A column chronicling conversations and events on the awards circuit

The town, even with the speed race pace of awards season, is unquestionably slowing down for the Christmas/New Years break, and you can feel it. But there is just a small window of down time before it starts again in earnest, beginning with the Palm Sp…

TUESDAY UPDATE with actuals: With offshore weekend finals in from the studios, Illumination/Universal's The Secret Life Of Pets remained the No. 1 movie at the international box office this session. It dropped a few whiskers from Sunday's estimates, wagging out $43.8M vs the $45M that was projected. That puts the…

FINAL MONDAY WRITETHRU: We’re at that point in August where ticket sales just slow down. Last Friday, there were 58% of schools in session, and this Friday, there will be only 36% of K-12 schools still off for the summer. Where does this leave us? Next weekend will mark the second point since January 22-24 where no…

With an estimated production cost that's in the vicinity of $100M, MGM and Paramount certainly didn't build Ben-Hur to fail this weekend.

But if there's one Come-to-Jesus from this remake’s estimated disastrous $11M opening: It's still a challenge for Hollywood to cross over a faith-based film to the masses 12 years…

Take a little American Hustle, add a bit of The Wolf of Wall Street and The Big Short, then throw in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, and you have the recipe for War Dogs, a rather incredible true story and the first semi-serious movie from The Hangover director Todd Phillips. I say semi-serious because despite…

As summer weekend box office grosses begin to ratchet down, it’s clear that kids are heading back to school.

According to ComScore’s school calendar, 58% of K-12 schools will be on break Friday, which is down from the 77% off at the same point in time last weekend. By Friday, Aug. 26, only 36% of K-12 schools will be o…

Before talking about his upcoming comedy War Dogs at Warner Bros’ CinemaCon panel today, director Todd Phillips acknowledged “disruption” in the business as booming technologies seek to steal audiences away from the big screen. And as far as Phillips goes, you can count him on the side of exhibition. “This is the time…

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