The Box Office Podcast

Lisa Laman was busy participating in a conference in Atlanta, so Jeremy Fuster and Scott Mendelson welcome back Kenny Miles to this week’s episode to discuss the blow-out opening weekend for WB and New Line’s The Conjuring: Last Rites . Miles, per usual, discusses his experiences and opinions related to his work as a CinemaScore pollster, while also bringing some insight into the films’ ongoing ap...

Yes, it’s a little odd to spend the majority of our conversation discussing a movie that barely topped $2 million over the Fri-Mon Labor Day box office, but them’s the breaks. After all, when Hollywood’s biggest new release is a 50th anniversary reissue of Jaws , well… we can only salute Weapons so many times. Anyway, Luke Y. Thompson and Michelle Kisner , both affirmed B-movie experts, offer thei...

The picture, for reasons that are 99% related to the theatrical marketplace, came and went in theaters last month. But the early days of August brought not one but two excellent original thrillers that play like newfangled horror fantasies filtered through the world as it is today. WB helped turn Weapons into a sleeper smash hit, which should, by the time you read this, zoom past the unadjusted $1...

It was mostly all about KPop Demon Hunters — which earned around $19.2 million via Saturday and Sunday showings — as summer otherwise ended with a whimper. The original animated musical fantasy became Netflix’s most-watched original movie at around the same time it was topping the weekend domestic box office. Chrissi Michael, content strategist by day and box office nerd by night , is here to diss...

Action For Everyone podcast host Mike Scott returns to A) plug this weekend’s Big Bad Film Fest and B) discuss Timo Tjahjanto’s first foray into Hollywood action filmmaking. He’s joined by Max Deering, also from Action For Everyone, as well as Fangoria . Is Nobody 2 a breakout sequel, or just a “spend more but make less” follow-up?* Is it Tjahjanto’s Hard Target or merely his Maximum Risk ?* Who p...

In this distinctly old-school episode of The Box Office Podcast, former co-host turned semi-regular special guest Ryan Scott returned to discuss the blow-out success of Zach Cregger’s Weapons . Scott Mendelson noted that it’s another example of WB’s marketing might in terms of turning less-conventional programmers into genuine smash hits. At the same time, Lisa Laman stressed that it’s another key...

A longer and more digression-packed episode than usual, because now semi-regular special guest Aaron Neuwirth kept talking and talking and talking. Sadly, he has been banned from The Box Office Podcast until no earlier than September 21. Although if there’s a movie (re)opening on the weekend of August 15 that justifies a cameo… The core discussion is, obviously, what a massive dip for Fantastic Fo...

As of this writing, Fantastic Four: First Steps has earned $142.25 million after five days in North American theaters, jumping an “impressive as Superman ” 36% from its $10.4 million Monday for a $14.2 million Tuesday. Concerns about a shockingly frontloaded weekend (barely double its $57 million Friday and 21% of its $117.64 million weekend stemming from Thursday previews) notwithstanding, it’s n...

Our guest, longtime film journalist and current Fangoria Managing Editor Meredith Borders, joins us all the way from Germany to discuss how Superman is inspired by and appeals to fans of Smallville , as well as to what extent The Smurfs is still popular in Europe. All agree that Superman is absolutely becoming a “normal people give a damn” event movie, trying to legacy-sequel-ize I Know What You D...

James Gunn’s acclaimed and buzzy Superman opened in North America with $125 million toward a $95 million overseas launch. The domestic grosses are good enough, especially with thus-far strong weekday earnings ($12.9 million on Monday, $17 million on Tuesday and $11.8 million on Wednesday) to compensate for thus-far lousy international grosses. And the buzz is closer to Batman Begins than Superman...

Longtime Jurassic super-fan (and more recent Clown in a Cornfield mega-fan) Ryan Scott returns to the fourth chair to talk about dinosaurs and movies about dinosaurs. The numbers ($148 million over five days in North America and $322 million worldwide) are unquestionably huge, even without IMAX screens. However, this standalone, presumably one-and-done entry still sparks questions about where the...

I’ve often said that I was exactly the right age to initially think that Power Rangers was idiotic when it debuted in 1993, only to come to appreciate it when my kids discovered it in the early 2010s. Be it “good” or “bad,” it’s unlike anything else that existed before or (save for attempted knock-offs) since. In retrospect, it was an example of a large-scale commercial triumph, partly due to bein...

