While you’d think that the terrific trio, alongside producer Max Deering and special guest Rendy Jones (another superb fourth-chair occupant who’s so young but has been doing this for so long that I shudder to think how old they were when I first started reading their reviews and commentary), would spend most of the time discussing Primate and Greenland: Migration. And, yes, both films get their due discourse. And yes, the monkey business includes a digression into the infamous opening-night reaction to The Devil Inside.
However, the first half is taken up by a conversation about everyone’s favorite studio logos and a tough-love chat about the many current struggles at Searchlight since its absorption into the Disney empire. The debate “rages” (not really) over why the former Fox Searchlight has struggled to at least remain as potent a year-end as Comcast’s Focus Features. Is it an inevitable consequence of consolidation? Is it an unwillingness to try and turn the likes of Rental Family into non-award-season hits? It’s probably a little of both.
Here’s hoping that The Testament of Ann Lee A) scores its share of Oscar nominations and B) opens wide-ish next weekend with closer to $6 million than, I dunno, $600,000, just to make us look like idiots. We also discuss Neon’s slow-roll success as the hot spot for fans of international cinema, surefire ways to sell The Testament of Ann Lee to regular audiences (think Jermaine Stewart), fancasting for The Housemaid’s Secret and — because this is a box office podcast — the latest Jim Jarmusch flick.
Recommended Reading…
* Scott Mendelson argues that, with The Housemaid representing her third straight overperforming non-franchise mainstream studio programmer, Sydney Sweeney might just be a movie star.
* Jeremy Fuster discussed how concerns and fears about almost inevitable corporate consolidation have dampened the mood even in an otherwise optimistic theatrical ecosystem.
* Lisa Laman noted in an older article worth resharing amid the initial publicity run for Avengers: Doomsday that Fox’s 2015 SDCC panel highlighted a Marvel-specific future that never truly materialized.
* Ryan Scott discusses how Ben Affleck and Matt Damon arranged for a performance-based bonus pool — to be shared among the cast and crew of Netflix’s The Rip — as a way to deal with (not unlike the Artist Equity arrangements for Air among other films) streaming-specific inequities in terms of profit sharing.
* Rendy Jones shares the best (among those they’ve seen) of the indie/festival/arthouse gems we should keep our eyes on for 2026
If you like what you hear, please like, share, comment, and subscribe (using a cartoon mallet) with every justified ounce of strength and passion. If you’d like to reach out and offer good cheer, request in-show discussions, or suggest ideas for bonus episodes, please email us at Asktheboxofficepod@gmail.com (which I finally fixed so that it’ll forward to my personal business email, natch).
* Scott Mendelson - The Outside Scoop and Puck News
* Jeremy Fuster - TheWrap
* Lisa Laman - Dallas Observer, Pajiba, Looper, Comic Book and Autostraddle
* Ryan C. Scott - SlashFilm and Fangoria
* Max Deering - Fangoria and Action For Everyone
* Rendy Jones - Rendy’s Reviews
