Preliminary box office numbers at Deadline give Friday, as expected, to CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS 2 (Sony), and it will easily win the weekend as well.  Its $10M opening day is above the original Cloudy in 2009 ($8.1M) but below last year’s Hotel Transylvania ($11M), and with a sequel’s usual frontloading, it’s […]

  Another NBC vs CBS showdown–but this one goes the other way. CBS:  Two-thirds of a remarkable night.  The back-to-back episodes of THE BIG BANG THEORY that served as its Season 7 premiere were spectacular at 5.3/5.8, not just the highest network scores of the week (barring football), but up from last year’s 5.0 for […]

  THE MICHAEL J. FOX SHOW:  Thursday 9:30PM on NBC (airing tonight at 9PM) – If Nothing Else Is On… Behind its feel-good star and tone, THE MICHAEL J. FOX SHOW is–even more than most TV shows–as much a business proposition as it is a piece of entertainment, so let’s start with that.  In a […]

  After the excitement of the past two days, with the arrivals of The Blacklist and Agents of SHIELD, last night’s numbers were on the dull side. ABC:  Even though ABC won the night, there was no good news in the line-up.  THE MIDDLE began its season at 2.4, down 0.5 from last fall.  The […]

The 39th weekend of the year is looking like a good $114 million for the top 12 films, up 22% from the $94 million multi-year average for this weekend. Opening at over 3,800 theaters Friday (way above the 2,886 average theater count for opening weekends the last two years), Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 from Sony should average […]

  Read All Our Fall Pilot Reports here and Midseason Pilot Reports here. BACK IN THE GAME:  Wednesday 8:30PM on ABC  – Worth A Look Unlike most of its characters, BACK IN THE GAME keeps its pitches pretty much in the strike zone, which in this case is a combination of The Bad News Bears […]

  Marvel took over more of the universe last night. ABC:  AGENTS OF SHIELD was meant to be a blockbuster from the moment its development was announced, and so it was, with a giant 4.6 start that tied The Voice in the 8PM hour.  That’s 50% higher than the 3.1 debut for ABC’s last try at […]

  AGENTS OF SHIELD:  Tuesday 8PM on ABC – Potential DVR Alert Even without any connection to the multi-billion-dollar entertainment monolith that is Marvel (and behind it, Disney), the arrival of a new TV series from Joss Whedon would be an event.  Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a bedrock not just of the TV […]