Shows
The Box Office PodcastEp. 81 - 'Nobody 2' Could. 'Nobody 2' Would!Action For Everyone podcast host Mike Scott returns to A) plug this weekend’s Big Bad Film Fest and B) discuss Timo Tjahjanto’s first foray into Hollywood action filmmaking. He’s joined by Max Deering, also from Action For Everyone, as well as Fangoria. Is Nobody 2 a breakout sequel, or just a “spend more but make less” follow-up?* Is it Tjahjanto’s Hard Target or merely his Maximum Risk?* Who pops in unannounced to discuss last weekend’s big theatrical release?* Is KPop Demon Hunters a rare film that became a pop cultural sensation at least partially because it skipped the...
2025-08-211h 40
The Box Office PodcastEp. 80 - Hooray For Hollywood?In this distinctly old-school episode of The Box Office Podcast, former co-host turned semi-regular special guest Ryan Scott returned to discuss the blow-out success of Zach Cregger’s Weapons. Scott Mendelson noted that it’s another example of WB’s marketing might in terms of turning less-conventional programmers into genuine smash hits. At the same time, Lisa Laman stressed that it’s another key example of why it’s still worth it for Hollywood to roll the dice on original or less pre-sold theatrical films. Meanwhile, Jeremy Fuster noted the skillful marketing campaign that, unlike the overly cryptic pr...
2025-08-141h 04
The Box Office PodcastEp. 78 - Galactus Demands a Doggy BagAs of this writing, Fantastic Four: First Steps has earned $142.25 million after five days in North American theaters, jumping an “impressive as Superman” 36% from its $10.4 million Monday for a $14.2 million Tuesday. Concerns about a shockingly frontloaded weekend (barely double its $57 million Friday and 21% of its $117.64 million weekend stemming from Thursday previews) notwithstanding, it’s not like the film is collapsing into oblivion now that the hardcore MCU fans have checked it off their proverbial lists.That was the general impression offered up in this latest episode of The Box Office Podcast, namely that Marvel’s latest was a step i...
2025-07-301h 15
The Box Office PodcastEp. 76 - Reign of the 'Superman'James Gunn’s acclaimed and buzzy Superman opened in North America with $125 million toward a $95 million overseas launch. The domestic grosses are good enough, especially with thus-far strong weekday earnings ($12.9 million on Monday, $17 million on Tuesday and $11.8 million on Wednesday) to compensate for thus-far lousy international grosses.And the buzz is closer to Batman Begins than Superman Returns, so we invited TheWrap’s resident scooper and geek-specific (but not IP-exclusive) film journalist, Umberto Gonzalez, to answer “Why is this IP franchise reboot different from all other IP franchise reboots?”Jeremy Fuster discusses how this furthers the noti...
2025-07-181h 12
The Box Office PodcastEp. 74 - ‘F1’ Blue-Shells Blumhouse as Pixar Slips on Its Own Banana PeelThe good news is that F1 just nabbed a big win for Apple’s bumpy theatrical ambitions. The bad news is that M3GAN 2.0 continued Blumhouse’s less-than-stellar track record with sequels, which was less of an issue even a few years ago when their originals and non-sequels were kicking ass on the regular. And the truly ugly news drops at around the hour-mark as Lisa Laman reads as-it-drops reporting confirming all our worst fears about why Pixar’s Elio was delayed and what was changed from the allegedly nearly finished original cut. Get full access to The...
2025-07-041h 28
The Box Office PodcastEp. 73 - How Low Can Pixar's 'Elio' Go?This week’s topic, obviously, is what happened to Elio, whether Pixar is finished as a butts-in-seats brand for original animated films, and (without blaming any single factor as a zero-sum explanation) who and what is responsible.Special guest Josh Spiegel, who wrote the book(s) on Pixar, blames Bob Chapek for sending three key original Pixar films to Disney+ during the early days of the streaming war.Lisa Laman notes that Pixar hasn’t been a “the name is enough” brand since the mid-2010s.Jeremy Fuster attributes the decline to audiences voting for...
2025-06-271h 32
The Box Office PodcastEp. 71 - 'Ballerina,' You've Barely Seen Her... Slaying On The ScreenBallerina is that most frustrating of things for we box office pundits, as it’s a relative disappointment even though it’s not remotely an all-around commercial disaster. Should it have opened closer to $35 million than $25 million? Maybe, but $25 million is not half bad for a film starring a “known but not butts-in-seats draw” actress in what was her first theatrical headliner, which was heavily marketed using another actor and character who appears in little more than an extended cameo. And yeah, with Saw XI in purgatory and Michael pushed to 2026, Ballerina retroactively became Lionsgate’s closest thing in 2025 to a conventional...
