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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February 28th, 2016
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It’s Oscar day and, if all goes to plan, I will be live-blogging the ceremony tonight. Here is the list of nominees marked according to predictions from our readers, and my personal wishes. Nominees in Bold are the ones predicted to win by our readers (we’ll have a full rundown of the predictions at noon, after the contest ends). If I am predicting a different film, those are in Italics. Meanwhile, the nominees I want to win, but don’t think will win, are Underlined. There are a few categories where the film I really think deserves the award was not even nominated, plus a few I don’t have a real opinion on.
If you haven’t done so already, it’s not too late to enter our Oscar competition, and win all Best Picture nominees on Blu-ray or DVD.
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February 20th, 2016
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. The Best Original Screenplay category isn't the most lop-sided category we will highlight, but it is also not very competitive.
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January 15th, 2016
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The Oscar nominations were announced at 5:30 am Pacific time. Nothing is good that early in the morning. Worse still, this was a terrible year for snubs, especially when it comes to diversity of the nominees. The voters for the Oscars are 94% white and 77% male... but that's still more diverse than the list of nominees. The Revenant led the way with 12 nominations and it is expected to win a few of those, while it is a serious contender in most of the categories it was nominated in.
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January 6th, 2016
The Writers Guild of America nominees were announced and there are only a few surprises here. Additionally, one of these three races seems too close to call at this point.
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August 1st, 2015
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It is still a little too soon to tell how July will finish, as we don't have any numbers for the final weekend at the time of writing. We know Minions was a monster hit and that Ant-man will be a financial success. However, until we see how Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation does, it will be impossible to call the month a true success. If Rogue Nation bombed this weekend, then the month is only a partial success. It would also mean the summer of 2015 could be coming to an abrupt end. As for August, only Fantastic Four has a better than 50/50 chance of reaching $100 million; although some people think Straight Outta Compton also has a shot at that milestone. Besides those two, only a couple of other films even have a realistic shot at becoming midlevel hits. Worse still, last August was amazing with Guardians of the Galaxy breaking records. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles also did better than expected with a domestic haul of nearly $200 million. No release this August is going to match that figure. There's a good chance the top two releases combined won't do so. Fortunately, 2015 has a sizable lead over 2014, so even a soft month will keep 2015 ahead in the year-over-year comparison.
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