The Box Office Podcast Scott Mendelson
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- Business
A weekly conversation about the weekend box office between myself (Scott Mendelson) and a few younger and/or hipper pundits/entertainment journalists. Because why listen to me pontificate for 45 minutes when you can hear a handful of the best in the business as we discuss what happened and why at theaters near you?
scottmendelson.substack.com
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Ep: 17: Audiences Say 'Furi-No!-Sa,' But Monday Moviegoers Love 'Garfield'
Whether or not Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga should have performed better or was an inevitable “online fandom doesn’t equal audience interest” misfire, such a film shouldn’t have been expected to hold up theatrical — alongside The Garfield Movie — almost by itself. That’s the crux of the chat amid a historically grim Memorial Day weekend box office session.
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Ep 16: ‘If’ Doesn’t Whiff but the Amy Winehouse Biopic Fades ‘To Black'
We dissect If’s complicated $33.7 million domestic debut (remember G-Force?), whether we should be “happy” that The Strangers: Chapter 1 opened with $12 million (if horror becomes as franchise-dependent as every other theatrical genre…), and whether anyone should be surprised at the Amy Winehouse biopic Back to Black earning less than $3 million for the weekend (I was there… in early 1992… when The Babe bombed).
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Ep 15: Podcast On the Box Office For The 'Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes'
We talk about the solid $131 million debut for 'Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes,' including what went right, why it got a B from CinemaScore and what the math looks like (especially sans China) in terms of justifying follow-up. Oh, and 'Poolman' opened, too, I guess.
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Ep 14: Fall Guys and the Faults of our Star Wars
Does the mediocre opening weekend suggest a broader theatrical problem, or was Ryan Gosling in a Hollywood love letter to itself less enticing to regular moviegoers? Plus, how this is all, of course, the fault of our 'Star Wars'
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Ep 13: 'Suck It, Escape from Tomorrow!'
The complicated new math of films distributed by obscenely wealthy streaming companies where it hardly matters if a $55 million flick like Zendaya’s Challengers makes a rate-of-return profit on theatrical alone. What is the “success” point for these “theatrical as PR for streaming” movies in terms of making the distributors happy with the box office results? How good (or bad) is a $15 million opening for a film like Challengers amid the current status quo compared to the mid-2010s when studio programmers were in a healthier place?
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Ep 12 - Killer Nazis > Nazi Killers But Death Pools > Vampire Girls
ComScore senior media analyst Paul Dergarabedian guest-stars (as Ryan Scott takes a breather) amid a look at Civil War’s second-weekend hold (the good) and the debuts for Abigail and Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (the bad) prior to a deep dive into the upcoming summer movie season (barring a miracle, the ugly).
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