The Box Office Podcast

Skydance is betting (yet again) that Paramount's TRANSFORMERS, STAR TREK and GI JOE film franchises can, after multiple costly misses, spawn global box office hits again (or for the first time). It's not like the health of the entire entertainment industry is at stake, right?

Breezy, funny, and just plain fun, 'The Social Reckoning' works as a low-key underdog exposé while serving as both a grimdark sequel to and a "whoops, we blew that call" mea culpa apology for Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher's The Social Network... 1/2

Behold as @ScottMendelson explains why, for roughly the 1,742nd time, why the #StarTrek, #Transformers and #GIJoe franchises will likely never return to (or ever reach) tentpole-sized worldwide box office fortune and glory. tinyurl.com/3zeamkrs

Audiences prefer fantastical horror in movies like 'Other Mommy' to the real-world terrors in films like 'The Social Reckoning' (or 'Musk'). I don’t blame them, and this is not a new problem for Hollywood...

Two of these opened with ≈ $30M, which (on their respective $20-$40M budgets) were excellent results. If we critics mattered as much as "everyone" pretends, Paddington 2 would have grossed $1 billion, and One Battle After Another would have played like a 2010s DiCaprio flick.

Bemusingly, The Odyssey got back (most?) of its IMAX screens this weekend and thus jumped 54% to a $2 million 13th-weekend gross and a $623 million domestic total. Sans inflation, it's now right between The Last Jedi ($620m) and The Avengers ($623m) on the domestic all-time list.

‘Other Mommy’ was #1 in North America as ‘Resident Evil’ opened big in China to top globally amid a poor start for ‘Social Reckoning’ and a sharp drop for ‘Digger’

Brad Bird’s long-gestating animated private eye flick is a thrilling, funny futuristic fantasy that overcomes recycled metaphors through strong craftsmanship and storytelling...

Constance Wu and Henry Golding’s 'Crazy Rich Asians' showed (yet again) that splashy rom-coms and/or films focused on Asian characters could pull big bucks, two lessons Hollywood has since mostly ignored or forgotten. 1/2

Brian Duffield's 'Whalefall' delivers on its high concept and potent melodrama in a visually spectacular, emotionally poignant meat-and-potatoes winner...

It annoyingly ends before actually ending, but this third live-action feature film adaptation of Capcom's #StreetFighter video game series has style to spare and an unapologetic sense of goofy, over-the-top fun...

Best of Both Worlds - $31m in 2008 (683 3-D/uncharged screens) Boat- $26m in 2006 Fahrenheit 911 - $24m in 2004 Mission Impossible 4 - $13m in 2011 (Imax exclusive early debut) -Still stupifyingly impressive but not quite a record in that respect-

I remember writing about the possibility of SHANG-CHI and MORTAL KOMBAT, two martial arts fantasies featuring tournaments opening almost concurrently in 2021. I caveated that it was possible that only MK would have a tournament. Whoops.

You Can See Everything opened to $15 million in 855 theaters, pulling the 4th-biggest under-1,000-screen debut ever, behind Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds ($31M in 2008 in 683 3-D/upcharged theaters), Borat ($26M in 2006), and Fahrenheit 9/11 ($24M in 2004)...

Lots of weekend box office news, including 'You Can See Everything' doubling 'Melania's opening weekend, a soft overseas launch for 'Street Fighter,' a poor showing (alas) for 'Whalefall,' and Netflix's first legit gross report...

All respect, but I'd argue that the film's blow-out success ($15.6 million for the weekend) is another positive sign that movies don't need premium-large format auditoriums to pull best-case-scenario box office.

I do find it amusing that at least some of the post-release "controversy" over You Can See Everything, a film that is (among other things) about unreliable narrators, is based upon the notion that its filmmakers took everything its subject said at face value.

The oddest thing about the otherwise superb WILDWOOD is that the sweeping action fantasy is actually much more narratively straightforward and a bit less emotionally melancholy than its goosebump-inducing trailers imply. But yeah, @LAIKAStudios's batting average remains 1.00.

(@DaBoxOfficePod Episode 141: "Deceased Dogs and Jewish Mice") via @ScottMendelson, @jeremyfuster, Lisa Laman and @ODSTSpartan tinyurl.com/mpuxx9bp