Ando918

Do they make a ton of money on average? I averaged the 15 comedies this year (impossible to define comedy, but I took a stab at the ones most would define comedy). 22 Jump Street, Neighbors, Ride Along, Tammy, Dumb and Dumber 2, The Other Woman, Let's Be Cops, Horrible Bosses 2, Alexander and the Terrible, Think Like a Man 2, Blended, Million Ways, Sex Tape, That Awkward Moment, Haunted House 2. Average domestic total for these 15 comedies is 79 million. If you remove the highest one (22 Jump) and the lowest one (Haunted House 2) the average is only 75 million. The average RT score for the comedies this year is only 33%. That's a horrible average score for 15 movies. Is 75 domestic on a budget of 40 million a ton of money? Is 33% on Rotten Tomatoes a good number to aspire for? I don't think so.

Would have been great to have replaced the slots for DADT and Horrible Bosses 2 with a couple of intelligent adult dramas with the same budgets as those movies. Both comedies have been trashed by critics and audiences - no need for them to exist.

It is pretentious for me to want more than 10% of the movies this year aimed at adults? 90% of the movies are aimed at kids and teenagers. Sorry, but Into the Woods will be very kid friendly. Disney and a PG rating will make sure of it. The Hobbit is a movie about midgets. It is also a movie aimed at kids.

Too many kids movies are going to be in theaters over the last 5 weeks of this year. Big Hero 6? Penguins of Madagascar? Night at the Museum 3? Annie? Into The Woods? The Hobbit? Those movies are awesome if you are 10 years old, but what about adult moviegoers who want something thoughtful? Gone Girl will be the only adult drama this year in the top 25 at the box office. What happened to making movies like Captain Phillips, Argo, Blood Diamond, Michael Clayton, Lincoln, etc.? The adult stuff in the fall this year is now low budget indie fare showing on only 1,000 screens. Terrifying trend. We basically have to wait 10 months to finally get a glimpse at adult-oriented stories, and now that that time is here we barely get any.

DADT is going to finish somewhere in the 80s after that 2nd weekend drop. People were predicting 100 domestic after its OW.

Yep. Adults today care way, way more about cable TV dramas than movies. A decade ago, or two decades ago, or 3 decades ago, many people didn't even have cable TV. Adults had to settle for 30 minute family sitcoms on TV with laugh-tracks (T.G.I.F. on ABC and others). Now those 30 minute family sitcoms have moved to the Disney Channel.

0 of the top 10 movies at the U.S. box office this year will be rated R. Somewhat of an alarming trend, given how back in the 80s half of the movies in the top 10 every year would be rated R. Worrisome if you are a moviegoer like me who wants the studios to make more adult level stories (Moneyball, Captain Phillips, Lincoln, etc.) Yeah, I know those were not rated R, but they were aimed at the adult audience.

A decent number of moviegoers see this for what it is....a cash grab by greedy executives. No different than the first two Amazing Spider-Man reboots coming in below expectations. Many audiences can smell that there is no real need for them to exist.

The good news? The largest opening weekend at the U.S. box office this year is not Transformers 4. The bad news? The 2nd largest opening weekend at the U.S. box office this year is in fact Transformers 4.

That 82% Flixster score is concerning - as far as this movie winning the domestic box office total over Guardians goes. It is going to be very, very close with this finishing around 330 as well.

On the poster for Hunger Games 1 it is a close up of a woman's face. Just like how products aimed at female audiences (Covergirl, Maybeline, etc.) zoom in on the female's face. But the movie poster for this one is very distant. Products aimed more at men don't have close-ups. Soap operas use the close-ups. They've changed their marketing strategy a little bit knowing that 42% of the audience for this is male. When they marketed the 1st movie, they didn't think that so many males would show up, so they they did the Covergirl/Maybeline close-up shot on the poster.

Looking at how the movie posters have changed for Hunger Games 1-3 is interesting. They started off showing off her feminine looking face/long hair and now have her way in the distance, where you can't tell how long her hair is and she appears to be wearing body armor like a soldier. A very gender neutral poster.

The rap music injected into the trailer might be a way of trying to get Black audiences to come out and see this. Spike Lee has said numerous times that Black audiences usually don't come out to see serious/dramatic films starring African-Americans. Even mainstream stuff like The Great Debaters or Get on Up flops, but they see shoot em ups and gangsta movies in high numbers. Most of the people who went to see The Help or The Butler or 42 were White people.

As someone who has not read THG books and is not a major fan of this series, I can say that I really have no interest in seeing this movie....but I do have a lot of interest in seeing Mockingjay Part 2 in theaters. So if this movie under-performs and only totals 350 domestic, feel free to blame moviegoers like me. I was the same way with The Harry Potter series....saw Goblet of Fire and Deathly Hallows 2 in theaters, but never felt the buzz to see the other ones in theaters.

Harry Potter Deathly Hallows Part 2 - 169 OW.....Harry Potter Deathly Hallows Part 1 - 126 OW

Apparently Selma is starting to pick up some steam and move up the rankings. Based off of the trailers for Unbroken, I just have a feeling that movie is going to be this year's War Horse or Les Miserables where it was 1 of the top 3 on Gold Derby on December 1st, and then just disappeared from contention. Looks like it is trying way too hard.

Word of mouth for DADT has really kicked in since Saturday. Falling hard now. 90-95 domestic total.

A piece of crap wrapped in gold tinfoil is still a piece of crap.

Dumb and Dumber To's word of mouth is getting around quickly after that strong Friday night. Flixster is already down to a terrible 58% and still falling. This will finish at about 95 domestic.

Impressed by the 2nd weekend hold for Interstellar....and the amazing legs for Gone Girl that continues to defy expectations every weekend. I guess the message to the movie industry is that it is okay to sometimes make movies for adult brains, instead of pandering 90% of your movies throughout the year to mallrats in middle school and high school.

Someone wrote that the rom-com genre started to die when all of these bro-mance movies started popping up in the last 5-10 years. Judd Apatow comedies, Wedding Crashers, and now with a Kevin Hart wedding movie coming in January, and last January there was that bro-mance movie with Zac Efron. They have stopped hiring actresses for the leads and now instead have guys in the leads where all they do is talk about relationships, dating, and weddings.

The typical ones are set in Manhattan, have a lot of taxis, and the female protagonist usually works for a publishing company, magazine company, etc. And many scenes set during weddings.

If one looks at the colossal box office numbers of The Hunger Games series....or even the strong box office results of Angelina Jolie action movies like Salt and Wanted, and now with the Divergent series, it does seem like audiences (male and female) are getting more interested in action heroines, and less interested in Julia Roberts/Meg Ryan/Kate Hudson/Katherine Heigl type scripts where they revolve around weddings, fashion, taxis, shoes, and are set in Manhattan. Yeah, Julia had a few enormous hits in the 90s that would have translated to 250 domestic today, but those days are gone now. They aren't completely dead because many types of films have a lot of romance and comedy - but the 27 Dresses types of movies are pretty much dead.

The trailer for Unbroken does look really dull. Every single cliche in the book is used. Don't understand why GoldDerby currently has it as the 2nd or 3rd best odds to win Best Picture. The movie I will be seeing on Christmas Day is Big Eyes. That looks far more appealing. Tim Burton reuniting with his writers from Ed Wood on a topic he is personally passionate about.

The other day I checked his Facebook page to see what kind of buzz/following he had about this movie....and the bizarre thing I discovered is that 95% of the people who like/comment on his posts are female....and mostly women over the age of 50. I know he was a heartthrob for teen girls back in the day, but you would figure that would be over with. Literally every person who comments on his posts is a female.