An animated feature is back as the widest release as this week sees the arrival of DC League of Super Pets. Debuting in 4,314 locations, the latest from Warner Bros. features an all-star voice cast, headlined by the renowned comedic duo of Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart. The film follows Krypto (voiced by Johnson), who after his owner, Superman, is kidnapped must convince a rag-tag shelter pack—Ace the hound, PB the potbellied pig, Merton the turtle and Chip the squirrel—to master their own newfound powers and help him rescue the superheroes. DC League of Super-Pets will also be available to stream on HBO Max 45 days after its theatrical release.
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Nope is headed for an impressive $44-million debut, according to Universal’s Sunday-morning projection, just a little behind our predicted $48.7 million, but a strong number nevertheless. It gives Jordan Peele his third straight number one opening, and Universal pointed out this morning that it’s the biggest opening for a completely original film since Peele’s Us, which made $71.1 million on its first weekend back in 2019.
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Nope is an all-too-rare example of a big-budget, completely original, ultra-wide release, and it looks as though Universal will be rewarded with a strong opening weekend for Jordan Peele’s sci-fi horror movie. With strong numbers from Thursday previews, it looks like the film could hit $50 million on debut.
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When theater counts came out on Thursday, it looked like we were heading towards a tight race at the top of the box office chart between newcomer Candyman, which is launching in 3,569 theaters, the returning champ Free Guy, which has shown good legs so far, and PAW Patrol: The Movie, which debuted in second place last weekend and should enjoy a good hold given its family audience. With preview figures for Candyman now in, it goes into the weekend the clear favorite, although an upset is still possible.
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There are not a lot of major releases on this week’s list, but what we lack in quantity, we more than make up for in quality. In fact, there are five contenders for Pick of the Week and a couple of other smaller releases that might end up in my collection soon. It is going to be a rough week on my wallet. These include a couple of Oscar contenders, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood and Jojo Rabbit; a couple of animated releases, The Point! and Tex Avery: Screwball Classics: Volume 1; and a TV on DVD Megaset, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: The Complete Series. All five releases are worth picking up, but I’m going with Jojo Rabbit as this week’s Pick of the Week.
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When Jordan Peele announced he was going to remake The Twilight Zone, there were a lot of responses. Some were very excited about seeing his take on the classic TV show, while others were worried that it simply couldn’t compare to the original. Which side was correct? And is the Blu-ray release worth picking up?
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Toy Story 3 gave the franchise such a perfect send off that when Toy Story 4 was first announced it was met with a lot of trepidation. Most assumed it would be impossible to live up to its predecessor and many were worried it would fail at that task so much that it would retroactively make the franchise worse. Was it able to do the impossible? If not, was it at least able to avoid being a disaster?
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Us topped the weekend chart and expectations with $71.12 million during its debut. This was more than double what Captain Marvel earned during this weekend and it helped the overall box office grow 6.8% from last weekend to $148 million. More importantly, this is 14% higher than the same weekend last year. Granted, 2019 is still way behind 2018, but it is chipping away at the deficit and is now behind by 17% or $450 million at $2.15 billion to $2.60 billion. Furthermore, 2019 is no longer an historically bad year at the box office. It used to be the worst year at box office in terms of dollars in over a decade. Now it’s the worst year since 2013 and if April is as good as March was, it could be in the top five best years in box office dollars by the beginning of May.
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Us is the only wide release of the week and it should easily earn top spot on the box office chart. It won’t dominate the box office chart, as Captain Marvel should still be a powerful draw this weekend. Unfortunately, there will be a huge gap between those two films and the rest of the box office, as no other movie is expected to crack $10 million at the box office. Fortunately, this weekend last year wasn’t particularly strong. Granted, there were five films that earned more than $10 million over the weekend, but the best, Pacific Rim: Uprising, only managed $28.12 million. There’s a chance the top two films this year will earn more than the top five did last year, giving 2019 only its third win of the year so far. It would also be its third win in a row.
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Haunted by an unexplainable and unresolved trauma from her past and compounded by a string of eerie coincidences, Adelaide feels her paranoia elevate to high-alert as she grows increasingly certain that something bad is going to befall her family. After spending a tense beach day with their friends, the Tylers, Adelaide and her family return to their vacation home. When darkness falls, the Wilsons discover the silhouette of four figures holding hands as they stand in the driveway. This endearing American family is pitted against a terrifying and uncanny opponent: doppelgängers of themselves.
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It’s Oscar night and we will be live blogging the show. We will announce the winners and have our reactions as they happen, while keeping track of how our readers did in predicting the outcomes.
