August 1st, 2018
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Overall, July was a a little weaker than expected. Ant-Man and the Wasp appears to be on pace for $200 million, while it is too soon to tell if Mission: Impossible—Fallout will also get there. That said, 2018 is still ahead of 2017 by $550 million, so the month of July was a success in that regard. As for August, there’s only one movie that is expected to earn $100 million, Christopher Robin, and maybe a few others that could hit $50 million. It’s a rather sad slate of movies. Fortunately, last August was even worse, so 2018 should at least maintain its lead. Maybe we can get lucky and come away with a $600 million lead by the end of the month.
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February 26th, 2017
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It’s Oscar night and we were live blogging the show. Read on the the highlights of what turned out to be a crazy night.
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February 26th, 2017
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.
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February 22nd, 2017
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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 which films should just feel honored to be nominated. Today we look at the two Screenwriting Categories, finishing with Best Adapted Screenplay. This is a harder category to judge, because the consensus favorite, Moonlight, was considered an original screenplay by nearly everyone else.
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January 24th, 2017
The Oscar nominations were announced starting at 5:18 am Pacific time. Nothing is good that early in the morning. Worse still, it’s a boring year for nominations with very few surprises worth talking about, especially in the biggest categories. Leading the way was La La Land with 14 nominations, tying the record.
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January 11th, 2017
The BAFTA nominations were announced and it should come as no surprise what film lead the way... La La Land with 11 nominations, Nocturnal Animals and Arrival are tied for second with nine nominations a piece.
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January 4th, 2017
The Writers Guild of America is the latest group nominees to be announced. There are a lot of categories that WGA hand out awards, but only three of them are theatrical releases. The list of nominees include several major Awards Season players, like Hidden Figures, but there are also some surprises.
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January 1st, 2017
December box office numbers helped 2016 end on ... a note. The good news and the bad news almost exactly balance out. On the one hand, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story will finish the year with more than $400 million after just 16 days of release. That’s a stunning amount of money that helped 2016 earn a record box office at the domestic market. However, Star Wars: The Force Awakens earned $650 million during December of 2015, so the month lost a lot of its lead over 2015, so much so that ticket sales fell behind last year’s total. The weakness at the end of the year will spill over into 2017, which is terrible news. A slow start could result in the dominant box office story being 2017 struggles compared to 2016. Bad news like this can sometimes become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Sadly, 2017 is also going to get off to a slow start when it comes to wide releases / expansions. There are 16 films scheduled to open or expand wide this month and none of them are expected to get to $100 million. It is likely none of them will even get very close. xXx: Return of Xander Cage is expected to be the best of a weak bunch, but I could see it getting beat by one of the five Oscar contenders opening wide this month, if it gets off to a slow start and one of the Oscar contenders starts picking up steam. Hidden Figures got off to a great start on Christmas Day and should it continue to earn Awards Season recognition, including some Oscar nominations, it could be in wide release well into February. Last January wasn’t as busy with 13 films opening or expanding wide over five weeks. Of these, two of them, The Revenant and Kung Fu Panda 3, topped $100 million domestically, while another, Ride Along 2, came close. 2017 is going to get destroyed in the year-over-year comparison.
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