WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  The release of Maleficent has put Disney in a virtual three-way tie for second place (with Warner Brothers and Sony), each with around $1.35 billion worldwide for 2014 to date.  Fox remains comfortably in first place with $1.7 billion.  The other studios remain out of the running, particularly Universal, which was not helped at […]

    THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL:  Worth A Ticket – A Different Kind of Dream Team     Bear with me here. On Friday, Fox Searchlight will throw THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL directly into the path of the mega-buster that is The Avengers.  (Well, in 27 big-city theatres, anyway.)  It’s tempting, of course, […]

  NETWORK UPDATE:  The STANLEY CUP FINALS adjusted up to 2.3 after time zones were accounted for.  In addition, 20/20 rose by 0.1.  FRIDAY CABLE:  See our WORLD CUP SKEDBALL post for a detailed breakdown of the day’s games, but in 18-49s, 2 of the games were the highest-rated shows on cable:  the Spain/Netherlands game  […]

  Some more pre-Upfront pick-ups and renewals from the Peacock.  This time the happy newcomers are 2 1-hours: DO NO HARM is a modern day Jekyll & Hyde thriller about a neurosurgeon (Steven Pasquale from Rescue Me) who has a dangerous alter-ego.  Hopefully it’ll play better than NBC’s last alter-ego thriller, the flop My Own […]

  NETWORK UPDATE:  AMERICAN NINJA WARRIOR lost 0.1 in final numbers.  In addition, the LAST COMIC STANDING rerun gained 0.1, while the rerun WHOSE LINE IS IT ANYWAY dropped 0.1. MONDAY CABLE:  As detailed in the newest WORLD CUP SKEDBALL post, yesterday was a relatively low-rated day for World Cup matches, and it probably didn’t […]

  There’s an old saying that you can’t plan for crazy.  And that brings us to some of NBC’s official Fall TV schedule:     Let’s take a look, night by night. MONDAY:  Things begin logically enough, with the return of THE VOICE leading into one of the network’s new dramas.  We had Infamous in […]

  NETWORK UPDATE:  ROOKIE BLUE gained 0.1 to avoid a series low.  The rest of the news was bad:  HELL’S KITCHEN, GANG RELATED, and all the new episodes of UNDATEABLE were down 0.1 from preliminary ratings. THURSDAY CABLE:  On a night that didn’t feature much new original programming, Adult Swim’s LOITER SQUAD led the evening […]

  THE DICTATOR:  Watch It At Home – Little Shock, No Awe   With Borat, Sacha Baron Cohen made one of the noisiest splashes into movie stardom of the past decade, daring and distinctive.  The question was whether he could follow it up.  And the answer, based on Bruno and the new THE DICTATOR, is […]