The Delta Variant, streaming wars and surging piracy loom large as CinemaCon launches Sunday at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, the first in-person gathering of theaters owners and Hollywood studios since the pandemic struck 18-months ago. The virus has slashed registered attendees to circa 2,000 from 3,500 pre-pandemic, with a sizeable European contingent entirely shut
Streaming
Documentaries about a da Vinci and a dictator, a Pablo Larraín drama with Gael Garcia Bernal, a Donnie Yen martial arts thriller by the late Benny Chan, and CODA, Apple’s record-busting Sundance acquisition, make specialty bows this weekend as the arthouse sector fights through a slow reopening. “The market is still finding a balance right
Disney CEO Bob Chapek continued to emphasize the flexibility of the studio’s controversial theatrical-day-and-date Disney+ Premier model given the uncertain times of Covid. “We value flexibility in being able to make last minute calls,” said Chapek on today’s earnings call without indicating any additional future dynamic window releases beyond the studio’s recent summer handful of Cruella,
EXCLUSIVE: We’re hearing very loud rumblings from exhibition that Sony is poised to relocate Venom: Let There Be Carnage and Hotel Transylvania: Transformania. In the case of Venom 2, it’s to another destination on the release calendar. First we heard January, then Oct. 15; Sony hasn’t decided I hear what the new date is or whether they’ll continue to stay put on
AMC Entertainment CEO Adam Aron sees two things protecting the circuit in the face of surging Covid cases trigered by the Delta variant – its own Safe & Clean protocols, and vaccinations. “To our knowledge there has not been a single transmission of Covid by an AMC guest over the past year,” he said. “Most
The Paris Theater, an NYC cinematic landmark rescued by Netflix in 2019, will officially reopen August 6 with the streamer’s The Forty-Year-Old Version by Radha Blank and a week of repertory films programmed by the director. The only single-screen movie theater in Manhattan and the borough’s largest, with 545 seats, has hosted limited theatrical engagements
Shares of publicly traded move chains fell sharply Monday while broader markets rose as Disney’s Black Widow helped drive the post (ish) pandemic box office to new highs but plenty of viewers siphoned off to Disney+, raising an alarm or at least a lot of questions. AMC Entertainment, the biggest U.S. chain, saw its shares
Amazon did not report viewership figures for their $200M Skydance acquisition title The Tomorrow War, but third-party streaming analytics corp Samba TV did, and the Chris Pratt movie drew 2.41M U.S. households during the 4-day holiday weekend. The previous 3-day weekend viewership for Amazon movies Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse, another Skydance pick-up by the streamer, and
IFC Film’s Werewolves Within saw the biggest debut in a weekend without many new limited releases. Directed by Josh Ruben and written by Mishna Wolff, the comedy-horror flick stars Sam Richardson (Veep) and Milana Vayntrub. In the Ubisoft game-based film, a proposed pipeline creates divisions within the small town of Beaverfield and a snowstorm traps
Specialty box office is ready for liftoff. With Los Angeles and New York completely peeling back restrictions on theater capacity for the first weekend, we are starting to see rays of hope illuminate the limited release space. Meet The Blacks 2 blasted expectations last week by posting a $1M+ debut (per screen average of $2,533).
It’s thrilling to watch Lionsgate make a run at the box office top spot with The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard, a grown-up comedy. Not a kiddie fantasy, like Peter Rabbit 2 or Cruella. Not a Covid-era placeholder, like The War With Grandpa, or a streaming event, like Borat Subsequent Moviefilm. But a rough, raucous, R-rated action
Hidden Empire Film Group’s comedy/horror romp The House Next Door: Meet the Blacks 2 scared up a $1.064M opening weekend (per screen average of $2,533) with writer-director Deon Taylor and his team huddling right now over where and how much to expand the run — but expand it they will. Taylor’s thrilled with the $$
With more theaters reopening and film-goers slowly returning, life is being resuscitated into the specialty box office. This week we see a faith-based movie premiere banking serious dinero. Witnesses is a film recounting the early days of the Church of Latter-Day Saints and the translation of the Book of Mormon. The movie is directed and
Disney+’s live-action 101 Dalmatians spinoff Cruella drew 686K U.S. households over the four-day Memorial Day holiday weekend according to today’s figures from Samba TV. It’s a number that’s 39% less than the 4-day Labor Day traffic for another Disney+ Premier title, Mulan, which pulled in 1.12 million U.S. households over Sept. 4-7, 2020. Both titles were available
EXCLUSIVE: Netflix has another feature hit on its hands in Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead which is on its way to becoming one of the streamer’s top 10 most watched movies, bound to notch 72M viewing households in its first four weeks. Army of the Dead, which repped the streamer’s widest theatrical release in 600 theaters prior
