April 5th, 2011
Like last week, four new releases reached the top 30 on this week's sales chart and all four landed in the top five. It was a close race for top spot with Yogi Bear leading The Tourist 685,000 units to 609,000 units. In terms of dollars it was even closer at $10.27 million to $9.99 million.
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March 30th, 2011
Only four new releases reached the top 30 on this week's sales chart; however, all four landed on the top of the chart. Leading the was way The Fighter with 880,000 units and $13.20 million during its first week on the home market.
Barbie: A Fairy Secret was fairly close behind with 630,000 / $7.86 million. Hereafter was a ways back with 309,000 units / $4.32 million. The final new release to chart was The Switch in fourth place, which was very close behind, especially in terms of dollars, at 288,000 units / $4.32 million. Megamind fell from second to fifth with 267,000 units / $4.00 million for the week and 2.31 million units / $32.66 million after four.
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March 14th, 2011
Another exhaustingly slow week. It seems like forever since there was a week with two or more top-tier releases. There is one film that was a hit both at the box office and with critics, The Fighter, while most of the rest failed to succeed in both areas and during a normal week many would have not even been worth mentioning. That said, The Fighter would have been a contender for Pick of the Week even if the competition was stronger than average and the DVD or the Blu-ray / DVD Combo Pack is worth grabbing.
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February 27th, 2011
The Oscar are being handed out tonight and we will be going over the winners as they are announced and giving a few reactions, perhaps there will be a few surprises along the way. This story will be updated as the winners are announced, so check back throughout the evening to see if The King's Speech will be this year's winner, or if The Social Network will manage the upset. Plus there are many other potentially interesting results ahead.
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February 20th, 2011
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 nominees should just feel honored to be nominated. This weekend we wrap things up and the final category is the most prestigious, Best Picture. With ten nominations, it's a crowded field; however, all but a couple of those are clearly long shots.
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February 20th, 2011
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 nominees should just feel honored to be nominated. This weekend we wrap things up with our final two categories, starting with Best Director, which looks to be a two-horse race. But what a race!
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February 13th, 2011
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. This weekend we will look at the four acting categories, with Best Supporting Actor, which is a two-horse race, if you want to be very generous.
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February 13th, 2011
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. This weekend we will look at the four acting categories, starting with Best Supporting Actress, which is possibly the most competitive of the four acting races. Even though there's definitely a favorite.
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February 6th, 2011
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 look at Best Original Screenplay, which is not only one of the more competitive categories this year, it is also one of the harder ones to predict due to complications with other awards.
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January 30th, 2011
The SAG awards were handed out tonight, and again there were no real surprises. The King's Speech took home two awards, including Best Cast. The The Fighter also came away with two wins, taking home both Supporting awards. This does seem to take away a lot of the guesswork for Oscar predictions.
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January 25th, 2011
The Oscar nominations were announced this morning, thus ending months of speculation. Along with a (very) few surprises, the list of nominees is mostly a case of Deja Vu. Leading the way, as it has so often this year, was The King's Speech, with 12 nominations, including six in seven of the most prestigious categories (Best Picture, Director, Screenplay, and the four acting categories). But it was far from the only multi-nominated film on the list.
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January 16th, 2011
The Hollywood Foreign Press Association handed out the hardware tonight, and while there were plenty of winners, one film, The Social Network, stood out by winning four awards, including three of the major ones.
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January 12th, 2011
The Directors Guild of America spreads out the nomination process, but the last of the theatrical categories were announced today. The guild hands out awards in nearly a dozen categories, but only two for theatrical release. Two categories, ten nominations, and only one that wasn't completely foreseen.
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January 6th, 2011
So, will holdovers bewitch the box office?
The answer to that is almost guaranteed to be yes.
There is almost no chance either the one wide release, Season of the Witch, or the major expansion, Country Strong, will top the chart. In fact, one could argue there's a better chance neither will reach the top five. This is really bad news for the start of 2011. We knew the holdovers wouldn't be as strong as they were last year, no with Avatar earning $50 million over the weekend, but if the new releases can't keep pace with last year's new releases, we could be in trouble.
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January 4th, 2011
Producers Guild of America announced the nominations in seven categories, three of which are for theatrical releases. Like last year, there was only one repeat nominee, and again like last year, it was a Pixar release.
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January 4th, 2011
WGA nominations were announced this week, and there were some strange results, as the guild is sticking to their rules, which resulted in a number of possible Oscar contenders being ruled ineligible. That said, of the non-documentary films, only one hasn't picked up a single nomination previously, so it is hard to say this list is too out there.
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January 3rd, 2011
2011 has begun but it didn't get off to a strong start. It didn't even get off to a better than expected start, as only one film in the top five really topped expectations. Overall, the box office grew by 10% from last week hitting $159 million, but that's not great given Christmas Eve landed on a Friday. It was also down 28% from the same weekend last year, so 2011 is off to a bad start. Granted, it's incredibly early, but there are not a lot of hopeful signs for the rest of the month and double-digit declines will likely be the norm.
