What happens when a studio dedicates a decade to adapting one of the most popular novel series in the world, and does so with an eye for quality? In the case of Harry Potter, the result is a massive payoff. Warner Bros. upset its own record for the biggest domestic opening weekend box office take, set by The Dark Knight in 2008, as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 opened to a $168.5 million domestic haul and earned nearly half a billion dollars worldwide. Read the numbers below. Read More »
.
Please Recommend /Film on Facebook
From M to Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, the length of a movie’s title can be very short or incredibly long. But with recent short-title hits like Hop and Rio, one fan wondered, does the length of a movie’s title have any correlation to its box office success? Mark Lee over at OverthinkingIt.com thought that sounded like a challenge and set out to answer the question. The results might not surprise you, but are still incredibly interesting. Read More »
In the end, the only thing that could take down the Na’vi was full frontal nudity. Among its many box office records, Avatar held the single day box office record in Hong Kong, grossing 2.63 million Hong Kong dollars on its opening day. That record has now fallen, though, as a 3D soft core porno film called 3D Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy made HK$2.78 million (the equivalent of $340,ooo U.S.) on its opening day on just 73 screens, eventually grossing HK$17 million over its opening weekend.
3D Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy is a remake of a 1991 film of the same name about a sexually frustrated teacher in ancient China who gets wrapped up in the harem of a new friend. Featuring full nudity and “camouflaged lovemaking” but no actual penetration, Sex and Zen is billed as “the world’s first 3-D erotic film” Learn more about it and watch the trailer after the break. Read More »
Very Small Array has created an interesting graph showing the Rotten Tomatoes’ tomatometer score of the top ten highest grossing films per year, tracked over the last 60 years. And as you might expect, with exception of 2010, 1999, and 1997, we’ve been on a downward spiral. It use to be more common that the highest grossing films of the year would also have critical acclaim (Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jaws...etc), but the last 20 years the split between box office dollars and quality have diverged.
2010 was an unusually strong year for the top ten, which included the following fresh-rated films: Toy Story 3, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1, Inception, How to Train Your Dragon, Despicable Me, Iron Man 2 and Tangled. That’s 7 out of 10, with the only rotten eggs being The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, Alice in Wonderland and Shrek Forever After.
DirecTV finally announced the official details of their much discussed premium on demand service called Home Premiere. Launching April 21 with Sony’s Just Go With It, the service will give DirecTV subscribers with HD-DVR’s the ability to watch a movie two months after it opens in theaters for the cost of $29.99. Rentals last for 48 hours. However, DirecTV will only offer one premium movie at a time. So it’ll start with Just Go With It, then extend to other films like The Adjustment Bureau, Cedar Rapids and Hall Pass. So far Sony, Universal, Warner Brothers and Fox are all on board with the program.
Home Premiere has been a real thorn in the side of the National Association of Theater Owners who believe it could deliver a huge blow to their business. And while they won’t be boycotting blockbuster movies in protest, they’ll probably stop running trailers or hanging posters for films that will eventually appear on the service. No sense in promoting things people can see at home.
That’s only a small part of it though. What’s really at stake here is the theatrical experience as a whole. Is DirecTV’s new program the natural evolution of cinema or the beginning of the end? Read more after the break. Read More »
UPDATE: Shortly after this piece was published, the National Association of Theater Owners issued a statement that they most certainly would NOT encourage theaters to boycott any upcoming films, including the Harry Potter finale. Read the full press release after the jump. The original article remains below.
Could major theater chains really refuse to show Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, the film most people believe will be the year’s biggest blockbuster? It’s possible. The National Association of Theater Owners, which represents national theater chains such as AMC and Regal, is threatening to stop showing films released by Universal, Sony, Warner Bros., and 20th Century Fox because those studios have agreed to a new Premium Video On Demand service. The new service, which goes into practice this month on Direct TV, will feature films 60 days after their theatrical release for the cost of $30. Theater owners don’t like this model one bit and see it as the biggest blow yet to their already dwindling business. But would they really not show a sure fire money maker like Deathly Hallows or is it just an empty threat? Read much more after the break. Read More »
When The Weinstein Company decided to edit the cursing out of Tom Hooper‘s Oscar-winning film The King’s Speech, they felt the new family-friendly PG-13 rating would help them draw even more money out of their little film that could. Well amid controversy over the artistic merits of such a chop job, audiences have spoken. Last weekend, when The King’s Speech was still rated R, it pulled in about $2.2 million, good for 13th place. This weekend, the new PG-13 version pulled in, according to early estimates, only $1.2 million, dropping to 14th place.
Does this mean the Weinstein’s experiment failed? Or was it simply too late in the game to change a film that had already made over $130 million? Read more after the jump. Read More »
Someone has put together an infographic titled “Oscars vs. The Box Office” which takes a look at the highest grossing movies worldwide along with how many Oscars each movie won. Hit the jump.
Read More »
