Jacob Hall
Marvel Teases ‘Ant-Man’ With an Ant-Sized Teaser
Okay, Marvel. This is cute. As exhausting as “teasers for trailers” can be, we’ll give you credit for this ‘Ant-Man’ preview, which is more of a snarky joke than an actual piece of marketing. Technically, this is our first look at footage from the upcoming film, but someone has apparently saturated the video with Pym Particles because the screen is literally too small for us to actually comprehend anything that’s going on.
Weekend Box Office Report: ‘The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies’ Wins the Weekend
As expected, ‘The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies’ won the weekend, but a quick examination of the actual numbers makes this victory feel just a little hollow. The same goes for ‘Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb’ and ‘Annie,’ both of which took second and third place without putting forward particularly impressive numbers. Yep, the holiday box office looked just a little rough this weekend.
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.
Cary Fukunaga’s ‘It’ Split Into Two Films, Separating the Past and Present Timelines
Stephen King’s ‘It’ is a beast of a book. Over its 1,000-plus pages, the novel follows a group of close-knit friends who do battle with a malevolent, child-killing force in their youth, only to reunite decades later to finish the job. It’s a messy, ambitious and insanely (perversely, even) detailed work. It feels unadaptable. But no one tell that to ‘True Detective’ director Cary Fukunaga, whose long-gestating adaptation is finally going before cameras next summer.
Weekend Box Office Report: ‘Mockingjay’ Crushes Thanksgiving Weekend
Appropriately, the Thanksgiving holiday box office was all about the leftovers. While two high profile new releases struggled to open, films from the past few weeks continued to do solid business. In fact, this was one of the most varied weekends at the box office in quite some time, with YA adaptations, animated family movies, epic blockbusters, and small independent films all performing better than expected.
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.
Report: ‘Star Wars: Episode 7’ Trailer Attached to ‘The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies’
Yes, it’s easy to decry the permeation of film marketing and our obsession with trailers and posters and previews, but let’s just be honest with ourselves here: The ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ trailer is going to an event that rivals the release of most movies. Think back to the good ‘ol days of 1998 (”A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...”) and remember how fans would buy tickets to ‘A Bug’s Life’ and ‘The Siege’ just to watch the teaser trailer for ‘Star Wars: Episode I.’ If you’re one of those people and want to replicate that experience, you’d better pre-order your ticket for ‘The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies’ pretty soon.
‘The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1′ Final Trailer: Katniss Goes to War
The final trailer for 'The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1' is here and it's strictly business. At just over a minute long, it's packed full of big emotions and even bigger explosions, never even bothering to pause and fill you in on the plot because it already assumes that you saw the first two movies. Yeah, this movie is going to be huge.
Weekend Box Office Report: ‘Ouija’ Scares Up a Victory Over ‘John Wick’
It feels like common sense: of course the horror movie released a week before Halloween is going to win the weekend war at the box office over the action movie. And yet, most horror movies continue to get released as far away from the season of the witch as possible. Can the recent success of 'Annabelle' and this weekend's 'Ouija' change that?