Uh oh, Marvel really is getting desperate...

Films like THE LONG WALK, NOW YOU SEE ME 3, and THE HOUSEMAID are precisely what The House That Jigsaw Built should be releasing in theaters. And yes, I'd include aspirational commercial whiffs like GOOD FORTUNE.

And this, right here, is a great example of why we should be concerned. “Apple intelligence” just flipped the script and blamed him. Now imagine that across 25,000 news headlines

“Then they shouldn’t have voted for this!” Bitch, Asheville is a blue college town and the county has gone blue for decades. I am so sick of this “if I pretend disasters only happen to red areas, it means I’m safe because I’m properly on the left!” No. You’re not safe. That’s why we save everybody.

Spoken like Ashley Tisdale on Phineas and Ferb: “Mom, James Cameron is doing the James Cameron thing again!” (‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’ earned $22 million on Friday and is set to have a bigger second weekend than ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ despite opening 1/3 lower)

Read my words! As #AvatarFireAndAsh prepares to pass $200 million domestically on Saturday, but not before soaring past $600 million worldwide tonight, any relative #boxoffice decline from ‘The Way of Water’ can be blamed on a refreshingly large number of successful year-end releases.

Hear my words! | @lytrules.substack.com returns to discuss 'Avatar: Fire and Ash’s (commercial) fortune and (artistic) glory in what turned out to be The Box Office Podcast’s 100th episode

"I'm putting together a team..."

(Unpaywalled, which is what Payakan would want...) James Cameron’s #AvatarFireAndAsh passes $450 million worldwide after a week in theaters while posting weekday grosses on par with ‘The Way of Water’ and (initial) post-debut legs longer than most year-end fantasy franchise blockbuster tentpoles...

And this, as I've said many times, is the primary reason for the genocide in Gaza. For Netanyahu, it was always about changing the story from his own culpability.

I am currently on jury duty for the day. So... if I run into any gaslighting, self-pitying, "Boo hoo, you'll never hear my song again!" drama queens, they are going straight to whale jail!

Had Disney succeeded in cementing the likes of Shang-Chi, Captain Marvel and the Fantastic Four as A-level Marvel heroes, it wouldn’t need nostalgia to sell the MCU’s next team-up tentpole...

maintaining the fiction that cbs news would remain relatively objective under her leadership was a *lot* more important — to the admin, to cbs news, to david ellison and to bari weiss — than killing this story was, and it’s incredibly funny she didn’t know that

If you're wondering why my AVATAR 3 box office post was so damn late today...

Uh oh! If James Cameron’s third Pandora passion play fails to leg out excessively, #AvatarFireAndAsh might only gross as much at the worldwide #boxoffice as (depending on its legs) such infamous flops as INSIDE OUT 2, JURASSIC WORLD, THE AVENGERS or BARBIE!

Friday #BoxOffice: Yes, #AvatarFireandAsh is opening lower than hoped, with a likely over/under $95M domestic debut weekend. However, unlike when ‘The Way of Water’ opened to $134M three years ago, James Cameron’s sci-fi flick has plenty of competition or help amid a crowded holiday season.

America is fatally obsessed with the question, “What if the WRONG people get something they don’t DESERVE?” We will go without healthcare, dignity in old age, and food for children to keep someone, somewhere from getting what is perceived to be a free lunch. This our great national weakness.

Wanna know why ‘Avatar 3’ might open closer to $100M than $150M? Among other variables, three other movies are opening in over 3,100 theaters and chasing a $20M domestic debut weekend. ‘Avatar 2’ opened unopposed. Does anyone remember what film dared open against the first ‘Avatar’ in December 2009?

Paul Feig's and Rebecca Sonnenshine’s adaptation of Freida McFadden’s best-seller -- starring a game Sydney Sweeney and a gleefully on-point Amanda Seyfried -- is a genre revival that still plays like a new movie that isn’t afraid to, uh... rock the cradle.

At its best, and even with too much plot and action seemingly cribbed from its immediate predecessor, there’s a lot of “at its best,” #AvatarFireAndAsh plays like James Cameron knows that it’s potentially the last auteur-driven mega-budget franchise blockbuster that Hollywood’s ever going to make.

Don’t react to an original success by releasing an unrequested IP-for-IP’s sake remake, why not every slow weekend is a “garbage day,” and more. (Weekend #BoxOffice Report via @scottmendelson.bsky.social)

A lot to unpack here about class, gender, and caring work 19thnews.org/2025/12/ice-...

"Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear."

There’s a good chance that the battle over Warner Bros. might be another example of an unending narrative filled with phantom tea leaves, evidence of evidence and false clues that prove entirely irrelevant before what is a coin toss (Netflix or Skydance?) between two likely to be bad results.

Okay, but... does *she* have a harem...?

Listen Now --- I spoke with @hertzbarry.bsky.social, the author of ‘Welcome to the Family’ about the 25-year saga that, almost accidentally, turned an unassuming B-movie ‘rip off, don’t remake’ riff on ‘Point Break’ (with surfing swapped out for street racing) into the $7 billion THE FAST SAGA...