2025-06-111h 07
The Box Office PodcastEp. 67 - 'Thunderbolts' Are... So?It’s just the three of us (Scott Mendelson, Jeremy Fuster and Lisa Laman) discussing the extent to which revealing the “actual” title of Thunderbolts may have either not helped or done more harm than good. We also note the surprisingly strong (for an IFC horror movie) debut weekend for Clown in a Cornfield while noting how and why Vertical’s Fight or Flight and Lionsgate’s Shadow Force failed to make much of an opening weekend impression. Get full access to The Outside Scoop at scottmendelson.substack.com/subscribe
2025-05-1556 min
The Box Office PodcastEp. 64: Users Are Losers, but ‘Sinners’ Are Winners!Longtime film critic, podcaster, and friend of Scott Mendelson (but don’t hold that against him), Aaron Neuwirth, returns to help us celebrate the spectacular domestic debut of Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan’s Sinners. We discuss its impressive weekend upswing, near-unprecedented CinemaScore and PostTrak grades, and how its word of mouth will hopefully mitigate an otherwise expected decline as it starts to lose IMAX and other premium large-format (PLF) screens in the coming weeks.A disclaimer. For reasons unknown the audio went mute during Lisa Laman’s climactic “Who I am and what I wish to plug,”...
2025-04-241h 05
The Box Office PodcastEp. 59 - Everybody HurtsEverything is terrible, and everyone is hurting. That’s the general sentiment as longtime film critic, podcaster and friend-of-Scott Mendelson (don’t hold that last one against him)Aaron Neuwirth guest-stars to try and bring some light into the darkness of an unusually bleak weekend at the domestic box office. Hollywood is (finally?) offering more small-scale studio programmers, but audiences are less willing than ever to see them. How much blame falls on the audience for not showing up? How much is about, as Jeremy Fuster reminds us, films like Black Bag just seem close enough to the...
2025-03-201h 05
The Box Office PodcastEp. 57 - That's Anora!Since there really isn’t much box office news to discuss, we spent the entire show discussing the Oscar season that just ended.Lisa Laman explained the commercial realities that helped make Anora the lowest-earning Best Picture winner since The Hurt Locker in 2010. Jeremy Fuster argued that it was more important for the Academy Awards to honor the “best” movies of the year even at the cost of remaining a top-tier pop culture event. Scott Mendelson noted Anora’s place alongside a slew of pre-COVID pictures like Parasite, Joker, Knives Out and Hustlers which acknowledged that income inequali...
2025-03-061h 08
The Box Office PodcastEp. 55 - America, F*** No!Scott Mendelson, Jeremy Fuster and Lisa Laman pontificate on why a $101 million Friday-Monday debut isn’t great news for Captain America: Brave New World and could be terrible news for the theatrical industry, which is banking on the MCU tentpole to deadlift the entire first quarter. Concurrently, longtime LA journalist vet and before-it-was-cool geek culture expert Luke Y. Thompson is our special guest in a conversation discussing the give-and-take of politically-minded tentpoles, how disingenuous politically-minded operators exploited the genuine (explanation is not justification) anger over the diversification of stereotypically niche fandoms and whether Marvel’s current mixed track record is a na...
2025-02-191h 08
The Box Office PodcastEp. 53 - 'Companion' Box Office Goes To The Dog(s), Man!This weekend’s episode goes to the Dog(s), Man. Jeremy Fuster couldn’t make it, but Lisa Laman and Scott Mendelson welcome Kenny Miles to this week’s episode to discuss both the new releases (Companion and Dog Man) in a general sense and share his experiences and opinions related to his work as a CinemaScore pollster. We all agree that actually polling folks walking out of the movie on opening night is a better word-of-mouth measurement tool than opt-in online user polls that, of course, can be gamed and skewed for one reason or another. Also, we discus...
2025-02-051h 07
The Box Office PodcastEp. 52 - Flight Risks, 'Brutalist' Chatter and Oscar Snubs With Chrissi MichaelThe actual box office news is comparatively light, so this somewhat became an accidental three-part episode.In the first act, Scott Mendelson, Lisa Laman and this week’s special guest star (Chrissi Michael, natch) discussed the ups and downs of the top ten and the various ways in which younger viewers ingest pop culture.The second act, during which Jeremy Fuster pops in a bit late but not too late (think when you show up 25 minutes after the listed showtime at an AMC theater and Nicole Kidman is still proselytizing), features more conventional box office pu...
