Author Archive
 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Premiere Review: “Halt and Catch Fire”

  HALT AND CATCH FIRE:  Sunday 10PM on AMC The first season of HALT AND CATCH FIRE realized late in the game that it had been telling the wrong story about the wrong characters, and tonight’s Season 2 premiere was b...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW: “Can A Song Save Your Life?”

  Less intimate but perhaps even more irresistible than his micro-indie smash Once, John Carney’s follow-up CAN A SONG SAVE YOUR LIFE? plays a similar tune with broader orchestrations.  The city this time is New ...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Finale Review: “The Royals”

  History will record that on the same night the curtain rang down for Mad Men, THE ROYALS also concluded its season.  As utterly different as the two shows are, The Royals is one of the many cable scripted series that pr...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

Behind the US/Worldwide Weekend Box Office – 11/22/15

  OPENINGS:  The stated $101M weekend start for THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY PART 2 (Lionsgate) means that we won’t really know whether it went over $100M until final numbers are released tomorrow.  But even if tha...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

EARLY FRIDAY BOX OFFICE: “Bad Grandpa” Does Good

  Amid its very public internal tumult today, Deadline managed to post some preliminary box office numbers, and if they hold up, BAD GRANDPA (Paramount) will take over first place for the weekend.  Its reported $11.5M Fri...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE SKED Season Finale Review: “Major Crimes”

  The Season 2 finale of TNT’s MAJOR CRIMES, intended to pay off the show’s one serialized storyline, about Rusty (Graham Patrick Martin), the teen ward of series protagonist LAPD Captain Sharon Raydor (Mary Mc...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

Behind the US/Worldwide Weekend Box Office – 7/3/16

  OPENINGS:  The older, less frontloaded audience for THE LEGEND OF TARZAN (Village Roadshow/RatPac/Warners) allowed it to slip ahead of the holiday weekend’s new arrivals, down just 10% from Friday for a 3-day $38....
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

EARLY FRIDAY BOX OFFICE: “Think Too” OK, “Jersey Boys” Off-Key

  This is going to be a soft weekend at the box office, since studios are largely saying out of the way of next week’s Transformers behemoth.  Based on preliminary numbers at Deadline and elsewhere, THINK LIKE ...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Series Premiere Review: “Rebel”

  REBEL:  Thursday 10PM on ABC Krista Vernoff is one of network TV’s most prized showrunners.  She’s successfully guided Shonda Rhimes’s Grey’s Anatomy into a remarkable 17th season of success (wh...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

Behind the Worldwide Weekend Box Office – 5/4/14

  OPENINGS:  As summer kick-off weekends go, the $92M for THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN (Sony)–which may go down by $1M or so in final numbers tomorrow, given an aggressively high Sunday estimate–was pretty mild.  I...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SKED: Week 2 + 1 – NBC Network Scorecard

> The third week of a network season is a critical one.  Ratings erosion after a series or season premiere is expected and even acceptable, because it’s understood that not every viewer drawn by hype and marketing wi...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE SKED’S THURSDAY NETWORK SCORECARD – 10/18/12

Sometimes stunt casting works. CBS:  On a night when most of broadcast TV was even at best, 2/2 MEN was up a healthy half-ratings point from last week to 4.0, by far its best Thursday rating thus far.  The reason seems to be ...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SKED REVIEW: THE TONY AWARDS

Even the acceptance speeches are classier on THE TONY AWARDS.  Tonight’s telecast featured a eloquent salute to “All those who say ‘Yes'” in the name of theatre from the lead producer of Best Play winne...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE BIJOU: Breaking Dawn Part 1 Boxoffice Part 1 – 11/16/11

> Welcome to the weekend of THE TWILIGHT SAGA:  BREAKING DAWN PART I, where every ticket sold will be the subject of excited speculation about just how big an opening the sure-to-be-blockbuster will have. We begin overseas...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

EARLY FRIDAY BOX OFFICE: Hollywood Takes The Holiday Off

  Labor Day weekend is always the exhausted last gasp of the summer movie season, but this year the studios didn’t even try.  Partly it’s the effect of August having generally been a disaster in 2015 (last yea...
by Mitch Salem