HARRY POTTER PERFORMS MAGIC ON DVD

The DVD charts looked like Potter’s fields last week as all seven Harry Potter movies managed to make the top 20 on Nielsen Videoscan’s First Alert sales chart for the week. The chart was headed, of course, by last year’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows ‹ Part 1. Home Media magazine — this despite […]

DISNEY, UNABLE TO MOUNT POPULAR GAMES, SLASHES GAME UNIT

Despite their enormous financial and content resources, movie studios have traditionally encountered rough seas in launching video games, often beaten by small, upstart companies. The Walt Disney Co. — which seemingly ought to be able to convert its popular animated titles to appealing games — has annually lost hundreds of millions of dollars on the […]

TRUE GRIT STARTS WEEKEND AT NO. 1

Paramount’s True Grit topped Friday’s box office with about $4.5 million, edging out Universal’s Little Fockers, with about $4.2 million. Season of the Witch got off the ground with $3.7 million to place third, followed by Disney’s Tron: Legacy with an estimated $2.7 million, and Sony Screen Gems’s Country Strong, which earned about $2.76 million. […]

AT BOX OFFICE, 2010 GOES OUT WITH NO BANG

The box office ended the year inauspiciously, down 29 percent from last year’s final weekend. The top film was Universal’s Little Fockers with $25.77 million, putting it past the $100-million mark after 12 days in release. It was down a modest 16 percent from the previous weekend. But the No. 2 film, True Grit, was […]

HOLIDAY BOX OFFICE: EVEN WORSE THAN ESTIMATED

Box office revenue for the holiday weekend plunged deeper than originally estimated, led by Little Fockers, which, although landing in first place, took in $30.8 million, down from Sunday’s estimate of $34 million. The Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader, came in at $9.48 million, down from Sunday’s estimate of $10.8 million. And […]

HOLIDAY BOX OFFICE: BAH, HUMBUG!

(Updated) Studios and theater owners were no doubt in full agreement with Ebenezer Scrooge’s assessment of the Christmas holiday this weekend as total ticket receipts plunged 49 percent below last year’s. The ghost of Christmas past surely haunted Universal’s Little Fockers, which, although coming in first, earned just $34 million over the weekend and $48.3 […]

WEATHER MAY FREEZE HOLIDAY BOX OFFICE

A white Christmas may have been a pleasant thing for Bing Crosby to croon about, but weather conditions over most of the U.S. and Europe during this season is threatening to force many of the usual holiday moviegoers to remain home. The dreadful weather is also being blamed in part for a sudden slowdown in […]

LAPD LAUNCHES PIRATE STING

In what officials boasted were the largest raids on counterfeit distributors in Los Angeles history, L.A. police, working with the city’s antipiracy task force, have arrested ten men and seized some $4.06 million worth of counterfeit DVDs, CDs, and apparel, city controller Wendy Greuel said. She did not break down the number of items seized […]

TRON: LEGACY SOARS AT IMAX VENUES

Clearly moviegoers were primarily attracted by the whiz-bang special effects of Disney’s Tron: Legacy — not what critics described as its muddled plot. Veteran box-office analyst Paul Dergarabedian pointed out Monday that of the $44 million in gross domestic ticket sales for the movie over the weekend, $10.3 million was generated by premium-prized ticket sales […]

TRON: LEGACY: IT’S NO AVATAR

Disney’s Tron: Legacy may have blasted off with a strong $18-million opening on Friday, but after its initial surge of fanboy enthusiasm waned, ticket sales quickly slumped, and it ended up with an estimated total of $43.6 million for the weekend, a result that the Los Angeles Times described as “solid but far from spectacular.” […]

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