The good news is that F1 just nabbed a big win for Apple’s bumpy theatrical ambitions. The bad news is that M3GAN 2.0 continued Blumhouse’s less-than-stellar track record with sequels, which was less of an issue even a few years ago when their originals and non-sequels were kicking ass on the regular. And the truly ugly news drops at around the hour-mark as Lisa Laman reads as-it-drops reporting c...

This week’s topic, obviously, is what happened to  Elio,  whether Pixar is finished as a butts-in-seats brand for original animated films, and (without blaming any single factor as a zero-sum explanation) who and what is responsible. Special guest Josh Spiegel, who wrote the book(s) on Pixar , blames Bob Chapek for sending three key original Pixar films to Disney+ during the early days of the stre...

Due to a false alarm about potentially malfunctioning Wi-Fi, we ended up with two special guests for the price of one. Kirsten Acuna, having recently begun a new gig as a staff editor at  People  Magazine, dropped by to discuss the second of three high-profile live-action remakes for 2025. And since we weren’t sure if Jeremy Fuster would be able to make it, Aaron Neuwirth made his third appearance...

Ballerina  is that most frustrating of things for we box office pundits, as it’s a relative disappointment even though it’s not remotely an all-around commercial disaster. Should it have opened closer to $35 million than $25 million? Maybe, but $25 million is not half bad for a film starring a “known but not butts-in-seats draw” actress in what was her first theatrical headliner, which was heavily...

Sony’s  Karate Kid: Legends  continues to make  Jumanji  the exception to the rule. At the same time,  Bring Her Back  shows that, in ways mostly positive but slightly negative, moviegoers might be clued in to A24’s fright flight shenanigans. Could the  Karate Kid  flick have performed better if it were more closely tied to  Cobra Kai ? Might  Bring Her Back ’s inexplicably positive viewer scores...

Jeremy rages against bad-faith online discourse concerning the ending of Lilo & Stitch . Lisa cowers in terror at Plinky’s moist eyeballs. Scott whines about Final Reckoning ’s past-tense Mission: Impossible callbacks. All share varying degrees of disappointment with both big-deal Memorial Day weekend releases. Commercially, they of both kicked relative amounts of butt, with Lilo & Stitch setting...

As the headline indicates, this is an extended conversation—not quite an interview—between me and the star of  R.I.P.D.  and  The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard . Long story short, we have periodically chatted over the last decade, mainly through Twitter private messages (yes, the star of  Turbo  slid into my DMs), but not to the extent that I’m on his holiday card list or anything like that. Anyway, h...

Brandon Peters stops by to discuss what went right with a legacy sequel that didn’t sell itself as one. Topics covered included how WBD marketed a follow-up 14 years later without depending on existing fandoms, the idea that  Final Destination  may be the best Hollywood slasher franchise from the post- Scream  era, and why the franchise’s consistent quality (rarely great but seldom terrible) has c...

It’s just the three of us (Scott Mendelson, Jeremy Fuster and Lisa Laman) discussing the extent to which revealing the “actual” title of Thunderbolts may have either not helped or done more harm than good. We also note the surprisingly strong (for an IFC horror movie) debut weekend for Clown in a Cornfield while noting how and why Vertical’s Fight or Flight and Lionsgate’s Shadow Force failed to m...

The good news is that Thunderbolts* (or… uh… are we using the new title now?) kicked off the summer movie season with $74 million in North America and $160 million worldwide, grosses that would be excellent for 90% of all big-deal Hollywood franchises. The bad news is that such a bow is still essentially tied with Eternals and lower than the debuts for Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and Captain...

This was supposed to be just a summer movie preview episode. The bonkers-bananas hold for Sinners, along with aspirational openings for Revenge of the Sith and The Accountant 2, means that half the show was spent offering up the most optimistic “We’re back, dammit!” chatter since last Easter weekend. For this occasion, former co-host turned Sweeps Week Guest Ryan Scott pops back in to (also) share...

Longtime film critic, podcaster, and friend of Scott Mendelson (but don’t hold that against him), Aaron Neuwirth, returns to help us celebrate the spectacular domestic debut of Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan’s  Sinners. We discuss its impressive weekend upswing, near-unprecedented CinemaScore and PostTrak grades, and how its word of mouth will hopefully mitigate an otherwise expected decline a...

A Minecraft Movie  held firm atop both the domestic and global box office with a hold on par with  Beauty and the Beast . Meanwhile, two faith-specific films opened with good-to-great grosses relative to their expectations and obligations.  The King of Kings  was a much-needed hit for Angel Studios and earned a comparatively robust debut for a non-Disney/Comcast animated film.  Drop  was the lates...