The Box Office Podcast

With Jeremy Fuster and Max Deering both on holiday, it’s a pretty loose, off-the-cuff and unstructured, even by our standards, episode. With Lisa Laman again offering another round of “financial flashback,” this week’s guest is Nathanael Rice, who just four months ago launched a potential rival to the likes of Box Office Mojo and The Numbers . It’s called  Box Office Watch , and while it’s still g...

As Bradley Charles Cooper once sang, it takes a lot to change your plans, and a train to change your mind. Yes, Chrissi Michael is back to chat about  Supergirl  and all the fortune and glory it most certainly did not achieve. Alas, with $40 million in North America and $68 million worldwide as of Monday, this wasn’t quite the upbeat episode we were perhaps expecting up until a month or two ago. M...

With Jeremy Fuster having to bow out for the week, Caroline Siede, she of The AV Club, the podcast Role Calling (each episode is “a five-film retrospective starring an actor they love”), stops by to discuss all things Toy Story 5 , with a few brief notes related to Obsession ’s ridiculous legs, hopes and fears for Supergirl and last weekend’s other three releases ( The Death of Robin Hood, Levitic...

This won’t exactly be the most hard-hitting critical discussion about Disclosure Day . I probably liked it least among the four of us, and yet my thumb is still firmly pointing upward. Nonetheless, Aaron Neuwith, fresh from a trip to Japan with 2 Black Guys Talk Godzilla co-host Terrance Johnson, returns to the fourth chair to discuss The Furious (since he ended up quoting in the trailer and on th...

As expected, Masters of the Universe became the latest example of “good movie, don’t care” IP adaptation in the tradition of Power Rangers, Transformers One, and (at least overseas) Predator: Badlands. And, as somewhat expected, Scary Movie 6 was a nostalgia-skewing relaunch that successfully played to the kids. At the same time, The Amazing Digital Circus was the latest example of a YouTube-creat...

Having already announced his intentions to step down from his role as the Chief Executive Officer of Fathom Entertainment at the end of this year, Ray Nutt also stopped by for a brisk 35-minute chit-chat for another irregular “an hour with” episode of The Box Office Podcast. On the eve of Amazing Digital Circus becoming the latest “from YouTube to movie theaters” success story, and weeks after Fat...

Chrissi Michael, content strategist by day and box office nerd by night , returns to talk shop for what could be a line-in-the-sand weekend for movies and movie theaters. This weekend’s episode was mostly metaphorical high-fives and champagne-popping, a momentary moment to exhale for a podcast that began on the opening weekend of Argylle. Hollywood might finally be pulling its head out of its ass...

Will The Mandalorian and Grogu begin to make things right? That’s the key subject of discourse as our original fourth-chair co-host returns to dissect yet another example of a once-towering franchise pulling merely okay opening weekend grosses. It’s a reunion of the, uh, “core four.” Scott Mendelson, Jeremy Fuster, Lisa Laman and Ryan Scott (does Kermit flail) spend 80 minutes digging into the nit...

Rendy Jones returns to discuss what went right with Focus Features’ Obsession (which actually opened with a $17 million opening weekend, with a very promising 2.46x multiplier) and what went wrong for Is God Is . - Rendy notes how Alisha Harris’ terrific crime melodrama caught between  Michael  (now at $705 million worldwide) last weekend and presumably Boots Riley’s more explicitely “light” I Lov...

Andy Gorham, self-titled gentle giant and vanilla gorilla of “Action Twitter,” joins to discuss, obviously, Mortal Kombat II . What went right (an actual Mortal Kombat tournament), what went wrong (the return of Kano meant Cage was redundant), and whether a solid ($38.5 million, and now with $41 million in four days) domestic opening is enough to compensate for a mediocre ($21.5 million) overseas...

Somehow, Chrissi Michael returned. She and Aaron Neuwirth stepping in for last week’s Michael episode was more of a concurrent personal favor and/or a last-minute request. Still, she had always intended to reprise for this week’s Devil Wears Prada 2 -centric episode. At the risk of stating the obvious, the crux of the conversation is, well, the movie that opened to around $235 million worldwide la...

If you followed any of the online discourse related to The Devil Wears Prada 2 in the run-up to its release, you’ll recall much back-and-forth over the new film seeming to be, in terms of its pre-release trailers and TV spots, not as bright, colorful or otherwise “cinematic” as its 2006 predecessor. The question of why some films look and feel smaller and visually drabber than those before the 201...

With Jeremy Fuster unable to make it this week, two of our more frequent guests, Chrissi Michaels and Aaron Neuwirth, stopped by to discuss all things Michael . By the way, the Michael Jackson biopic earned $7.65 million on Monday (-70% from its $25.4 million Sunday gross), bringing its domestic four-day total to $104.9 million. The subjects of discourse include, of course, what was in the movie,...

