Wilfred

American Made was so mediocre, I'm baffled by its 86% RT score. This is basically of the same quality as War Dogs. Actually, I might honestly prefer War Dogs solely for Jonah Hill's hilarious turn. I honestly think a bunch of critics gave it a pass because Cruise finally did something resembling a character driven film again, which is what they've been clamoring him to do for years.

The Neon Demon number is almost hard to fathom. I'm not really upset Free State of Jones flopped. The whole 'finally a movie for adults' campaign when the film's reviews were worse than a lot of the blockbusters this summer was beyond obnoxious.

Joy will have weak legs. Good WOM for Big Short seems to have started percolating as I expected (with Joy and Hateful Eight likely to have mixed WOM and Revenant likely to be in the same boat among general audiences, this movie has a real chance to flourish over the coming weeks) but Concussion held much better than I expected.

Hateful Eight will not have anywhere near the legs Django or Basterds did. It lacks the star power and is frankly, nowhere near as good as those two films were. QT had his fanbase turn out for the Roadshow but I imagine mainstream audiences will find the film needlessly overlong. That is definitely good news for The Revenant, though that is still going to be a tough sell.

Also curious about this. Deadline and rth's numbers divulge quite a bit on those two.

Echo The Big Short being very strong sentiment. The financial jargon may go over some heads but Paramount is being wise to play the long game with it. It's the rare film that's both educational and genuinely entertaining. A 5 day $15-16 Million run sets it up fine for what I expect will and should be a long run. Especially if it gets a Best Picture nom. Which I assume it will.

Horrifying stuff.

A- Cinemascore is also slightly better than I expected, I bet it's going to hold better than expected too.

3.4 Million for Aloha? Yikes. Crowe might be toast.

Those numbers aren't even decent for Tomorrowland, sorry. They're not bomb level but they're not decent. They're decidely (if not significantly) below tracking and a B Cinemascore for this type of film is mediocre at best (Maleficent scored an A with similar reviews).

Clooney isn't a draw, he never has been. Not that his presence was the deciding factor here but it didn't help any. Brad Pitt might be the only 50+ male actor who can help a film's B.O. at this point. Depp's flopped out, Cruise couldn't sell EoT even with terrific reviews and the Scientology thing has further hurt him. Rouge Nation will sell on the franchise's name, not his. I bet his next original movie flops. Pitt doesn't have a lot of big hits but at least his movies consistently turn a profit aside from a couple art films he's done that had no chance to begin with. If I was a studio with a tentpole calling for a 50+ actor, he'd be the first person I'd turn to.