2025-01-301h 24
The Box Office PodcastEp. 51 - Somehow, Ryan Scott ReturnedAs the sad Poe image implies, former co-host Ryan Scott is back, at least for one episode. They never found the body; he fixed the autopilot six months ago, an enraged Superboy punched the space-time continuum or whatever a bunch of times, and/or the entire last season was a dream. Either way, we hope for a few more Ryan Scott guest appearances over the next year to the extent his schedule allows. It was like riding a bike as we discussed why Wolf Man earned too little, with Scott discussing the specifics of Invisible Man’s success. Ryan corre...
2025-01-211h 01
The Box Office PodcastEp. 49: Missing That Insidious White NoiseSince there were no newbies of note this weekend, all due respect to Vertical’s The Damned, Scott Mendelson, Lisa Laman and Jeremy Fuster just talked about the holdover business and that pesky “fewer movies than theaters were once accustomed to” issue that still seems to be in play five years after the start of the COVID pandemic. The good news is that Mufasa: The Lion King is legging like a champ, and Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is racing into the video game-based movie history books. Moreover, adult-skewing biggies like Nosferatu, A Complete Unknown and Babygirl are thriving concurrently right alongs...
2025-01-0748 min
The Box Office PodcastEp. 47: Sonic's Holiday Heist vs. Mufasa's Christmas Coal with Paul DergarabdianAfter appearing on all 46 of the first episodes of The Box Office Podcast (even the late June episode where it was just her and Ryan holding down the fort), Lisa Laman had to sit this one out. She’ll be back for episode 48, so you can listen to me roll my eyes at all the Nosferatu nonsense *and* shudder at the hardcore deep-dive Sonic the Hedgehog nerdery in one single episode. This time, however, we’ve got a special guest star… (copies and pastes the whole thing cause I’m a lazy b*****d), Comscore Sr. Media Analyst Paul Dergarab...
2024-12-2652 min
The Box Office PodcastEp. 45 - This is the Saddest Movie, and I Love Crying At It!Weirdly enough, there were well over a dozen new releases this weekend, even if it a few of them made anything resembling “money” in terms of domestic grosses. Nonetheless, this episode offers a slew of tangents including…* The comparative cultural rehabilitation of Chris Nolan’s Interstellar, at least in terms of online nitpicking versus critical and real-world approval* The value of putting old(er) classics back into wide theatrical release* Why Y2K was DOA* Bruce Willis’ complicated 2010s filmography* Our critical complaints with Gladiator II* Michelle Kisner (an...
2024-12-101h 13
The Box Office PodcastEp. 44 - "Wait, He Fixed The Autopilot System Six Months Ago!"Moana 2 shattered Thanksgiving weekend records with a sky-high $225 million Wed-Sun debut, right alongside Wicked Part One’s equally impressive $118 million Wed-Sun *non-opening weekend*. Oh, and Gladiator II kept up with the competition, relatively speaking, as it showed that there’s room in the moviegoing marketplace for more than one — or even two — big-deal franchise-friendly mega-budget tentpoles. But, sorry Red One, definitely not four big-deal franchise-friendly mega-budget tentpoles.Listen as Lisa Laman decries the extent to which Disney’s tentpole-focused strategy has overwhelmed Searchlight, Jeremy Fuster passionately explains why the Academy Awards both still matter and are more important...
2024-12-041h 20
The Box Office PodcastEp. 28: A Lively Weekend For 'Deadpool 3'Both Deadpool & Wolverine and It Ends With Us nabbed $50 million+ weekends, again showing Hollywood there’s more than one way to build a blockbuster. Lisa Laman details the key lesson from the mega-hit Colleen Hoover adaptation. Ryan Scott begs Lionsgate to stop making Borderlands-sized franchise failures. Jeremy Fuster ends the show with a righteous diatribe contrasting D23’s bread-and-circuses pageantry with the struggles facing the filmmakers responsible for Disney’s biggest hits. Get full access to The Outside Scoop at scottmendelson.substack.com/subscribe
2024-08-1359 min
The Box Office PodcastEp. 27: Deadpool Traps A Purple CrayonThe gang is back to discuss what continues to go right for Deadpool & Wolverine, what only went kinda-sorta okay for M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap and what went 104% wrong for Harold and the Purple Crayon. There are fewer digressions than usual, although we do note Warner Bros. Discovery’s very bummer summer and Longlegs being Nicolas Cage’s biggest live-action hit in nearly 17 years while imploring Imax to give the people what they crave: Hundreds of Beavers: The Imax Experience. We also answer our first piece of viewer mail. Keep them coming. Otherwise, we’ll have to actually figure out what...