Shawn Robbins, currently at Fandango and owner/operator/etc. of The Box Office Theory, stops by for a slightly extended episode, since it’s a triple feature. First, we talk about the weekend box office, namely Lee Cronin’s The Mummy and Normal alongside a promising platform launch for Mother Mary amid solid holds for Super Mario Galaxy, Project Hail Mary and The Drama. We also, closer to the end,...

Pardon the delay on both the podcast and the CinemaCon coverage. Honestly, there has not been a ton of outright news offered up amid the panels, so I’m hoping those who are interested can wait for a deep-dive analysis of what was said and shown until I have time to actually spellcheck the damn thing(s). Anyway, Michelle Kisner stopped by for this week’s (recorded on Sunday) Box Office Podcast. I i...

Kenny Miles, film critic and CinemaScore poller, returns for his (I think?) third go-around on The Box Office Podcast as we discuss, well, it’s pretty obvious. Jeremy Fuster couldn’t make it because of… journalism. Still, he gives A24 its flowers and offers a pithy, not-incorrect summation of  The Super Mario Galaxy ’s $400 million-plus Wed-Mon global debut. Meanwhile, Lisa Laman, Scott Mendelson...

Luke Y. Thompson returns for his… uh… fourth guest spot since February 2025, giving the likes of Aaron Neuwirth and Chrissi Michaels a run for their money. Of course, he pops in just BEFORE we get a second Masters of the Universe trailer. But fear not, he’s already been penciled in for June 8. The hero of the moment is again  Project Hail Mary , which had one of the biggest second-weekend grosses...

Aaron Neuwirth (of 2 Black Guys Talk Godzilla and OutNow With Aaron and Abe ) pops in yet again to chat alongside Scott Mendelson, Lisa Laman and Jeremy Fuster about why Project Hail Mary soared so high, why Ready or Not: Here I Come was the opposite of a breakout sequel, and the reasons for and (hopefully) consequences of Universal’s choice to expand its industry-llow theatrical window to one in-...

In a show that’s half box office punditry and half Oscar telecast discourse, original co-host Ryan Scott returns for what’s a comparatively old-school episode. Among the subjects this week are everyone’s favorite Oscar night win,  Hopper ’s strong domestic hold, Colleen Hoover going 3/3 with  Reminders of Him , and Undertone ’s solid debut. The last one, as Lisa Laman notes, should remind studios...

Charlie Jane Anders, long-time sci-fi author and sci-fi entertainment journalist (whose work has won — among others — the Crawford Award, Hugo Award, Lambda Literary Award, Locus Award, Nebula Award, and Theodore Sturgeon Award) joins the gang as we dig deep into what went right with Disney and Pixar’s Hoppers and what went wrong with Warner Bros.’ The Bride . Among the topics of discourse are eve...

Semi-regular guests Aaron Neuwirth (of 2 Black Guys Talk Godzilla and OutNow With Aaron and Abe ) and Brandon Peters ( The Brandon Peters Show ) reprise yet again to discuss the confluence of Tinseltown terrors and real-world horrors that makes a $64 million domestic and $97 million worldwide debut for Spyglass and Paramount’s Scream 7 feel… less than cheerworthy. Max Deering couldn’t make it beca...

Longtime film writer, movie reviewer, entertainment journalist, and author Marya E. Gates is this week’s extra-special guest. Considering this relatively barren weekend for new releases, it would have been deeply ironic had this (among other things) expert in the realm of silent cinema arrived on a week with little to talk about. The good news is that while Hollywood mostly took the week off (agai...

Longtime journalist and podcaster Jordan Crucchiola guests on this week’s episode as the gang discusses the reception and commercial performance of Emerald Fennell’s  Wuthering Heights . Well, she eventually skips out at around the halfway mark since she hadn’t yet seen the other new releases amid a crowded President’s Day weekend. Still, the remaining four of us (Scott, Lisa, Jeremy and Max) have...

In what was a needlessly barren weekend in terms of new releases from major studios, the newbies and the smaller distribution outlets picked up some of the slack. So, for the occasion of what was technically Super Bowl weekend, Chrissi Michael, content strategist by day and box office nerd by night , returned for the fourth time as she attempts to stake her claim as the Steve Mart… err, uh… Emma S...

In his long-awaited debut in the revolving (or fifth?) fourth chair of The Box Office Podcast, long-time film pundit and action film expert Vyce Victus pops in presumably/theoretically to discuss the latest Jason Statham joint. And while we find enough time to discuss Shelter ’s place in the Statham canon, as well as tipping our hat to Ric Roman Waugh as a regular director of high-quality “dad mov...