Steve Mason

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Stories By Steve Mason

Box Office: Abrams' Star Trek Goes Where No Trek Has Gone Before: $33M In 29 Hours

Rebooting Bond with Daniel Craig was Bold. Christopher Nolan’s Reinvention of Batman was genius. But some thought it was overly-ambitious, even audacious, to attempt to restart the Star Trek franchise. It has begun to pay off already for Paramount Pictures, and there will dividends for years to come. J.J. Abrams is officially the Lazarus of…

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Box Office: Star Trek Thursday Night Previews Deliver A Possible $6.5M-$7.5M!

Several sources at competing studios have told me that J.J. Abrams’ all-new reboot of Star Trek (Paramount), which debuted last night at 7pm at many of its 3,849 locations, may have grossed as much as $6.5M-$7.5M. Studio honchos are “locked down tight” about actual numbers, but that is in the same ballpark as Transformers (Dreamworks/Paramount),…

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Box Office Tracking: Star Trek Could Reach $65M For 4 Days! Easily Biggest Trek Opening Ever!

The all-new J.J. Abrams reboot of Star Trek (Paramount) will win the second weekend of the Hollywood Summer Box Office season by at least a couple of light years over Fox’s fast-fading X-Men Origins: Wolverine, but some of the astronomical numbers I’ve seen floating around in the blogosphere are very over-heated. Make no mistake, this…

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Box Office: Wolverine Claws To $34.75M Friday; Could Scratch Out $86.8M Opening Weekend

In my Final Weekend Tracking column posted on Wednesday, I predicted that X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Fox) would reach $92M on opening weekend, despite soft reviews (now only 38% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes). My first fearless forecast of the 2009 summer blockbuster season appears to be close to dead-on (missed by only 5%). Star-turned-producer Hugh Jackman…

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Box Office: Wolverine Could Claw To $92 Million Opening Weekend, A Huge Start To Summer Blockbuster Season

The great thing about a sequel is that it has a built-in audience. The problem with sequels is that, as the numbers after the title go up, so does the production budget. Very hard to know for sure, but sources have told me that the production budget for X-Men was in the $75M range. X-2:…

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Box Office: Obsessed Is The Biggest Last-Weekend-Of-April Opener Ever

Recording superstar Beyonce Knowles is building a bankable resume for herself as an actress with Sony Screen Gems’ Obsessed as the latest title burnishing her resume. Co-starring the excellent Idris Elba (The Wire), this low budget, PG-13 genre pic has scored a far-above-expectations $11M on Friday, and it will likely reach $27.5M for the weekend.…

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Box Office Tracking: Hollywood's Worst Release Date

The final weekend of April has never been Hollywood’s favorite release date. In fact, it is generally considered to be among the worst release dates on the calendar. Whatever opens on the final weekend of April gets absolutely crushed by the official start of the summer blockbuster season on the first weekend of May. The…

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Box Office: Hannah Montana Beats Expectations, Observe & Report Off To Sluggish Start

She has a hit TV show on the Disney Channel, a pair of albums that have debuted at #1 on the Billboard charts, a concert tour with 69 sold-out arenas in North America, and now a second #1 movie in as many years. Miley Cyrus is the biggest teen star in the world. With most…

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Box Office Tracking: Hannah Montana And Observe & Report Could Lift Easter Weekend To An All-Time Best

Easter weekend 2009 will almost certainly be an all-time record-breaker for Hollywood with a pair of new releases that could be among the top six bunny holiday openings of all time. Although neither Hannah Montana: The Movie (Disney) or the new R-rated comedy Observe & Report (Warner Bros) will challenge 2006’s all-time Easter weekend opening…

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Box Office: Fast & Furious Opens With A Scalding $28M Friday; Could Speed To $65M By Monday

With 400,000 Americans showing up every year at the Indy 500 and 200,000 more buying tickets to see NASCAR’s premiere event The Daytona 500, you would think that the most creative minds in Hollywood would be looking for a way to cash in with more movies about car racing and car culture. NASCAR has an…

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Box Office: Fast & Furious May Race To $48M Opening Weekend

Universal’s Fast & Furious will be “burning rubber” this weekend at America’s multiplexes as the original street-racing cast reunites after some sub-par chapters of the franchise. The original The Fast & The Furious hit theatres in 2001 under the direction of Rob Cohen who had shown a knack for action with Dragon: The Bruce Lee…

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Box Office: Monsters Vs. Aliens With Almost $12K Per 3-D Screen! The Future Of 3-D Is Looking UP!

Jeffrey Katzenberg and Dreamworks Animation have definitively proven that Digital 3-D is a blockbuster format. Not only has Monsters vs. Aliens seized a monstrous $58.2M in opening weekend ticket sales, Real-D (the technology provider) and Dreamworks have revealed that $25M or so of that gross was generated specifically from 3-D and IMAX 3-D. Fox is…

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Box Office: Monsters Vs. Aliens With $16M Friday & Possible $56M Opening Weekend!

