The Box Office Podcast

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 (and Lisa Laman) raving about The Brutalist Oh, right, Michelle Kisner [https://www.rottentomatoes.com/critics/michelle-kisner/movies], a card-carrying (and founding) member of the Michigan Movie Critics Guild [http://card-carrying (and founding) member], stopped by as a special guest as Jeremy took the week off. So this week it’s Scott, Lisa and Michelle in a conventionally unconventional episode that somehow found more to talk about in regard to those Johnny English movies than about Moana 2. Get full access to The Outside Scoop at scottmendelson.substack.com/subscribe [https://scottmendelson.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

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 than any other awards show, while Scott Mendelson notes that the dual success of both female-skewing, family-friendly musical fantasies shows that there are no more excuses for Hollywood to be shy about placing one major movie right alongside another one. Meanwhile, we say a temporary farewell to one of our co-hosts as we essentially killed off a major character in one of the year’s final episodes. Fear not, it’s of his own volition, and it’s less Halloween Ends and more Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. Surely nobody could have survived that fall, explosion, tidal wave or being chopped in half by a laser sword before drifting down a bottomless gorge, right? Get full access to The Outside Scoop at scottmendelson.substack.com/subscribe [https://scottmendelson.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

The conventional wisdom that Wicked Part One’s $112 million opening destroyed (audiences don’t mind musicals, and they don’t mind the whole “part 1 of 2” thing) and whether a $55 million domestic debut is good enough for the pricy Gladiator II (which, inflation aside, is relatively high for an R-rated action movie not based on a comic book). Meanwhile, some digressions related to Moana II’s upcoming Thanksgiving release, how Bonhoeffer represents the status quo for Angel Studios and a deep-dive conversation prompted by a listener question about “What If?” box office scenarios. What if Amazing Spider-Man had bombed in 2012? What if The Interview had been even a modest hit in 2014? Could Disney have survived the theoretical failure of Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl in 2003? Lisa also explains why Tom Cruise and Adam Driver are current examples of great actors who make comparatively poor career choices. Get full access to The Outside Scoop at scottmendelson.substack.com/subscribe [https://scottmendelson.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

It is a tale of two franchise-friendly $250 million tentpoles and to what extent the streamer deserves nuance and mercy for a domestic and global opening weekend that would be an outright disaster for a legacy studio. Sure, Red One was greenlit and budgeted for streaming, but why make excuses for the very streaming companies that helped undercut the legacy studios’ ability to release non-franchise theatricals in the first place, especially when the film in question isn’t a studio programmer like Challengers or a prestige flick like Killers of the Flower Moon? Meanwhile, hopes are high for Gladiator II (which earned a decent $87 million in its overseas debut) and Wicked Part One (which is set to play the role of the pre-Thanksgiving YA fantasy epic of the year indeed), while Moana II is tracking so high that we’re just hoping that it’s… better than Inside Out 2. Get full access to The Outside Scoop at scottmendelson.substack.com/subscribe [https://scottmendelson.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

We all try to distract ourselves by discussing the long-game value of Christmas movies and the coming triple-whammy of Gladiator II, Wicked Part One, and Moana II, which will help bring the overall year-end closer to 2023 than any of us dared hope back in January. You can also enjoy our wildly off-topic discussions about what Hollywood tried to make in the 2010s. From here on out, Timothée Chalamet shall be known (in a superlative, complimentary sense) as “The Dune Twink.” Get full access to The Outside Scoop at scottmendelson.substack.com/subscribe [https://scottmendelson.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]