2024-08-0757 min
The Box Office PodcastEp 21: 'Inside Out 2' Bikerides 'Thelma' to The 'Exorcism'Ryan Scott and Lisa Laman do it "solo" to discuss the $101 million second weekend for Inside Out 2 along with better-than-expected openings for 'The Bikeriders,' 'Thelma' and 'Kinds of Kindness'. Get full access to The Outside Scoop at scottmendelson.substack.com/subscribe
2024-06-251h 01
The Box Office PodcastEp 06: Kung Fu Panda 4 vs Dune 2 vs Oscars 96What does a strong $58 million domestic opening for Kung Fu Panda 4 mean for DreamWorks and feature animation in general? How far can Dune Part Two soar — especially at the domestic box office? And what went mostly pretty well at the 96th Academy Award? All of these mysteries and more will be answered by 3/4 of us in our sixth episode. Ryan Scott is at SXSW this week, so he’ll be back next episode to presumably spoil the s**t out of Monkey Man, Fall Guy and, uh, maybe Late Night with the Devil?I’m running behind, so for...
2024-03-1346 min
The Box Office PodcastEp 05: Dune, Nothing but Dune, Give Me That Dune... Don't Let It End!Most of this week’s episode concerns the $82.5 million domestic (well played, Ryan) and $182.5 million worldwide opening weekend for Dune Part Two. We talk about the massive share for PLF screens, the lower expectations for the first ‘Dune’, how young stars made an adaptation of a 59-year-old novel seem cool and how Denis Villeneuve’s Dune avoided the fate of Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049. Also discussed was the $104 million-plus Oscar season performance of Poor Things and how A24 has become a brand.As always, if you like what you’re hearing, do the usual thing of liking, shar...
2024-03-0651 min
The Box Office PodcastEpisode 04: Must Faith-Based Films Get Meaner? Will Beatles Assemble?, Could 'Drive-Away Dolls' Have Succeeded In Pride Month?Among the topics Bob Marley’s place near the top of high-grossing musical biopics, how this four-part Beatles movie is going to work, whether the underperformance of Ordinary Angels bodes ill for aspirational Veggie Tales-style faith-based flicks (an actual debate between myself and Lisa… yay friendly conflict?), whether Oppenheimer can reach $1 billion worldwide (they think it’s half-way there, I think they’re merely living on a prayer), and the tragedy that the reissue of Universal’s Les Miserables did not score a $2,460.1 per-theater average.We end with eye-rollingly specific opening weekend predictions for Dune Part Two, which mean...
2024-02-2745 min
The Box Office PodcastThe Outside Scoop's Box Office Podcast Ep 03Episode three is right on time, with all four of us again chatting about the weekend box office that was. Ryan C. Scott (SlashFilm) returns after a brief abscence, joined again by myself along with Lisa Laman (Collider and Looper) and Jeremy Fuster (TheWrap). While we do briefly talk about the Fantastic Four casting, as well as thoughts on Kung Fu Panda 4’s eventual release and the $600 million-plus success of Wonka, the majority of the 42-minute chat is about the movie that opened with $52 million over the Wed-Mon President’s Day weekend (Bob Marley: One Love) and the...
2024-02-2042 min
The Box Office PodcastThe Outside Scoop's Box Office Podcast Ep 02Episode two is a day late, since we all wanted to chat about the various Super Bowl trailers which of course didn’t air until Sunday evening. Alas, Ryan C. Scott couldn’t make it but it’s still me, Lisa Laman (Collider and Looper) and (popping in at the 9:30 mark) Jeremy Fuster (TheWrap) discussing the miserable Super Bowl box office, the mostly interesting Super Bowl-aired movie trailers and the fallout (or lack thereof) from Warner Bros. apparently shelving Coyote Vs. Acme for the second time. Among the digressions, a possible summer box office boost for ma...
2024-02-1455 min
The Box Office PodcastScott Mendelson Finally Has a Podcast!Join legendary box office pontificator Scott Mendelson alongside a handful of younger, cooler but no less knowledgeable box office pundits. Currently, it will be me alongside Jeremy Fuster (TheWrap), Lisa Laman (Collider), and Ryan Scott (Slashfilm). Spoiler: He is what they grow beyond.In this episode, we discuss Argylle's box office failure, Carl Weathers's passing, the perils of a theatrical industry that is light on tentpoles, and why Road House went straight to Prime Video. Get full access to The Outside Scoop at scottmendelson.substack.com/subscribe
2024-02-061h 09