October 7th, 2006
While three of the top five renters this week were
new releases, none of them did particularly well. Leading the way was
The Lake House with $7.92 million, which is merely adequate given the film's theatrical run.
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September 30th, 2006
Despite there being two
new releases in the top five, and four on the overall charts,
Lucky Number Slevin remained in first place with $5.13 million for the week and $12.59 million after two.
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September 19th, 2006
It's another week where first run releases are taking a backseat to limited releases and TV on DVD.
That latter category is especially busy with the Fall season under way.
In fact, it is from that list that we get the DVD Pick of the Week, My Name Is Earl - The Complete First Season - Buy from Amazon, but Hard Candy - Buy from Amazon earns an honorable mention.
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September 18th, 2006
The latest box office prediction contest asks to predict the opening weekend for
Jackass: Number Two, which is opening in an estimated 3000 theatres this weekend. Whoever comes the closest to predicting the film's opening 3-day weekend (Friday to Sunday),
without going over will win
Grease -
Rockin' Rydell Edition. While the person who comes the closest to the film's opening 3-day weekend (Friday to Sunday,
without going under, will win
Stick It on
DVD. Entries must be received by 10 a.m., Pacific Time on Friday to be eligible, so don't delay! (On a side note, if the title of this contest gives
Johnny Knoxville and the rest of his gang an idea for a stunt for Jackass Three, I apologize in advance to whoever is injured trying to perfrom complex gymnastics covered in industrial lubricant.)
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June 25th, 2006
The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift started its international run last weekend but missed the top five with $7.93 million on 810 screens in 8 markets. The film took first place in five markets, including the U.K. with $3.35 million on 415 screens, in Australia with $2.28 million on 221 screens, and New Zealand with $444,000 on 53 screens. This is inline with what the
original opened with in those markets, but with shorter legs due to
Sequelitis it won't have as high a final box office.
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May 15th, 2006
It was a bad week for new releases with no newcomer able to beat expectations.
Even though the holdovers held up well the overall weekend box office numbers sank.
In total, theatrical releases earned $100 million, which was down 9.7% from last week and more importantly 2.7% from last year.
This was the first year-to-year drop-off in eight weeks, although it was relatively small.
In fact, had either Poseidon or Just My Luck matched expectations, the total box office would have seen a small growth.
The small decline wasn't enough to put a dent in 2006's lead over 2005, which remains at 6%.
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May 11th, 2006
The second weekend of summer is looking soft this year with Mission: Impossible 3 getting off to a slower than expected start last weekend and buzz surrounding Poseidon being rather weak.
The good news is that both those films should top last year's winner and that should lead to another week of year-to-year growth.
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May 8th, 2006
The unofficial start of summer was a disappointment, with the number one film missing expectations by nearly $20 million. However, the overall numbers were still very positive with the box office bringing in a total of $110 million.
That's 7.8% higher than last weekend and 26.5% higher than the same weekend last year.
Even better are the year-to-date numbers, which now stand 6% higher than last year.
There is some bad news ahead as next week looks weaker and Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith and its $100 million weekend will hurt year-to-year comparisons the week after that.
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May 4th, 2006
This weekend is the unofficial start of the summer box office season with what should be the biggest movie of the year, at least so far.
There's little doubt that Mission: Impossible 3 will be the biggest movie of the weekend, the only question is how well will it compare with other blockbusters, both this year and years past.
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May 1st, 2006
The last weekend in April is generally not a good time to open a new movie since the first weekend in May is the unofficial start of the Summer Blockbuster season. Movies that open now generally only get one weekend of release before being crushed by the competition. Because of this, studios tend to dump films that have lowered expectations during this weekend. So there's little surprise that the total box office was down 6.6% from last week to $102 million. But more importantly, that represents a 12.6%
increase from the same weekend last year despite the fact that last year's
number one film earned nearly $5 million more than this year's
number one film did. This surge had helped the year-to-date figure grow to $2.603 billion, up 4.7% over last year's pace. This is significant because it puts ticket sales on the rise as well as total box office.
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April 28th, 2006
The first of the new Friday edition Weekly Website Review column is here, but not without a hitch. We had a bit of a power outage early in the day so I did what any modern man would do when faced with the prospects of going without the Internet for an undetermined amount of time, I took a nap. Fortunately, I was mostly done before the power went out so there was no real affect on this week's list, but I am starting to this that this column is cursed. As for the list, its pretty average with the best of the bunch being
A Scanner Darkly -
Official Site.
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April 27th, 2006
It's a busy week for wide releases with four such films coming out, although none of them look like breakout hits.
In fact, only one of the films is opening in significantly more than 2,000 theatres.
Continuing the overriding trend of the year, the film that is earning the worst reviews of the weekend should also top the charts.
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April 13th, 2006
Back to normal levels of traffic on this list, but like last week there's not an over abundance of huge sites on this week's list. I hope that changes soon as the summer box office season is just around the corner. The best of the bunch this week is
Hard Candy -
Official Site, which has been slowly growing for months.
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April 6th, 2006
It's a much busier week this week including several sites that I found through e-mails. Thanks for the tips. (On a side note, if you sent me an e-mail regarding a movie site and I forgot it, please send it again. It was a big list this week and I'm almost positive one or two sites slipped between the cracks.) Unfortunately, while there are plenty of sites on this week's list, there's not a lot of top notch ones. The movie on this list that made me the most excited was
The Simpsons Movie, and that one doesn't even have an official movie site, just the
teaser trailer.
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April 1st, 2006
March wasn't as strong as expected and April doesn't seem to have what it takes to turn things around. IMDb has a poll they run every month on what film you are looking forward to the most. This time the number one film is
Silent Hill was in first with 16.5% of the vote. Number two went to 'Other' at 13.0% of the vote. This is a really, really bad sign. With no advanced buzz, many films will have a hard time attracting an audience, which not only means less people are seeing the movies, but also less people are seeing the trailers for the big summer releases, which means less buzz about the summer releases... On the other hand, there are several limited releases that look promising including
Friends with Money,
Hard Candy,
The Notorious Bettie Page, and
Kinky Boots. Unfortunately, all but the first are being released on April 14th.
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