WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  Here is an updated look at the 2019 film slates by studio. BOX OFFICE. Looking at North American box office, 2019 ends -4% below last year’s comparable 52-week span and basically even with this point the past four years ($10.656 billion).  Over the same period, Hollywood films have grossed over $27.7 billion […]

  At the beginning of the month, the success of Guardians of the Galaxy and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was prompting some to excitedly conclude that the box office year was now truly 52 weeks long.  But the second half of August remains a lousy time to launch a movie, a fact that’s being borne […]

  FINAL DESTINATION 5 – Watch It At Home:  Death Takes No Holiday   There’s only one thing worth mentioning in FINAL DESTINATION 5… and it’s the one thing I can’t talk about.  Let’s just say that if you’ve been a follower of the series all along, the filmmakers (whether it was screenwriter Eric Heisserer […]

        NETWORK FINALS:  There were no changes from the preliminary Friday ratings.         Broadcast Official Nationals Program Ratings Chart     CABLE HIGHLIGHTS:  Discovery’s GOLD RUSH was at 0.53/0.43/0.31 compared to last week’s 0.53/0.38.  A&E’s LIVE PD dropped 0.11 to 0.50, and the pre-show hour was down 0.03 to […]

  Below are the ratings in key demos for the Top 25 original cable telecasts from Friday night.  Note that due to the holiday weekend, THE KNICK took the week off on Cinemax, as did HBO’s original series on Sunday night.  (HBO itself ran a KNICK rerun with a 0.02 result.)  However, JONAH FROM TONGA […]

  IMMORTALS:  Watch It At Home – Brainless, Violent and Weirdly Spectacular   There’s no question that the director Tarsem Singh has an eye.  Singh started as a director of commercials and music videos–his most famous is probably REM’s “Losing My Religion”–and his features The Cell and The Fall both had striking, memorable visuals.  Both […]

  FOX:  UTOPIA fell again, down 0.2 from its Tuesday rating to 0.7, and only managing to tie a rerun on NBC for 2d place in its hour.  Once regular season competition arrives in 10 days, it seems unlikely that FOX will be able to devote 2 primetime hours to such a low-rated series every […]

    THE VOW:  Not Even For Free – Forget About It   This year has brought us a far-fetched, but ultimately moving and deeply romantic story about a couple who have finally gotten together and married after a great deal of turmoil and who then face their greatest challenge of all:  a fluke accident […]