'Top Moneymaker' Status Comes With Math Problem

Really? 'Hot Tub Time Machine' is the best we can do?

(NEWSER) - “2010 very possibly is the worst year in the history of motion pictures,” declares Joe Queenan in a hilarious Wall Street Journal piece bemoaning the downfall of American cinema. You know things are bad in Hollywood when:

• “Shia LaBeouf—who looks a bit like the young George W. Bush” is being passed off “as the second coming of Tom Cruise.”
• The top contenders for Next Big Action Star are Jake Gyllenhaal and Adrien Brody. “None of these are logical heirs to the throne abandoned by Arnold Schwarzenegger and Harrison Ford and Sylvester Stallone. They may not even be legitimate heirs to the throne vacated by Steven Seagal and Jean-Claude Van Damme.”

Latest 'Twilight' entry enjoys 3rd-biggest weekend ever

(NEWSER) - In the third-largest weekend debut ever, The Twilight Saga: New Moon rang up $140.7 million, riding records for a midnight opening and a single day to totals trailing only The Dark Knight and Spider-Man. Audiences were four-fifths female, with the remaining 20% mostly teen boys, USA Today reports. The Blind Side outperformed expectations, doing $34.5 million. Precious fell out of the top five but remained in the top 10, taking in $11 million. The top five: More»

Measuring a film's success in dollars is misleading

(NEWSER) - Not a year seems to go by without a film breaking a box-office records: Dark Knight a contender for biggest all-time earner! Bourne Ultimatum the top August opener! But that’s not because the films actually draw more viewers than the previous record-holders; it's because the figures are in dollars, which are subject to inflation, writes Zachary Pincus-Roth for Slate. More»

Michael Bay robot-romp could be biggest movie of 2009

(NEWSER) - Michael Bay’s Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen nearly toppled the 5-day opening record by earning $201.2 million since Wednesday, Entertainment Weekly reports. The Dark Knight remains unbeaten at $203.8 million, but Transformers still crushed the weekend competition with a $112 million gross. Filling out the top five were The Proposal ($18.5 million), The Hangover ($17.2 million), Up ($13 million), and My Sister's Keeper ($12 million). More»

(NEWSER) - The new Transformers flick had a stellar start, raking in $60.6 million on opening day to make it the biggest Wednesday debut ever, Variety reports. For all-around opening days, the Michael Bay shoot-em-up lags just behind record-holder Dark Knight, which took in $67.2 million on a Friday last summer. Transformers 2 has a shot at eclipsing the best five-day open ever, a mark of $152.4 million set by Spider-Man 2 in 2004. More»