> Now that we’ve all taken a breath after the extraordinary success of The Hunger Games (and Lionsgate has had a chance to count its money), Hollywood’s real blockbuster season is about to begin, and indications are that it’s going to start off with a bang.  Audience tracking surveys normally begin measurement about 3 weeks […]

  LARRY CROWNE:  Watch It At Home – Giant Stars/Tiny Ambitions   Allow me to play Nostradamus for a moment.  the day will come–and it’s not far off–when you’ll be sitting in front of your TV set, remote in hand (or maybe you’ll be looking at your online streaming site, the vision is a little […]

    THE THING:  Watch It At Home – Not Interesting Enough To Be Scary   The third movie iteration of THE THING is as impersonal as the creature it’s about.  This version, the first feature directed by Matthijs van Heijningen Jr and with a script credited to Eric Heisserer (he wrote the remake of […]

  James Ponsoldt’s SMASHED (not to be confused with NBC’s Smash), which premiered in the Dramatic Competition at Sundance, is a new spin on a fairly old story.  The concept goes back (at least) to 1962’s Days of Wine and Roses:  a couple (Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Aaron Paul), very much in love with both […]

  THE THREE STOOGES:  Watch It At Home – More Nyuks Than You’d Expect   The Farrelly Brothers’ THE THREE STOOGES is better than its marketing campaign let on, and while that would be more impressive if the trailer and ad materials hadn’t been almost unwatchably bad, it still makes for a welcome relief.  The […]

The Amazing Spider-Man pulled its overseas total to $202 million to date (up from $50 million at this time last week).  We’ll give The Amazing Spider-Man an initial overseas target of $510 million, toward the high end of the overseas totals for the previous trilogy with Tobey Maguire (Spider-Man 3 May 2007 $554 million overseas total, Spider-Man May 2002 $418 million, Spider-Man […]

Once again, Team Weil has the only summer movie slate with any significant business this past week, up $108 million to $842 million to date. Team Salem’s slate grew $15 million this past week, to just under $725 million this summer to date. Team Metcalf grew $29 million (thanks to the slate’s final opening, the […]

Thank God for overseas box office.  One of the last great American exports is the Hollywood motion picture slate.  The films released in the U.S. over the last four months have grossed $3.65 billion in North America, but they have taken in another $4.85 billion in foreign lands.  There is no better example than Resident Evil: […]