BAD JUDGE:  Thursdays 9PM on NBC starting October 2 – Change the Channel PLAYERS:  Non-Writing Executive Producers Will Ferrell and Adam McKay (and Anne Heche).  Star Kate Walsh.  Series creator Chad Kultgen (mostly a novelist–Jason Reitman’s new dramedy movie Men, Women & Children is based on his book–although he was also a writer on, […]

NBC dominated the broadcast networks on the first Monday of the summer season with a 1.9 rating from 8-11 pm, although NBC will come in behind ESPN which aired Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals between the Boston Celtics and Miami Heat (that rating to be released later today along with the other cable […]

Men in Black 3 increased to $275 million overseas to date (up sharply from $132 million last week).  Battleship has stalled overseas — the foreign total is now $235 million (up marginally from $233 million last week).  Dark Shadows moved up to $121 million (from $107 million last week), putting the Tim Burton film within sight of maybe $225 million […]

  FOREVER:  Tuesday 10PM on ABC starting September 23 – If Nothing Else is On… PLAYERS:  Series creator Matthew Miller, an experienced writer/producer on shows like Chuck, 666 Park Avenue and The 100, but who hasn’t had a show that he created on the air in 15 years.  Stars Ioan Gruffudd and Alana de la […]

  THE GUARD – Worth A Ticket:  The Art of Performance, Crispy and Well-Done   I don’t know that there’s an actor in movies today more fun to watch than Brendan Gleeson.  Gleeson is probably best known for playing Mad-Eye Moody in several of the Harry Potter movies, but he’s been giving sensational performances since […]

  OPENINGS:  THE GREAT WALL (Legendary/Universal) scraped its way to $18.1M in the US, and should add another $3M or so on Monday.  The $50M it will hope to reach here will barely pay for its US marketing campaign, so the spectacle lives or dies overseas.  Right now it’s at $244.6M in the rest of […]

Based on Friday’s and Saturday’s grosses, weekend #35 of 2014 looks like $86 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, now 1% above the norm for this weekend ($85 million) but 8% below this weekend last year (detailed track below). Opening at 2,639 theaters, As Above/So Below from Universal grossed $3.2 million Friday and $2.8 million […]

    HAYWIRE:  Worth A Ticket – For the Gasp-Inducing Fight Scenes Alone   You might think that if a major, celebrated filmmaker were to take the extraordinary step of announcing, years in advance, that he had set the time for his retirement from movies, and that, even though he was only middle-aged, he would […]