OPENINGS: Amazingly, the 58% first weekend plunge from $96.2M for 2019’s Joker to $40M for JOKER: FOLIE A DEUX (DC/Warners) understates how much audiences hated the new film. For that, you have to look to the respective Friday-to-Saturday drops, after word of mouth had a chance to set in: 44% compared to 18%, which […]
OPENINGS: THE WILD ROBOT (DreamWorks Animation/Universal), aided by strong reviews, started above expectations with $35M. It has the family audience almost to itself until mid-November, and should pass $100M in the US. It’s thus far in only 29 international territories, and has $18.1M after a $9.9M weekend. Since the source material is a series […]
OPENINGS: TRANSFORMERS ONE (Hasbro/Paramount) underdelivered vs projections by about 20%, and its dim $25M start didn’t even give it the weekend’s #1 ranking at the box office. Paramount was taking a calculated risk by rebooting the franchise via PG-rated animation, and it doesn’t seem to have worked out. It faces direct competition next weekend […]
BABYGIRL (A24 – Dec. 25): We’ve reached the point where Nicole Kidman’s work ethic has become something of a running gag. In the past 5 years alone, she’s appeared in an incredible eight feature films and seven TV series, with three more series on tap for 2025 (so far). Truth be told, it can feel […]
SATURDAY NIGHT (Columbia/Sony – Sept 27): It’s easy to imagine a film about Saturday Night Live making a statement about the cultural, political and financial impact of the show, or recounting its long journey from being a shout of youthful abandon to one of the last remaining pillars of traditional broadcast television. That isn’t the […]
MEGALOPOLIS (American Zoetrope/Lionsgate – Sept. 27): Francis Ford Coppola’s long-awaited, much-discussed return to epic filmmaking, self-financed to the tune of $125M+ (he’s paying for the marketing as well as the production) is, alas, a hapless failure in every way. Its fatuous pretentiousness might be excusable if it were a dazzling piece of cinema, but it […]