Jacob Hall
Weekend Box Office Report: ‘Chappie’ Leads a Slow Weekend
With some of the year’s biggest movies only a month or two away, the box office seems to have entered a holding pattern. Some of the new releases are minor hits. Others crash and burn. Right now, Hollywood just seems to be crossing their fingers and hoping for the sweet, sweet summer movie season to come along and save them (or at least the April release of Furious 7). In other words, every new release underperformed this weekend.
Oscar Winners Thank Steven Spielberg More Than Anyone Else, Including God
We all watch the Oscars for different reasons. Some watch for the sheer spectacle. Some watch to see if the movies they like actually win something. Some watch so they can drunkenly criticize what everyone is wearing. But in the end, it all comes down to all viewers doing the exact same thing: watching people thank other people for upwards of three hours. But which people have been thanked the most in 86 years of Oscar history? Someone with a lot of time on their hands decided to figure that out.
Weekend Box Office Report: ‘American Sniper’ Takes Out ‘Blackhat’
A lot of people are going to act like they didn’t see the enormous success of ‘American Sniper’ coming, but the signs were all there. On top of the promising limited release numbers, there was the awards buzz. On top of that, there were the names of director Clint Eastwood and star Bradley Cooper. On top of that, the subject matter of the film is inherently attractive to the same category of moviegoer that makes Christian-themed films into massive hits. ‘American Sniper’ had one doozy of a weekend, but it’s not that surprising.
Weekend Box Office Report: Audiences Pass Over ‘Exodus: Gods and Kings’
Sometimes, a film can effortlessly open at number one at the box office while still being a pretty huge disaster. This is the case with ‘Exodus: Gods and Kings,’ which rode a wave of terrible reviews and an even more terrible marketing campaign to a hugely disappointing start. With a lot of big movies opening the next two weeks, the new Biblical epic won’t even find time to grow some legs. Chances are strong that it is dead on arrival.
Weekend Box Office Report: ‘The Pyramid’ Gets Buried Upon Arrival
Honestly, we could have just copied and pasted last weekend’s box office report and gotten away with it. Outside of the shifting numbers, the order of the top 10 is almost identical to what it was a week ago. This is Hollywood in a holding pattern. The weekend after Thanksgiving is a wasteland. That’s probably why ‘The Pyramid’ was dumped this weekend. However, the lone newcomer in the top 10 didn’t just bomb, it bombed spectacularly.
‘Pirates of the Caribbean 5’ Casts Brenton Thwaites as Captain Jack’s Sidekick
It's been three years since ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides’ was unleashed upon an unsuspecting populace, convincing even the most die hard fans of Disney's lucrative franchise that Captain Jack Sparrow needed to take a break. Maybe forever. And yet, these past years have been filled with rumors and casting and almost-casting for ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales.’ Like it or not, this film is coming and now it has the young up-and-comer Brenton Thwaites in its drunken, slurred, overlong clutches.
Weekend Box Office Report: ‘The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1’ Makes All of the Money and It’s Still Not Enough
There‘s going to be a lot of blood and ink spilled across the internet on the subject of the opening weekend for ‘The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1.’ Yes, the third film in the series did open significantly lower than its predecessors. Yes, there are definitely people at Lionsgate wringing their hands and trying to figure out why the film opened below expectations. And yet, that opening weekend is still massive. It’s three day total is larger than most movies ever have a chance to make in their entire runs. So, let's have some perspective as we dive into this week’s top 10.
Weekend Box Office Report: ‘Dumb and Dumber To’ Proves That It Pays to be Stupid
‘Dumb and Dumber To’ arrives two decades after the first film was one of the bigger hits of 1994 and no one knew what to make of it ... until it topped the box office this weekend and made it look easy. Now, the idea of two middle-aged actors returning to two of the most idiotic characters in modern movie history doesn't seem so desperate and crazy. It seems canny.
Our Worst Fears Realized; They’re Turning the Universal Monsters Into Superheroes
The likes of Dracula, Frankenstein and the Wolf Man have no business aping the Marvel “shared universe” structure in the first place. They're monsters! Let them monster! Any of our well-intentioned blogging-into-the-wind was too little, too late because the head of Universal has pretty much come and out said that they're taking the horror out of their horror icons.
Clever New IKEA Commercial Parodies Stanley Kubrick’s ‘The Shining’
We live in a world where commercial directors speak (and breathe and live) the same pop culture language as the people they've been hired to peddle all kinds of products to. The result: television advertisements have gotten more clever, more specific, and most importantly, more ready to become instant viral sensations on the internet. A new IKEA commercial, whose release in the chilly weeks of October is no coincidence, cleverly parodies one of the most famous horror movies of all time and it's pretty cool.
‘Ted 2′ Fires Stephen Collins Following Child Abuse Allegations
Stephen Collins has been fired from director Seth MacFarlane's 'Ted 2' today after a recording of the actor admitting to child molestation made its way online. This horrifying news is compounded by the fact that Collins is best known for playing the loving Rev. Eric Camden on the beloved family drama '7th Heaven' for 11 seasons.
Weekend Box Office Report: ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ Reigns Over a Very Slow Weekend
There actually was a new film released this week. It's called 'The Identical' and it's a Christian-themed fable about what would have happened if Elvis Presley's stillborn twin brother had survived. Well, for reasons that should be obvious after reading that sentence, 'Guardians of the Galaxy' held onto the number one spot this weekend while 'The Identical' opened outside of the top 10, never to be heard from again.