What did you see this weekend?

by Nathaniel R

Weekend Box Office Estimates (September 7-9)  🔺 = New or Expanded Theater Count
W I D E 800+ screens	PLATFORM / LIMITED excluding prev. wide
The Nun	The Wife
1. 🔺THE NUN  $53.5*NEW* Nun movies	1. YA VEREMOS $770K on 369 screens (cum. $3.3) Review
2. CRAZY RICH ASIANS $13.6 (cum. $136.2)  Review, Yeoh, Podcast	2. 🔺THE WIFE $712k on 153 screens (cum. $2)  Review, Poster Blurb, Glenn's Oscar
3. 🔺 PEPPERMINT $13.1 *NEW*	3. 🔺JULIET, NAKED $670k on 467 screens (cum. $2.4)
4. THE MEG $6 (cum. $131.5) Review	4. THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS $155k on 132  screens (cum. $11.9)  Review
5.🔺SEARCHING $4.5 (cum. $14.3) Review	5.  PUZZLE $121k on 131 screens (cum. $1.8)

What did you see this weekend? I'm in Toronto cramming movies into my eyeballs (just screened: First Man and If Beale Street Could Talk). Reviews soon... thankfully Chris at least is keeping up with the reviews immediately after his screenings. I'm slower - apologies!

In box office news this week: The Nun had the biggest opening weekend of its Conjuring franchise; Fallout became the #1 in the Mission: Impossible franchise globally; BlacKkKlansman is now Spike Lee's third biggest narrative feature (behind Inside Man and Malcolm X... though if you dont adjust for inflation its also behind Jungle Fever and Do the Right Thing); Crazy Rich Asians finally showed a bit of a slowdown after a month in release but hasn't started to lose theaters yet and is already well on its way to being very profitable ( $160+ million globally thus far on a $30 million budget); And The Wife is expanding well with a still healthy per screen average and now crossing $2 million which bodes well for Close's Oscar campaign if it's a slow-and-steady-wins-the-race kind of year. We'll see. 

Summer Box Office Top Ten. Are These "Popular Achievements"?

by Nathaniel R

It's probably foolish to continue to poke fun at The Academy for their desperation in wanting to honor "Popular Achievements" but we can't help ourselves. It's so redundant. Box office success is its own reward and has nothing to do with "best" really, just with "success of brand awareness" and "delivering what people are expecting". The charts prove that it's getting more and more rare for an original picture to make it into the year end top ten. Even in the summer, with a much smaller field of contenders, it's still really hard for any movie that isn't a sequel to be one of "the most popular." Summer movie season kicked off on April 27th with The Avengers and ends right about now on Labor day weekend.

Herewith the TEN biggest hits of Summer 2018... How many of them did you see and if you controlled all box office, how much would they have earned?

SUMMER TOP TEN (Figures as of 9/2/2018)

1. AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR (April 27th) $678+ It was always going to be huge but the phenomenon of Black Panther helped push it way way over the gross of the preceding Avengers picture which made $459 domestic. (Global Gross to Date: $2 billion... the first Marvel movie to ever do that... Black Panther grossed $1.3 billion globally though it's a bigger hit than Infinity War in the US)

2. INCREDIBLES 2 (June 15th) $601+ Proving that audiences were really impatient for a sequel to the 2004 smash, they turned out in droves 14 years later, the rose still in full bloom (Global Gross to date: $1.1 billion)

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What did you see over the weekend?

by Nathaniel R

Weekend Box Office Estimates (August 24-26)
W I D E 800+ screens	PLATFORM / LIMITED excluding prev. wide
1. CRAZY RICH ASIANS  $25 (cum. $76.8)  Review, Michelle Yeoh	1. 🔺 PAPILLON $1.1 on 544 screens *NEW*

2. THE MEG $13 (cum. $105.3)  Review	2. 🔺  PUZZLE $372k on 265 screens (cum. $1.2)

3. 🔺 HAPPYTIME MURDERS $10 *NEW*	3. 🔺 SEARCHING $360k on 9 screens *NEW*

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Crazy, Now Richer Asians

by Nathaniel R

The past two years have definitely been a huge wakeup call to Hollywood -- American audiences are demanding more diversity onscreen. It wasn't just the sleeper smash of Get Out, or the bigger than Batman/Superman numbers for Wonder Woman, or the record-breaking figures for Black Panther. Add Crazy Rich Asians to the increasingly large stack of hits proving to the powers that be that people value representation onscreen and movies that reflect the ethnic diversity of real life and the fact that the human race is 50% female. 

Weekend Box Office Estimates (August 17-19)
W I D E 800+ screens	PLATFORM / LIMITED excluding prev. wide
1. 🔺 CRAZY RICH ASIANS  $25.2 (cum. $34) *NEW* Review, Michelle Yeoh	1. THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS $498k on 276 screens (cum. $10.5) Review

2. THE MEG $21.1 (cum. $83.7)  Review	2. 🔺  PUZZLE $217k on 108 screens (cum. $733k)

3. 🔺  MILE 22 $13.6 *NEW*	3. 🔺  THE MISEDUCATION OF CAMERON POST $138k on 72 screens (cum. $404k)  Podcast, Interview

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The Meg's Box Office Bite. Plus Ant-Man 2 Crosses $200 Million

by Nathaniel R

Until we hear further details, everything will be viewed through the lens of our apocalyptic fears about Oscar's new "popular achievement" category. Does The Meg's huge opening weekend mean it'll be up for an Oscar? I mean it has been since Jaws that a giant shark movie was Oscar nominated, so if Oscar wants to remain "relevant" they should totally start recognizing MUTANT SHARK movies! Elsewhere in box office news, Spike Lee's BlacKkKlansman opened to great reviews, and much discussion, and is a total must-see "but since it didn't open big, I guess it's not as good as Slender Man and The Men so it doesn't deserve Oscar recognition, right?" he added sarcastically...

Weekend Box Office Estimates (August 10-12)
W I D E 800+ screens	PLATFORM / LIMITED excluding prev. wide
The Meg	Three Identical Strangers
1. 🔺THE MEG  $44.5 *NEW* REVIEW	1. THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS $700K on 326 screens (cum. $9.6) REVIEW
2. MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - FALLOUT $20 (cum. $161.9)  REVIEW, PODCAST	2. 🔺THE ISLAND $282k on 40 screens *NEW*
3. CHRISTOPHER ROBIN $12.4 (cum. $50)  REVIEW	3. BLINDSPOTTING $220k on 138 screens (cum. $3.7)
4.🔺 SLENDER MAN $11.3 *NEW*  REVIEW	4. 🔺 PUZZLE $164k on 44 screens (cum. $447k)
5.🔺BLACKKKLANSMAN $10.7 *NEW* REVIEW	5. 🔺 MCQUEEN $154k on 53 screens (cum. $750k) REVIEW

Though it did very well for a Spike Lee joint, Spike Lee joints don't tend to set the box office on fire. So should he return that Honorary Oscar? I'M JUST FOLLOWING OSCAR'S LOGIC THROUGH, Y'ALL. I seriously can't stop being pissed about this "popular achievement." notion. To quote Don Draper...

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