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December 30th, 2010
The New Year's weekend normally has no wide releases, and that's the case this year. This means last weekend's three big hits will finish one-two-three this weekend, although they could finish in a different order. Meanwhile, all three combined might not make as much as Avatar earned this time last year, meaning 2010 will end and 2011 will begin on a sour note.
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December 27th, 2010
It was a good news, really bad news weekend. Let's start with the good news. The overall box office for the year reached $10 billion for only the second time in history. Bad news, the box office this past weekend was so bad that 2010 lost its lead over 2009. It did rise from last weekend by 8% to $145 million, but that's 47% lower than the same weekend last year. Granted, Christmas Eve landing on a Friday did have a lot to do with that, but this is still a terrible result. Year-to-date, 2010 has now earned $10.33 billion, which is about $50 million behind last year's pace. It won't get better next weekend, so 2010 won't be setting the record.
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December 20th, 2010
The weekend numbers were mixed with only one film performing really well and a few more pulling in middling numbers for this time of year. Overall the box office was up 47% from last weekend adding $135 million to its running tally, meaning it crossed the $10 billion mark over the weekend. The good news is this was a weekend faster than that milestone was reached last year and the second highest in history. The bad news is that it was down 2% from last year, while the year-to-date race now has 2010 up by just 1.2% at $10.07 billion to $9.94 billion. There is a chance that by this time next week, 2010 will have surrendered its lead.
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December 17th, 2010
The SAG nominations were handed out this week, and while there were a couple of interesting notes, overall there was a decided lack of surprises. The King's Speech and The Fighter led the way with four nominations each, while Black Swan and The Kids Are All Right were right behind with three. All four have been considered Awards Season players for a long time, so their success with SAG merely confirms that and is not shocking in the least.
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December 16th, 2010
Early in the year, after the fantastic success of Avatar and Alice in Wonderland, it looked like 2010 would see more tickets sold than 2009, and it could crush the total box office record.
That seems like a long, long time ago.
Memorial Day was a disaster and, despite a few bright spots here and there, the box office has never regained its early shine.
Now the question is not whether 2010 will see more tickets sold; it won't.
The question is whether or not 2010's total box office can remain above 2009's pace.
If Tron: Legacy is a monster hit, it could go along way to helping save a win for 2010.
It's going to need to be a monster hit to keep pace with last year and the only shred of good news I can think of for 2010 is that Avatar was a relatively slow starter, when compared to its eventual run.
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December 14th, 2010
The Hollywood Foreign Press Association announced their nominations early this morning, and there are some interesting surprises included in the mix. Leading the way was The King's Speech, which has long been seen as one of the major players this Awards Season. Meanwhile, The Fighter and The Social Network were right behind with six each. There were many, many other films nomination, including more than a few shocks. ... Mostly in one category.
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December 14th, 2010
The Fighter started its run on top of the per theater chart with an average of $75,003 in four theaters. That's not the best per theater average of the year, or even of recent weeks, but it does suggest it will perform well when it expands wide on Friday. Black Swan remained potent on the per theater chart despite very significant expansion. It earned an average of $36,726 in 90 theaters, which is more than enough to assume further expansion over the coming weeks. The King's Speech was close behind with an average of $31,148 in 19 theaters during its third week of release.
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December 10th, 2010
Another week, another Oscar hopeful coming out in limited release. Unfortunately, very few of the films on this week's list are earning Award-worthy reviews. In fact, most are not even earning reviews that are strong enough to suggest they will thrive in limited release. Hopefully we will still get a few hits out of the mix.
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December 1st, 2010
It's the end of the year and there are certainly some question marks that will be answered over the next 31 days. Are there any monster hits left for 2010? Will 2010 manage to stay ahead of 2009? Will it actually start winning again at the box office? Unfortunately, the answer to all three of those questions might be no. First of all, of the November wide releases, only two will really match expectations, with a couple of others coming close. So December starts on the weak side. Additionally, last December saw the release of Avatar, the biggest box office hit of all time. There's no film coming out this month that will match that movie. In fact, there's a chance no movie coming out this month will match last December's second place film, Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel. This means that even though 2010 had a $300 million lead over 2009 just a few weeks ago, by the end of the year, 2010 might fail to break last year's record.
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October 11th, 2007
This week's round of new casting information contains updates for Avatar, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Star Trek XI, and more!
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August 23rd, 2007
This week's round of new cast information contains updates for Day Zero, The Fighter, He's Just Not That Into You and more!
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August 21st, 2007
Starting today we will provide a list of announced movies, new stars and directors on our website each Tuesday.
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