017 struggles compared to 2016. Bad news like this can sometimes become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Sadly, 2017 is also going to get off to a slow start when it comes to wide releases / expansions. There are 16 films scheduled to open or expand wide this month and none of them are expected to get to $100 million. It is likely none of them will even get very close. xXx: Return of Xander Cage is expected to be the best of a weak bunch, but I could see it getting beat by one of the five Oscar contenders opening wide this month, if it gets off to a slow start and one of the Oscar contenders starts picking up steam. Hidden Figures got off to a great start on Christmas Day and should it continue to earn Awards Season recognition, including some Oscar nominations, it could be in wide release well into February. Last January wasn’t as busy with 13 films opening or expanding wide over five weeks. Of these, two of them, The Revenant and Kung Fu Panda 3, topped $100 million domestically, while another, Ride Along 2, came close. 2017 is going to get destroyed in the year-over-year comparison.
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There are a number of limited releases coming out this week spread from Wednesday through Sunday. This includes several that are aiming for Awards Season glory: 20th Century Women, Hidden Figures, Silence, and others. There might be too many great films on this week's list, which means some will not live up to their box office potential.
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It is a good, but very shallow week on the home market. The Wolf of Wall Street is leading the pack, with the Blu-ray Combo Pack earning first place and DVD earning second. This is a $100 million hit and a multi-Oscar nominee, so it is not surprising it is earning the top two spots. On the other hand, third place currently belongs to Monster High: Frights, Camera, Action! on DVD. That's a real sign that it is a shallow week. That's not to say some of the smaller releases are not worth picking up. Mystery Science Theater 3000: XXIX is certainly a contender for Pick of the Week, but in the end I went with The Wolf of Wall Street. On a side note, Continuum: Season 2 on Blu-ray earned the Puck of the Week, for Best Canadian Release.
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The Wolf of Wall Street is the latest film from Martin Scorsese and stars Leonardo DiCaprio. Not surprisingly, it was considered an Awards Season favorite from the time it was announced. The last time Martin Scorsese directed a movie that didn't earn at least overall positive reviews was Boxcar Bertha back in 1972, which is so long ago that we don't even have it in our database. That's a winning streak that is probably second to none. Since the year 2000, he has released six movies (not counting documentaries) and five of those six have earned multiple Oscar nominations. Combined, they have earned 14 Oscar wins. On the other hand, this film earned weaker reviews than expected and was shut out on Oscar night. So is this film weaker than than average for his recent work? Or has he simply made so many great movies that the expectations are just too high?
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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. Today we end this with the two most prestigious awards, starting with Best Director. You could generously call this a two-horse race, but in reality there is only one director expected to win.
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Frozen continues its impressive run earning first place with $24.0 million in 47 markets for totals of $545.1 million internationally and $913.7 million worldwide. It became the 28th film to reach that level and has already overtaken Finding Nemo for 27th place. The film opened in China with $14.11 million over the weekend, which was enough for third place over the weekend, which is good, but not amazing. On the other hand, it fell just 30% in South Korea adding $8.93 million on 1,375 screens over the weekend, lifting its total to $58.04 million after four weeks of release. At this pace, it should catch up to Despicable Me 2 in a couple of weeks, and depending on how it does in Japan, it could reach $1 billion worldwide.
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The Oscar nominations were announced this morning and there are some surprises mixed in with the predictable results. Gravity and American Hustle led the way with ten nominations each while 12 Years a Slave was right behind with nine. The fact that 12 Years a Slave wasn't the leader is the first of the surprises.
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The Directors Guild of America finished its theatrical nominations yesterday with the Documentary category. I'm of two minds with the list of nominees. On the one hand, I feel like I should be surprised, because a number of documentaries thought to be Oscar favorites were left off the list. On the other hand, they've been left off the list a number of times. I think it is time to rethink who is and is not an Oscar favorite.
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The Directors Guild of America handed out their nominations for Feature Films today and will do the same for Documentaries next week. I have no idea why they do this, but it makes my job harder. Usually, I just wait till the Documentary nominations are announced, but this year I will do two stories. Next week will be mostly cut and paste job.
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We had some good news and some bad news in November. The bad news is the overall weakness at the box office continued and 2013 lost its lead over 2012. Strong runs by The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and Frozen did help it bounce back in the end, but 2013 is still going to have a tough time topping 2012. Looking forward to December, we find about a dozen wide releases, sort of. There are several films that are opening in limited release that are expected to expand wide by the end of the month, but I'm not sure that will be the case for all of them. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug should be the easy winner this month and if it is a little lucky, it might even top its predecessor at the box office. There is a huge amount of hype surrounding Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues and it could double the first film's box office numbers. On the other hand, those two films might be the only two December wide releases to reach $100 million. There are a few that have the potential to get to the century mark, if they are big players during Awards Season. Obviously some of the films coming out this month will win awards, but there's already a lot of competition in theaters before the month begins. There were three $100 million movies last December, led by The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, so while it could be close, it looks like December will lose in the year-over-year comparison. This is really bad news, as 2013 can't afford to go out on a losing streak if it wants to top 2012.
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August ended, and we should be very grateful for that. Lee Daniels' The Butler was a surprise hit, while We're the Millers did better than expected. However, most other films that were expected to be solid hits failed to live up to expectations. Fortunately, August of 2012 was even worse, so 2013 regained the lead on the year-to-year comparison during the month. Looking forward, there is exactly one film that will likely become more than a midlevel hit in September: Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2. That film has a chance to reach $100 million in total. Most of the rest of the new releases will be lucky if they get halfway there. Fortunately, September of 2012 was even worse. Hotel Transylvania was a surprise hit, earning nearly $150 million, and there were a few others that topped $50 million, but there were also several outright bombs. If we can avoid those types of bombs, then 2013 should continue its winning streak.
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