The Box Office Podcast

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).

* What does Civil War’s chart-topping $26 million debut mean for A24?

* Scott and Lisa think a new Blair Witch is a horseman of the apocalypse situation.

* Ryan thinks we should all stop worrying and love the Blair Witch.

* Jeremy and Ryan talk about what they saw at CinemaCon.

And so much more!!

On the measured success of 'Monkey Man' and why 'The First Omen' is a classic "IP for the sake of IP" mistake. Thoughts on why the 20th Century Studios IP has mostly been so much of a dud for Disney, how 'Civil War' will play for paying moviegoers and what constitutes success or failure as the streaming bubble bursts and theaters are grateful for each and every major new release.

On today’s astonishing episode…!

* How the MonsterVerse rose from the ashes of King of the Monsters.

* Do "spectacular by pre-Covid standards” results for Bob Marley, Late Night with the Devil and Love Lies Bleeding offer cause for optimism?

*Small drops for Dune Part Two rebuts conventional wisdom about PLF-or-bust moviegoing.

All that and more!

Is Sony turning Ghostbusters into a viable franchise? Immaculate's record-high (for Neon) opening implies Sydney Sweeney has some drawing power. IFC Films triples their own personal best with a $2.8 million debut for Late Night with the Devil. Trailers for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Furiosa and Alien: Romulus each offer three distinct forms of shareholder-friendly generational nostalgia. Strong pre-release tracking for A24’s Civil War implies that a comeback for non-franchise *movie-movies*.

All that and more!

Ryan Scott was recovering from SXSW. He’ll be back next week. Mendelson, Fuster and Laman discussed Mark Wahlberg’s dwindling bankability after years of being a streaming butts-in-couches movie star (can Ryan Reynolds and Kevin Hart avoid this fate?), Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire being sold less like a sequel to Ghostbusters: Afterlife and more like a sequel to Ghostbusters II, how Spyglass “own goal”ed Scream VII into a proverbial Rise of Skywalker, if 87North become a Blumhouse-like brand for lower-budget action movies and more!!

What does a strong $58 million domestic opening for Kung Fu Panda 4 mean for DreamWorks and feature animation in general? How far can Dune Part Two soar — especially at the domestic box office? And what went mostly pretty well at the 96th Academy Award? All of these mysteries and more will be answered by 3/4 of us in our sixth episode. Ryan Scott is at SXSW this week, so he’ll be back next episode to presumably spoil the s**t out of Monkey Man, Fall Guy and, uh, maybe Late Night with the Devil?

I’m running behind, so forgive the lack of more detailed show notes. Oh, and the ending is very abrupt as Lisa Laman’s wifi fritzed in the final few minutes, and by the time she returned, we all had to skip out. As always, if you like what you’re hearing, do the usual thing of liking, sharing, commenting and *smashing* (using a cartoon mallet) that subscribe button with every justified ounce of strength and passion.

And do check out my guests’ work at their respective home bases. If you want to bother them on social media, well, that’s what Google is for.Jeremy Fuster - https://www.thewrap.com/author/jeremy-fuster/Lisa Laman - https://shorturl.at/hlqX8 and https://shorturl.at/mvzK8Ryan C. Scott - https://www.slashfilm.com/author/ryanscott/

Most of this week’s episode concerns the $82.5 million domestic (well played, Ryan) and $182.5 million worldwide opening weekend for Dune Part Two. We talk about the massive share for PLF screens, the lower expectations for the first ‘Dune’, how young stars made an adaptation of a 59-year-old novel seem cool and how Denis Villeneuve’s Dune avoided the fate of Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049. Also discussed was the $104 million-plus Oscar season performance of Poor Things and how A24 has become a brand.