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Voting is now closed in our 21st Annual Predict the Academy Awards Competition, and we’re ready to announce the predicted winners in each category.
We have overwhelming favorites in virtually all of the major categories this year, with one glaring exception: Best Picture. That race is a virtual tie between Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and The Shape of Water. Three Billboards has a very slight edge, with 44% of the vote, while Shape of Water has 43%. Get Out is a long shot, at 6%, and Dunkirk and Lady Bird are the only other films to get a look in, with about 3% each.
With the top two films both getting less than 50% of the votes, it’s fair to say there isn’t a favorite in this race, and any of these five films seems like a conceivable winner. The winner of our contest will likely be someone who makes the right call in this category.
Things are much more clear cut in other categories…
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It’s Oscar night and we will be live blogging the show. Before that, let’s take a last look at the nominations with a few annotations. Nominees in Italics are those that have received the most votes from our readers so far in our Oscar contest (which is open to new entries until noon, Pacific, today—enter now!). Bold films are those films I think will win. Meanwhile, those that are Underlined are those I want to win. Not all categories have underlined nominees, because not all categories have someone I’m cheering for, or because there are two nominees I couldn’t pick between. For example, I will be happy no matter who wins Best Supporting Actress. One last note: The contest is still going and the leading for Best Picture Switched from The Shape of Water to Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri to tied over the time I was writing this story. This is the closest I’ve ever seen it. Guessing the best picture correctly will go a long way to winning.
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The Independent Spirit Awards were handed out tonight, and Get Out was the big winner, sort of. It earned two Awards, including the two most prestigious, awards. However, it wasn’t the only film to pick up two awards tonight.
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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 who should just feel honored to be nominated. Today we look at Best Director, which I think is a more competitive category than most people think it will be.
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With our annual Oscar Prediction contest underway, now is the best time to look at the nominees and try to figure out who the favorites are and which films should just feel honored to be nominated. Today we look at the two Screenwriting Categories, ending with with Best Original Screenplay. This category is actually competitive, which is the first time I’ve been able to say that so far this year. In fact, there are three nominees that have a reasonable shot at winning.
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The Writers Guild of America have announced their winners. There are many categories that WGA hand out awards in, but only three of them are theatrical releases. The list of winners include a couple of major Awards Season players and not a lot of surprises.
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The Directors Guild of America Awards were handed out this weekend and two of the three categories could be good omens come Oscar night. To be more accurate, it sets up an interesting two-way race on Oscar night.
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The Oscar nominations were announced starting at just after 5 am Pacific time. They do this every year and no one has been able to adequately explain why to me. At least there were some interesting results this year. The Shape of Water led the way with 13 nominations, which is one below the current record and nearly as many as the next two films combined. Overall, there were seventeen films that earned two or more nominations.
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Directors Guild of America is one of those awards groups that spread out their nominations, but the last of them were announced today. There are some pleasant surprises and what is possibly the biggest shock of Awards Season so far. The only film to earn two nominations was Get Out.
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The BAFTA nominations were announced and this time The Shape of Water led the way with 12 nominations. The same films appear on many of the lists of nominees, but so far no one film has come to dominate the list. This makes it interesting, to say the least. There’s a good chance no one film will win the majority of prestige awards and that multiple films will have lots of reason to celebrate on February 18th when the awards are handed out.
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The Writers Guild of America is the latest group to announce award nominees. There are a lot of categories that WGA hand out awards for, but only three of them are for theatrical releases. The list of nominees include several major Awards Season players, and not a lot of surprises. The Big Sick, Lady Bird, The Disaster Artist, Get Out, The Shape of Water… We've seen almost all of these films appear on lists of nominations before.
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The Golden Globes nominations are the second major Awards Season set to come out. Sort of. (WGA announced the nominations for TV, radio, etc., but not their theatrical nods.) It is still very early in the year, so it is hard to say if there are any real snubs, or if there are any real favorites. The Shape of Water led the way with seven nominations, while The Post and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri were right behind with six a piece.
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The Independent Spirit Awards nominations were announced yesterday and thus the 2017 Awards Season begins. The movie with the most nominations is Call Me by Your Name, which opens on Friday. This is amazingly good timing. It’s not the only film that should get a financial boost.
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Get Out is inarguably the biggest surprise hit of the year. It earned over $200 million worldwide on just a $5 million budget. It also earned 100% positive reviews. (Armond White doesn’t count, because he’s not a real critic. Roger Ebert himself called Armond White a Troll.) Does the film live up to its success? Is it even medically possible for it to live up to its success?