In holdover news for the weekend, Lionsgate’s ‘Now You See Me 3’ has passed $200m worldwide, leaping over many higher-profile tentpoles from “legacy studios.”

Whether or not this back-and-forth matters, and fully admitting that Tarantino was "punching down," I'll just say that everyone upset about this should immedietely rent or stream THE LIFE OF CHUCK...

A brief look at the new releases at this weekend’s domestic box office that weren’t ‘Five Nights at Freddy’s 2.’

a type of content that makes me want to launch myself into space and is huge part of why everything is so bad: TikToker goes down a “rabbit hole,” makes 9-minute video. The “rabbit hole” was she found an Eater article. The Eater journalist did all the work: www.tiktok.com/t/ZTruBS8cp/

Blumhouse’s youth-skewing video game-based sequel opened on a weekend Hollywood usually leaves for dead, resulting in a sky-high opening amid an all-time best overall total for the post-Thanksgiving frame. (@scottmendelson.bsky.social's weekend #boxoffice analysis for #FiveNightsatFreddys2)

When Universal trumpets the (terrific) $109 million worldwide debut of FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY’S 2 as the studio’s second-biggest horror opening ever behind the first FNAF…

- My favorite Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa moment. - Simpsons 2 be-Labors a lesson well learned. - An Avengers 4 release highlights an Avengers 5 conundrum. - Netflix may (accidentally?) help theaters, but the fear is that it’s arguably in the studio’s best interest to starve them to death. - And more!

When you open a big/buzzy film on any weekend, even the usually empty post-Thanksgiving frame, we show up. It was true for 1991’s Star Trek VI. It was true for 2003’s The Last Samurai. Now it’s true (to a record degree) for 2025’s #FNAF2. (Friday #boxoffice report via @scottmendelson.bsky.social)

Am I the author of all of this pain? Or did I accidentally create #Avatar’s biggest pop culture “footprint” by writing 11 years ago (on its 5th anniversary, as a note of post-theatrical curiosity, not a criticism of the film) that it left no pop culture footprint? Did I incept all of this?!

So the reward for a company having an almost miraculously aspirational commercial and artistic year at the box office is to be bought by the one company with the most incentive (and seeming desire) to wipe movie theaters off the map? We’d almost be better off if Warner Bros.’s 2025 slate had tanked.

As it happens, I interviewed @scottmendelson.bsky.social earlier this week about, among other things, what Netflix buying WB would mean for theatrical. Spoiler: nothing good! (That’s about 30 minutes in. We also discussed RUSH HOUR 4, the weirdest bribe ever.) www.thebulwark.com/p/is-there-a...

So the reward for a company having an almost miraculously aspirational commercial and artistic year at the box office is to be bought by the one company with the most incentive (and seeming desire) to wipe movie theaters off the map? We’d almost be better off if Warner Bros.’s 2025 slate had tanked.

Fans of the games and young moviegoers hoping for a gateway horror film deserve better than #fivenightsatfreddys2, a willfully lousy (after a solid first act) snooze-fest that treats its IP as an excuse to barely try... via @scottmendelson.bsky.social

It may not be a career defining turn, but I loved Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa's delightful spoof of his own onscreen villainy in BALLS OF FURY.

Unions, make your voices heard. I know for a fact that you were so loud at Netflix HQ during the strikes that you annoyed the shit out of the employees in the office, so let them hear it again.

Ep. 97 - (Disney’s) Got a Million Problems, But ‘Woke’ Ain’t One

Unmatched post-debut legs for pre-Christmas releases, along with the “wait for Imax” factor, means that James Cameron’s #AvatarFireAndAsh does not need a ‘Star Wars'-sized opening weekend for long-term #boxoffice glory.

Or, if I may "yes, and..." if you want to use Rotten Tomatoes, pay more attention to the "average critic rating" (which offers a pretty accurate critical consensus) versus the more binary fresh/rotten score (which merely notes how many of the critics felt it was at least a 6/10).

Too much “been there done that” in terms of plot beats and set pieces, but #AvatarFireAndAsh is still an awe-inspiring technical and visceral achievement that rarely lets up in melodrama or intensity. It's such an all-in spectacle that it plays like it’s the last movie that’s ever going to get made.

Too few movies, per usual, but also you had ‘Gladiator II’ in its second frame instead of ‘Now You See Me 3,’ Predator: Badlands’ and ‘The Running Man’ in their respective third or fourth frames (Weekend #boxoffice for ‘Wicked For Good,’ ‘Now You See Me 3’ & everything else that wasn’t ‘Zootopia 2’)

Disney’s animated sequel opened like an in-country tentpole in China, amassing $272 million of its sky-high $556 million worldwide debut weekend in the Middle Kingdom alone. -- The #Zootopia2 weekend #boxoffice report -- via @scottmendelson.bsky.social

Disney’s #Zootopia2 earned the top single-day gross at the Chinese #boxoffice for any movie not titled NE ZHA 2 or DETECTIVE CHINATOWN 3 via @scottmendelson.bsky.social

Disney’s animated follow-up is opening like a true breakout sequel nine years after ‘Zootopia’ grossed a sky-high (then and now) $235 million in the Middle Kingdom.