January 1st, 2020
It’s the year 2020, the year where we find out how many times you can say, “Well, hindsight is 20/20.” before you get punched. On the positive side, while December wasn’t a great month, it was good enough to help 2019 end on a positive note, a positive note that should continue into January. There are no real potential monster hits coming out this month, but there are three films that have a real shot at $100 million domestically. These are, in alphabetical order, 1917, which will rely on Awards Season to get to the century mark. Bad Boys for Life will have a much, much easier time getting to $100 million, assuming people still care about the franchise 17 years later. Finally, Dolittle is looking like a disaster with a really troubled production; however, a $100 million run isn’t out of the question and if it can get there, it will at least save face. As for last January, Glass was the biggest hit of the month in terms of raw dollars, but The Upside was more impressive, as it is one the biggest hits in STX Entertainment’s history. We need two of the three potential $100 million hits to reach that mark to keep pace with last year, but we also have one more weekend to get there.
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January 16th, 2015
It is a really, really bad weekend to release a limited release. Not only do fans of art house cinema have a lot of films to choose from, but many of them are busy talking about the Oscar nominations, which were just announced. Even so, there are about a dozen limited releases on this week's list. I seriously doubt most of them will do well enough to make a real impact on the box office. There is one exception, as Still Alice is earning great reviews and even picked up a number of major nominations this Awards Season.
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June 7th, 2014
Ray Donovan began last year on Showtime and broke the record for biggest premiere on that cable channel. It maintained its viewership numbers throughout the season, while earning great reviews. Now that it is coming out on DVD and Blu-ray, is it worth checking out for those who don't have Showtimes? Is the Blu-ray worth picking up for those who like the show?
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November 18th, 2013
The World's End is the final film of the Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy. The first two films were Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. This film was the least financially successful of the three films, but is it also the weakest? If so, is it so weak that it isn't worth checking out?
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August 1st, 2013
July was hit and miss at the box office, mostly miss. In fact, only two films really topped expectations, Despicable Me 2 and The Conjuring. That said, 2013 has nearly closed the gap with 2012 and it won't take much to pull ahead. Looking forward to August, we find that it is a very busy month with 16 or so films opening wide over five weeks. Of course, the closer you get to September, the more likely these films will struggle to find an audience, and more often than not, there are simply too many films opening wide to suspect they will all find an audience. On the high end, 2 Guns could be the biggest hit of the month with just over $100 million. The Smurfs 2 and Elysium could pull in $100 million. All three of those films are opening in the first two weeks of the month. After that, most of the new releases will be lucky if they reach $50 million during their theatrical runs. By comparison, last August was not as busy with 14 wide releases. Of those, only one film, The Bourne Legacy, topped $100 million, although a couple came reasonably close. Hopefully we will have more $100 million hits this time around and 2013 will be able to complete the comeback.
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