It is an excellent weekend for Dreamworks Animation. Although the credit crunch prevented financing that would allow exhibitors to undertake the digital conversion of more of its theatres, Monsters vs. Aliens is benefiting spectacularly from the 2,075 or so standard Digital 3-D engagements and the added 143 Digital IMAX runs. The audaciously ambitious animated send-up…

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Box Office Tracking: Monsters Vs. Aliens Is The Widest Non-Summer Release Of All Time

Jeffrey Katzenberg has been the film industry’s strongest proponent of 3-D over the past few years, and this weekend his advocacy will start paying dividends for Dreamworks Amimation. Monsters Vs. Aliens will debut with 4,104 playdates. That makes it the 13th-widest release in modern film history, and it becomes the biggest non-summer debut of all-time.…

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Box Office: Summit Scores A Nice Hit With Knowing

It was another good weekend for Summit Entertainment. The distributor behind last year’s meteoric hit Twilight has scored a solid hit with the Alex Proyas-directed Knowing, starring Nicolas Cage. Despite shaky word-of-mouth and negative reviews, the sci-fi thriller got a solid 9% bump on Saturday for a $9.7M second day, and it will likely finish…

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Box Office: Knowing Grabs $8.8M Friday, Targets $24M Weekend

Early box office returns are pointing to a weekend win for Knowing from Summit, but I will put my money on I Love You, Man (Dreamworks/Paramount) to generate more in US ticket sales over the long haul. The Nicolas Cage sci-fi thriller has grabbed an estimated $8.8M to start the weekend, and it will likely…

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Box Office: Watchmen Plummets 71%! The Rock Leads Race To Witch Mountain To $25M Opening

As Watchmen (Warner Bros) falls, “The Rock” appears to be racing to a weekend win. Disney’s Race To Witch Mountain, starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, is off to a solid start with $7.2M or so on opening day, and, with its expected surge in family matinee audiences on Saturday and Sunday, it will likely triumph…

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Box Office Tracking: Witch Mountain Could "Rock" Watchmen For Surprising Weekend Win

One of the coolest ways to use the social networking platform Twitter is to find out what people are thinking, saying and Twittering about in real time. Here’s a small sampling of Tweets from the opening weekend of Watchmen (Warner Bros). Watchmen = Epic fail! If you haven’t seen The Watchmen yet, I’d urge you…

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Box Office: Watchmen Down 24% Saturday; Is Word-Of-Mouth "Killing The Masks?"

According to studio estimates, Watchmen (Warner Bros) will finish the weekend with an estimated $55.65M. After seizing $4.5M in Thursday midnight business, there were rumblings about $29M on opening day and an opening weekend of $70M+. When the picture scored a lesser but still good $25.2M Friday, weekend estimates were revised downward. As of Saturday…

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Box Office Update: Watchmen Ticking Downward, Now Targeting $57M Weekend & $145M Domestic

The Zack Snyder-directed $120M epic started with $4.5M in Thursday midnight business which is outstanding. There was no way for Watchmen to approach the $18.5M midnight start for lat summer’s The Dark Knight. First off, it is March and not the middle of summer blockbuster season. Kids have school. People are working. These are not…

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Box Office: Watchmen - $25.2M Friday, Possible $62.5M Weekend

“Who is watching the Watchmen?” Just about everyone…or so it seems. The brand new film adaptation of the classic graphic comic Watchmen is a hit of monstrous proportions on its opening weekend, but not everyone loves it. In fact, not only is there a prominent character named Rorschach (played by Oscar nominee Jackie Earle Haley),…

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Watchmen Scores $4.5M From Thursday Midnight Screenings

Zack Snyder’s Watchmen, with domestic distribution rights owned by Warner Bros and international distribution rights being handled by Paramount ( oh, and by the way, Fox also has skin in this game thanks to its recent litigation), is off to a blazing start. With well-promoted Thursday midnight and after midnight screenings (1,600 or so), the…

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Box Office Tracking: Alan Moore's Curse Won't Keep Watchmen From Topping $60 Million

Watchmen (Warner Bros) has followed a long and winding road, passing through the hands of some remarkable directors like Terry Gilliam (The Fisher King), Darren Aronofsky (The Wrestler) and Paul Greengrass (United 93), before landing in the lap of the mastermind behind 2004’s stunning re-imagining of Dawn of the Dead and 2007’s March blockbuster 300.…

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Overlooked: The Top 10 Best Performances Of 2008 That You May Not Have Heard About

The Academy Awards for 2008 have been handed out, and the “popular kids” have Oscars on their mantles, but the dirty little secret about winning awards is that you’ve gotta campaign for them. Thousands of dollars were spent by the distributors and filmmakers behind Slumdog Millionaire (Fox Searchlight), Milk (Focus Features), The Reader (Weinstein) and…

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Box Office Tracking: Jonas Brothers Should Easily Win Weekend With Possible $30M

Tween girls will unite this weekend and transform Kevin, Joe and Nick into box office stars. Last year, Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour ignited a box office wildfire with a $31.1M opening weekend despite only 683 3-D-equipped screens. Now Disney has the teen stars of the moment, Jonas Brothers, in the…

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Digital Crunch: Coraline May Be The Only Tween Girl Who Hates The Jonas Brothers?

Most tween girls love the Jonas Brothers, but not the case for the animated eleven-year-old title character from Henry Selick’s stop action animated 3-D masterpiece Coraline from Focus Features. Featuring the voices of Dakota Fanning and Teri Hatcher, the critics have swooned for this high tech gem (89% Fresh in Rotten Tomatoes), and audiences are…

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