In the wake of Monday’s news that Amazon is making a go at MGM, it’s been radio silence. As of today, we hear that both sides remain actively in talks, and want to get the deal done soon but the time frame remains undefined. With Amazon’s recent acquisition of big pics like Paramount’s Coming 2
AT&T CEO John Stankey took a Godzilla vs. Kong victory lap Thursday as the film managed to storm the domestic box office and provide a solid boost for HBO Max. Subsidiary WarnerMedia’s strategy of releasing its 2021 slate day-and-date in movie theaters and on its new premium streaming service was highly controversial when announced last
Lionsgate’s Voyagers isn’t your ordinary “the human race is in danger” sci fi romp. Written and directed by Neil Burger (Limitless, The Illusionist) Voyagers follows a group of young men and women bred specifically to have a great level of intelligence and obedience as they embark on an expedition to colonize a distant planet. Sounds like good, safe
Third-party streaming ratings firm Samba TV reports that 3.6 million households watched at least five minutes of Warner Bros./Legendary’s Godzilla vs. Kong on HBO Max in the pic’s first five days from March 31 to April 4. While HBO Max didn’t provide any official viewership figures on Godzilla vs. Kong, previous data from Samba shows that
More films with Eddie Izzard and Judi Dench is something that the world needs. They starred together in Stephen Frears’ Victoria & Abdul in 2017 and now they reunite in the Andy Goddard-directed Six Minutes To Midnight which will be released by IFC Films in theaters and on demand starting today. Written by Izzard, Goddard and
It is extremely ironic that on the same day when Warner Bros. throws in the towel on its day-and-date HBO Max theatrical release plan (for 2022) that Disney would take one of their most highly anticipated Marvel movies, Black Widow, and move it to a day-and-date theatrical Disney+ PVOD plan after the muted performances of
Are you ready for the weekend? Specifically, are you ready for a Long Weekend? Of course, we’re referring to the rom-com from Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions’ Stage 6 Films. Long Weekend will make its debut in theaters today and marks the feature directorial debut of Steve Basilone, who also wrote the script. The rom-com stars Finn Wittrock
Showbiz shares sparkled Monday starting off March with a major market rally around reopening, another vaccine rollout, a stimulus bill and a combo of upbeat earnings and streaming forecasts. Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine, the nation’s third, will ship this week and the possibility of $1.9 trillion flowing into the U.S. economy looks increasingly likely after
Written, directed and starring Julie Delpy, the family drama My Zoe from Blue Fox Entertainment hit theaters this weekend before dropping on VOD on May 25. As the big banner and specialty box office attempt to find its footing as restrictions of the pandemic lift at a cautious glacial pace, the film managed to add some
Paramount Pictures CEO Jim Gianopulos gets it; just like Disney CEO Bob Chapek gets it: You can’t have a successful streaming service without big theatrical event films. The two go hand-in-hand, so don’t try and muddy the waters. Big screen drives big franchises, which in turn drives streaming features and spinoff series. Exclaimed Gianopulos at
Harry Macqueen’s Supernova opened in 330 theaters this weekend, bringing some warmth to the specialty box office space. The Bleecker Street drama starring Colin Firth and Stanely Tucci is garnering tons of awards season buzz and has added some fuel to the specialty fire that has been struggling to stay afloat for almost a year.
The IFC Films documentary MLK/FBI from filmmaker Sam Pollard (Two Trains Runnin’, Eyes on the Prize) makes its debut in select theaters today as well as on demand. The release aligns with Martin Luther King Jr. Day on January 18 and it is super relevant to America’s wild inequity and racist treatment of the Black community —
The past year — and even the events of the past week in this country has been a struggle for a lot of people. More specifically, the pandemic and Covid-19 has claimed the lives of over 360,000 people and there are thousands of families in mourning. They are grieving — and this includes children. The
John Stephens, the outgoing CFO of WarnerMedia parent AT&T, defended the company’s move to release its 2021 film slate concurrently on HBO Max and in theaters and cited Warner Bros. century-long relationship with Hollywood talent — with some disgruntled at the move and the way it was communicated. “We’ve got a long history of working
The specialty box office and streaming space is ringing in 2021 with a peppering of new titles starting with Shadow in the Cloud starring Chloë Grace Moretz, which opens in select theaters and drops on VOD and digital starting January 1, 2021. Directed by Roseanne Liang who co-wrote the script with Max Landis, Shadow in the