The Box Office Podcast

A weekly conversation about the weekend box office between myself (Scott Mendelson) and a few younger (Jeremy Fuster), hipper (Ryan Scott) and cooler (Lisa Laman) entertainment journalists. Spoiler: I am what they grow beyond. scottmendelson.substack.com

The Box Office Podcast is a arts podcast hosted by Unknown Host, with 147 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

Unknown Host hosts The Box Office Podcast, a arts show with 147 episodes published.

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  The Box Office Podcast

  "I Wish Audiences Still Loved 'Star Wars' More Than Anything Else in the Entire World”

  May 28, 20261h 21mS0

  <p>Will The Mandalorian and Grogu begin to make things right? That’s the key subject of discourse as our original fourth-chair co-host returns to dissect yet another example of a once-towering franchise pulling merely okay opening weekend grosses. </p><p>It’s a reunion of the, uh, “core four.” Scott Mendelson, Jeremy Fuster, Lisa Laman and Ryan Scott (does Kermit flail) spend 80 minutes digging into the nitty-gritty over a new Star Wars spin-off that kids and general audiences seem to enjoy and will unquestionably be of more value to Disney as a theatrical movie than it would have been as the f...

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  The Box Office Podcast

  'Obsession' Compulsion and 'Shrek'-cavation

  May 21, 20261h 30mS0

  <p>Rendy Jones returns to discuss what went right with Focus Features’ Obsession (which actually opened with a $17 million opening weekend, with a very promising 2.46x multiplier) and what went wrong for Is God Is. </p><p>- Rendy notes how Alisha Harris’ terrific crime melodrama caught between Michael (now at $705 million worldwide) last weekend and presumably Boots Riley’s more explicitely “light” I Love Boosters this coming Memorial Day weekend.</p><p>- Lisa Laman sings the praises of Orion president Alana Mayo for greenlighting the likes of Till, Women Talking, Hedda, Bottoms, Nickel Boys and American Fiction.</p><p>- Everyone...

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  The Box Office Podcast

  'Devil' Slays 'Kombat'

  May 12, 20261h 40mS0

  <p>Andy Gorham, self-titled gentle giant and vanilla gorilla of “Action Twitter,” joins to discuss, obviously, Mortal Kombat II. What went right (an actual Mortal Kombat tournament), what went wrong (the return of Kano meant Cage was redundant), and whether a solid ($38.5 million, and now with $41 million in four days) domestic opening is enough to compensate for a mediocre ($21.5 million) overseas debut?</p><p>Did the caveats and complications around Project Popcorn and COVID mask that this was another “nobody cares outside of North America and a handful of overseas markets” franchise/IP? Could MK ever be more than a niche pr...

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  The Box Office Podcast

  Lotta Prada or Narnia and Chill

  May 7, 20261h 31mS0

  <p>Somehow, Chrissi Michael returned. She and Aaron Neuwirth stepping in for last week’s Michael episode was more of a concurrent personal favor and/or a last-minute request. Still, she had always intended to reprise for this week’s Devil Wears Prada 2-centric episode.</p><p>At the risk of stating the obvious, the crux of the conversation is, well, the movie that opened to around $235 million worldwide last weekend, albeit probably more of a review (preceded by a “Why Anne Hathaway is awesome, actually” discourse) than a box-office deep-dive.</p><p>Nonetheless, we cover the nitty-gritty about why it was s...

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  The Box Office Podcast

  An Hour With... Barco Cinema’s EVP Gerwin Damberg

  May 4, 202639 minS0

  <p>If you followed any of the online discourse related to The Devil Wears Prada 2 in the run-up to its release, you’ll recall much back-and-forth over the new film seeming to be, in terms of its pre-release trailers and TV spots, not as bright, colorful or otherwise “cinematic” as its 2006 predecessor. The question of why some films look and feel smaller and visually drabber than those before the 2010s (and beyond) has become almost mainstream discourse. I won’t pretend to have an expert opinion, and the explanations range from creative to financial, from an industry-wide switch from film to digit...

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