Boxoffice Weekly #003 (MP3 - 7.8MB - 23 min)
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It’s Presidents Day weekend here, where we take a day off to celebrate the birthdays of the two presidents everyone liked! In Lincoln’s case, almost everyone.
In tonight’s show we examine the motive behind blood-curdling corporate announcements. Also The Lion Sleeps Tonight lawsuit sleeps [...]

Atari announced last week that they’re going to be slashing their workforce and selling off some of their assets in the near future. With video gaming on the ascendent and some games earning more than most movies, how has this happened?
The first truly popular game was Pong, the brainchild of Nolan Bushnell. It was revolutionary. [...]

Rob Long is a sitcom writer who does weekly commentaries for KCRW in Santa Monica, and he has nailed something that is obviously wrong with Television. In this week’s MARTINI SHOT he suggests that the reason shows are getting worse and worse is that the people who make them are getting smarter and smarter. They basically [...]

If you’re interested in this blog you might like these movies, which are all about movies and the people who make them. These are my favorites; am I missing any?
The Big Picture - no movie has ever covered the sheer hell of pitch meetings better. Film school award-winner Nick Chapman (Kevin Bacon in his pre-sexmonkey days) [...]

Oooooh, satellite radio is in trouble. The death knell today comes from XM, the company who doesn’t have Howard Stern but will have Oprah. Their stock is down 5% on news that Pierce Roberts Jr. has resigned from the board, in protest of the continuous gush of money from the company. This paragraph from the [...]

Via Zap2It, the US TV ratings for the week ending today.
(Note: No more charts! They are keeping the show out of iTunes. Plays havoc with the feeds, don’tcha know.)
This chart is a reminder that prime time programming is feminine. GREY’S ANATOMY, DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES, and WITHOUT A TRACE are primarily aimed at female audiences. DANCING WITH [...]

Brent Redstone is suing his father and sister Shari in an attempt to dissolve National Amusements. Among other things, National Amusements is a movie theatre company with locations in the US, UK, Latin American and Russia. It’s huge, worth about $8 billion. Brent apparently wants to liquidate his 17% of it. In the suit he alleges his [...]

Yesterday I talked about studio how studios report their grosses on the honor system. How do they get their numbers? I can talk with authority about this because I ran movie theatres for a long time. Too long.
Exhibitors and distributors don’t trust each other, for a lot of reasons. And it all boils down to [...]

Box Office Weekly #002 (MP3 - 6.5MB - 20min)
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Another excitin’ fast-talkin’ show of Box Office Weekly! Who’s more popular, the french detective or the curious monkey? How much did the superbowl obliterate the competition? And can you make a coat out of Simon Callow? Listening is the only way to find [...]

I’ll be reading the box office figures tonight, which I get from Box Office Mojo. One of the things I like about their charts is they include a column listing the budget of the movie, so you can see whether it turned a profit. It’s useless, of course, but fun to imagine. Allow me please [...]