November 27th, 2019
It is an even worse week on the home market than it was last week. There are two Pick of the Week contenders, MST3K: The Gauntlet and RoboCop: Limited Edition Collector’s Set. The latter has far more extras, but it has also been released on the home market far too many times. It’s not even the first time it has come out on Blu-ray. It was still a very close competitoion, but in the end, MST3K won the title of Pick of the Week.
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September 4th, 2019
There were no new wide releases this past weekend and unfortunately, the holdovers weren’t able to take advantage. Angel Has Fallen remained on top, but it did so with only $11.80 million over the three-day weekend. This wasn’t enough to match expectations or last year’s number one film, Crazy Rich Asians. The overall box office fell 18% from last weekend, falling to $89 million. Worse still, this is 10% lower than this weekend last year, putting 2019 behind 2018 by a 6.2% or $510 million at $7.64 billion to $8.15 billion. On the positive note, this is likely the low point of the year and the Fall looks a lot stronger, starting with It: Chapter Two this coming weekend.
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August 29th, 2019
It’s the final weekend of the summer, Labor Day weekend. Officially it is the final weekend of the summer, but if you’ve been paying attention to the box office, then you know summer really ended with the release of Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs and Shaw weeks ago. This long weekend, movie studios have just given up and there are no wide, or even semi-wide releases to talk about. This means the top five will look about the same as it did last weekend with Angel Has Fallen on top, while some of the holdovers, specifically Good Boys and The Lion King, should take advantage of the lack of competition. Meanwhile, this weekend last year, Crazy Rich Asians remained the top film at the box office and will likely beat any of this week’s offerings. In fact, none of the films playing this year will earn as much over four days as Crazy Rich Asians did over three.
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August 27th, 2019
Angel Has Fallen led the way at the weekend with $21.38 million. There were some other pleasant surprises in the top ten and this helped the overall box office to a surprise win. It was down 9.6% from last weekend to $108 million; however, this was 5.6% higher than the same weekend last year and we haven’t had many reasons to celebrate in the year-over-year competition, so let’s focus on that. Year-to-date, 2019 is still behind 2018 and is so by nearly identical margins as last weekend at 6.3% or $500 million. This is still a deep hole to try and climb out of, especially since there are only four months left in the year, and I will be happy if we can just cut that gap in half by the end of the year.
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August 25th, 2019
There is some good news to talk about and that’s been depressingly rare this year. Angel Has Fallen is beating expectations with an estimated opening of $21.25 million. This opening is just behind London Has Fallen’s debut. Additionally, Angel has better reviews and matched the previous film’s A minus from CinemaScore, so it should have similar legs. It is too soon to tell how it will do internationally, but given the franchise’s performance so far, I remain optimistic.
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August 23rd, 2019
Angel Has Fallen had the best previews in the franchise earning $1.5 million last night, putting it on pace for about $15 million over the weekend. This matches our expectations nearly perfectly and should be enough to keep Lionsgate happy.
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August 22nd, 2019
There are three wide releases this week, but only one of them, Angel Has Fallen, is widely expected to do anything at the box office. Overcomer is a faith-based film and those are a risk at the box office, but the people behind this one do have a good track record. Finally there’s Ready or Not, the widest ever release for Fox Searchlight and its reviews are easily the best of the week, but the buzz suggests that won’t be enough to thrive. This weekend last year, Crazy Rich Asians dipped just 6% earning just over $24 million. No film is going to match that figure this week. There’s a chance all three wide releases won’t match that figure this week, combined.
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August 1st, 2019
July bounced back from June with both Spider-Man: Far from Home and The Lion King getting to $1 billion worldwide. Domestically, we are still behind 2018’s pace by more than $400 million, but that’s a substantial improvement over where we were at the start of the month. August should continue this winning streak, at least initially. Hobbs and Shaw could open with close to $100 million, but the only other film opening this month that has a real shot at $100 million in total is Dora and the Lost City of Gold. Last August, both Crazy Rich Asians and The Meg topped $100 million, while Christopher Robin came within 1% of that milestone. This August might be better at the very top, but I don’t think the top three this month will top the top three last month. Maybe if we get a surprise hit, it will, but I’m not willing to bet on that. On the other hand, unless something dramatic happens, 2019 should at least come close to matching last year’s pace and that’s better than most months have done this year.
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June 14th, 2016
It is a much slower week than it was last time. In fact, the only two reviews this week were for releases that came out last week. That doesn't mean we don't have any good releases and there are a few contenders for Pick of the Week. Of these, Hello, My Name is Doris is the one I'm most interested in buying and the Blu-ray, while not loaded with extras, is the Pick of the Week. I'm also giving an honorary Puck of the Week to Dark Matter: Season 1, which is a Canadian Sci-fi series.
(On a side note, Amazon's list of new releases is a mess with a bunch of Game of Thrones and Star Trek titles, most of which don't even have images. This made sorting through the new releases a lot harder.)
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