As always, if you like what you’re hearing, do the usual thing of liking, sharing, commenting and *smashing* (using a cartoon mallet) that subscribe button with every justified ounce of strength and passion. And do check out my guests’ work at their respective home bases. If you want to bother them on social media, well, that’s what Google is for.Jeremy Fuster - https://www.thewrap.com/author/jeremy-fuster/Lisa Laman - https://shorturl.at/hlqX8 and https://shorturl.at/mvzK8Ryan C. Scott - https://www.slashfilm.com/author/ryanscott/

Among the topics Bob Marley’s place near the top of high-grossing musical biopics, how this four-part Beatles movie is going to work, whether the underperformance of Ordinary Angels bodes ill for aspirational Veggie Tales-style faith-based flicks (an actual debate between myself and Lisa… yay friendly conflict?), whether Oppenheimer can reach $1 billion worldwide (they think it’s half-way there, I think they’re merely living on a prayer), and the tragedy that the reissue of Universal’s Les Miserables did not score a $2,460.1 per-theater average.

We end with eye-rollingly specific opening weekend predictions for Dune Part Two, which means (now that they know it vexes me) I’d imagine this is going to be the status quo going forward for all such predictions.

Notes - I failed to correctly name the abortion-centric faith-based drama I referenced as earning around $20 million in 2019. It’s not October’s Baby (a different faith-based film that earned $5 million in 2011 but rather Unplanned.

The New York Times article, which Ryan Scott references when discussing Focus Features, can be found here.The anime article Laman wrote for Collider can be found here, while Scott’s SlashFilm article on same can be found here. Scott’s retrospective on The Passion of the Christ can be found here. And while he couldn’t make it to this week’s recording, do still check out Fuster’s WrapPro piece on musical biopics as the hot new “trend.”

And when I noted in the episode that X-Men: Apocalypse was worse than Dark Phoenix, I didn’t even realize that Ms. Laman had just written a “why Apocalypse — not Dark Phoenix — killed the X-Men series” article. I called it a franchise-killing disaster in my initial 2016 review, which sadly turned out to be accurate.

It’s still among the few times that a major studio screened a major tentpole excessively early for critics (we all thought it meant the movie was going to be great) only to get blindsided by a slew of brutal pans. See also: Disney bringing Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny to Cannes. We’ll call this an extension of the Godzilla rule (don’t open your big movie on a Wednesday unless you’re sure you have a crowd-pleaser).

As always, if you like what you’re hearing, do the usual thing of liking, sharing, commenting and *smashing* (using a cartoon mallet) that subscribe button with every justified ounce of strength and passion. And do check out my guests’ work at their respective home bases. If you want to bother them on social media, well, that’s what Google is for.Jeremy Fuster - https://www.thewrap.com/author/jeremy-fuster/Lisa Laman - https://shorturl.at/hlqX8 and https://shorturl.at/mvzK8Ryan C. Scott - https://www.slashfilm.com/author/ryanscott/

Episode three is right on time, with all four of us again chatting about the weekend box office that was. Ryan C. Scott (SlashFilm) returns after a brief abscence, joined again by myself along with Lisa Laman (Collider and Looper) and Jeremy Fuster (TheWrap).

While we do briefly talk about the Fantastic Four casting, as well as thoughts on Kung Fu Panda 4’s eventual release and the $600 million-plus success of Wonka, the majority of the 42-minute chat is about the movie that opened with $52 million over the Wed-Mon President’s Day weekend (Bob Marley: One Love) and the film that earned just $26 million over the holiday frame (Madame Web).

We discuss the grim future for Sony’s Spider-Man Universe but a bright future for promising young actors not having to look at franchise flicks as do-or-die acting gigs. We discuss the grim overall domestic box office for the holiday while noting a slow crawl back to normalcy, maybe even a pre-streaming normalcy whereby more films (amd a few smaller films) make up a larger portion of the overall annual domestic box office spend.

As always, if you like what you’re hearing, do the usual thing of liking, sharing, commenting and *smashing* (using a cartoon mallet) that subscribe button with every justified ounce of strength and passion. And do check out my guests’ work at their respective home bases. If you want to bother them on social media, well, that’s what Google is for.Jeremy Fuster - https://www.thewrap.com/author/jeremy-fuster/Lisa Laman - https://shorturl.at/hlqX8 and https://shorturl.at/mvzK8Ryan C. Scott - https://www.slashfilm.com/author/ryanscott/