"The Greatest Showman" is Another Musical Hit. Is Hollywood Watching?

by Nathaniel R

The Greatest Showman is the second consecutive original movie musical to become a big hit. A sign of more to come?

The Greatest Showman will be crossing the $100 million mark today at the box office. It's become a hit with  little fanfare  if you think about it.  Oh sure it had the mainstream attention you get on opening weekend when you have big stars in your movie but beyond that did the media really take notice? It wasn't in most of the awards conversations that turn the volume way up on others movie this time of year. The only awards traction it received was for Best Original Song which is hardly a bankable business -- except, perhaps, in the case of soundtrack sales.) 

But long story short: it's a hit and showing legs in US theaters in that its percentage drop each week is way below the industry norms. The same was true of Moulin Rouge! which arguably kick-started the reemergence of the then-dead genre at the beginning of the century. The musical genre has, it should be evident to everyone, a loyal fanbase. But is Hollywood paying attention...?

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Box Office: The Post Widens, Proud Mary Aims, Paddington Returns

by Nathaniel R

Weekend Box Office (Jan 12th-14th)
W I D E 800+ screens	L I M I T E D excluding prev. wide
1. Jumanji $27 on 3849 screens (cum. $283.1)	1.🔺 I Tonya $3.3 on 517 screens (cum. $10)  REVIEW
2. 🔺  The Post $18.6 on 2819 screens (cum. $23) REVIEW | OSCAR KICK-OFF	2.🔺 Phantom Thread $1.1 on 62 screens (cum. $2.2) HARRIET'S CAMEO
3. 🔺  The Commuter $13.4 on 2892 screens	3. 🔺  Call Me By... $715k on 174 screens (cum. $7.2) REVIEWISH | SCREENPLAY | SEX
4. Insidious: The Last Key $12.1 on 3150 screens (cum. $48.3)	4. Hostiles $276k on 42 screens (cum. $821k)
5. The Greatest Showman $11.8 on 2938 screens (cum. $94.5) REVIEW | ZAC	5.🔺 Condorita: La Pelicula $236k on 153 screens

Support for Steven Spielberg's inspirational newspaper drama The Post within awards season has been a hysterical rollercoaster. Pundits were all "it's winning everything" as the rollercoaster climbed to its peak. On the descent they're screaming "lost everything!" (GLOBES, CRITICS CHOICE) or "wasn't even nominated!" (SAG, BAFTA). But now that the public is on the ride with the press perhaps we begin to climb again towards another adrenaline rush. Whether the descent is thrilling or terrifying this time will depend on your feelings about The Post  and how many Oscar nominations it gets. Streep and Hanks and Spielberg all remain bankable so the film will do fine in theaters but will Academy voters bite after the whiplash we saw during the precursors? [More charts and thoughts are after the jump...]

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Box Office: Jumanji, Tonya, and the Oscar waiting game

by Nathaniel R

Weekend Box Office (Jan 5th-7th)
W I D E 800+ screens	L I M I T E D excluding prev. wide
1. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle  $36 (cum. $244.3)	1.🔺 I Tonya $2.4 on 242 screens (cum. $5.2)  REVIEW | GLOBE SURPRISE?
2. 🔺  Insidious The Last Key $29.2 (cum. $212.1)	2.🔺 The Post $1.7 on 36 screens (cum. $3.8) REVIEW | OSCAR KICK-OFF PODCAST
3. The Last Jedi $23.5 (cum. $572.5) LYNN'S REVIEW | NATHANIEL'S TAKE	3. Call Me By... $758k on 117 screens (cum. $6) REVIEWISH | SCREENPLAY | SEX
4. The Greatest Showman $13.8 (cum. $75.9) REVIEW | ZAC ATTACK | ZENDAYA	4.🔺 Hostiles $310k on 46 screens (cum. $435k)
5. Pitch Perfect 3 $10.2 (cum. $85.9) REVIEW	5.🔺 Along with the Gods $280k on 35 screens ($1.1)

One thing that we're always forcefully reminded of each holiday season -- since we tend to forget -- is that the whole world is not, in point of fact, thinking about Oscar buzz. Each year countless films casually ring up rather large box office returns without generating any "heat" in award season and some not even being part of that game. Insidious for example had the weekend to itself in terms of new wide releases and was rewarded for it. The Greatest Showman, is another one that isn't really banking on Oscar love. The musical's global gross has already doubled its budget (though given the P&A expenditures it's probably got some ways to go before a profit still)...

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Doc Corner: Documentary Hits of 2017

Each day a new year-in-review / recap list of sorts. Here's Glenn Dunks

Nathaniel has already looked at the foreign language hits of the year and a the top-grossers for films by or about women, people of colour, LGBTQ and more. Now it's my turn to chime in with a look at what non-fiction movies were doing at the box office. It ain't exactly pretty - but, then, the figures below don't always paint an accurate picture for the world of documentary.

Much like the rest of the independent and arthouse scenes, festivals and VOD/streaming are becoming the primary way for audiences to see documentaries. Some of the most buzzed and most discussed of the year, for instance, are Strong Island, Icarus, Voyeur and Chasing Coral, which never received a theatrical release beyond minimal Oscar-qualifying runs. Meanwhile, other significant 2017 titles like LA 92, Oklahoma City, Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds aired on TV.

TOP 40 DOCUMENTARIES FOR 2017
Listed by US Box Office Gross only. Linked titles leads to reviews.
Oscar finalists are in bold 
🔺 = still in theaters (Note: Figures are as of 01/21/2018)

1. BORN IN CHINA $13.8 (April 21st)
As is often the case these days, a Disneynature title tops the chart. However, the figures for these Earth Day releases are diminishing. This one about pandas is the lowest-grossing of the seven Disneynature docs to be theatrically released since Earth in 2009 (so, not including The Crimson Wing: Mysteries of the Flamingo which went curiously unreleased in America). Still, this is a great figure for a nature documentary and as long as they keep churning them out hopefully people keep going in at least these modest numbers.

2. I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO $7.1 (February 3rd)
One of the lone bright spots among the first half of the year for arthouses was this Oscar-nominated James Baldwin doc. We may grimace when distributors keep films from the general public, but Magnolia were smart to see they not only had a very likely Oscar contender on their hands (it should have won, but that's not what we're here to discuss), but that there's no way for these films to thrive among the end-of-year prestige glut...

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A Slightly Queer Take on "The Last Jedi"

This was originally published in Nathaniel's intermittent column at Towleroad.

There’s a bit of a macro and micro thing happening at the movies. I’m not talking about Disney’s new merchandising bonanza pairing those miniature “porgs” (think CGI puffins) with towering furry Chewbacca. No we speak of the wide release and limited release divide. Star Wars: The Last Jedi has been filling houses at over 4000 theaters and is obliterating the competition (already number #3 of the year in just 10 days) while a bunch of Oscar contenders are playing, not so quietly, in limited release gigs in their pursuit of golden statues. We’ll talk about more of those again soon but first [cue yellow text crawl over space] Episode VIII: The Last Jedi

We now return to The Resistance (aka the proudly defiant “Rebel Scum”) who are even easier to relate to know in December 2017 when it feels like the world will be ending any day with each new disastrous move from our own evil empire. (Sigh) If they can just harness the light side of the force, break through that one gerrymandered code, save that one cornered group of people, fetch Luke Skywalker, they might live to see another day...

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