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Kong: Skull Island dominated the box office earning $61.03 million over the weekend. This is much better than predicted and this if reports are true, this is because it was a huge hit with families. Skull Island’s success hurt Logan, which fell to second place with $38.11 million over the weekend. Overall, the box office fell 13% from last weekend, but that’s still 22% more than the same weekend last year. Year-to-date is even more impressive. Back-to-back wins for 2017 has cut 2016’s lead to 0.8% at just $17 million. If Beauty and the Beast does as well as some expect it to do, 2017 could take the lead by the end of this coming weekend.
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If you took a bet a year ago that the Oscar weekend box office would be dominated by a movie with an A- CinemaScore, and a score of 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, you probably wouldn’t get great odds. If you’d included the stipulation that the film would be a horror movie written and directed by Jordan Peele, your winnings would set you up for retirement. For that is what we have this morning: Get Out will easily top the chart this weekend, with Universal estimating a weekend around $30.5 million.
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There are three films opening wide this weekend, which is a surprise. The buzz for Collide and Rock Dog are so quiet that I’m surprised they are playing in more than 2,000 theaters and I will be equally surprised if they open above the Mendoza Line by averaging more than $2,000 per theater. On the other hand, Get Out has nearly 100 reviews and its Tomatometer Score is 100% positive. It could be a surprise smash hit. Then again... It could be another Keanu. If that happens, The Lego Batman Movie will earn its third first-place finish in a row. That’s would be bad news for the overall box office. This weekend last year there were a similar selection of new releases. Gods of Egypt struggled while the other two new releases bombed, and only Deadpool saved the box office. If Get Out matches Deadpool’s total weekend of $31 million this time last year, I will be so happy. I don’t think it will happen, but it could be close.
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January turned out to be a good month. Granted, it didn’t live up to last January, but its box office was one of the top five Januarys of all time, so that’s still a good start to the year. Also, we will have our first $100 million movie released in 2017 and that doesn’t happen this early very often. As for February, there’s potentially the first $200 million hit of the year, The Lego Batman Movie. Fifty Shades Darker and The Great Wall both have a shot at $100 million. That said, it is more likely that both will miss that milestone than both will get there. As for the rest of the films, there are a few that are aiming for solid midlevel hits, like John Wick: Chapter Two and Get Out, while there are very few potential bombs. By comparison, last February there was one monster hit, Deadpool, and a lot of bombs. No other movie besides Deadpool made $50 million. No movie opening this month will match Deadpool, but we won’t have as many bombs either, so hopefully that will balance out and 2017 won’t fall further behind 2016.
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It is the beginning of August, a.k.a., the beginning of TV on DVD season. While there are a few prominent releases in that category, the biggest release is Batman: The Killing Joke, which is still a hot mess, but this time on Blu-ray. There are plenty of smaller releases that are worth picking up, including April and the Extraordinary World. Its reviews are nearly 100% positive and the Blu-ray Combo Pack is the Pick of the Week.
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The Jungle Book easily remained in first place on Friday’s box office chart, earning $10.25 million. That is down just 38% from last Friday and if the weekend as the same internal multiplier as last time, then we are looking at a $49 million weekend haul. That’s a lot more than we predicted and would push the film’s running tally well over $250 million. However, this seems overly bullish—I would expect a weekend total of a few million less.
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There are three wide releases coming out this week, but none of them look like they will challenge The Jungle Book for top spot. In fact, it looks like all three combined won't come close to The Jungle Book weekend haul. Keanu is the best of the new releases and it has a shot at becoming a midlevel hit. Mother's Day could have been a midlevel hit as counter-programming, especially with Mother's Day just over a week away. However, early reviews are hurting its chances with moviegoers. Finally there's Ratchet and Clank, which is one of those animated movies that feels like it should have gone Direct-to-Video. As for this weekend last year... this weekend last year was the first weekend of May, so year-over-year comparison has to deal with The Avengers: Age of Ultron. Obviously 2016 is going to get crushed this weekend. It should bounce back next weekend.
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March was a really good month, for the most part. There were a few bombs, but the two biggest films, Zootopia and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, both beat expectations by significant margins, so overall the box office was better than expected. Unfortunately, April is a mess, which makes prognosticating really tough. Every single week has at least one film that either moved, switched from wide to limited release, or disappeared entirely. The Jungle Book appears to be the biggest film of the year, but The Huntsman: Winter's War could also be a $100 million hit. Sadly, last April was led by Furious 7, which earned more than $350 million at the box office. That's very likely more than both The Jungle Book and The Huntsman: Winter's War will make combined. Worse still, there were only four weekends in April last year, meaning the month ends by going head-to-head with The Avengers: Age of Ultron. By the time the month ends, 2016's lead over 2015 might be gone. Let's hope it is not that bad.
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