The first four months of 2023 showed a healthy increase in the domestic box office’s total gross over the preceding year — $2.6 billion to $1.9 billion going by the BoxOfficeMojo data, which works out to a 30 percent boost even after adjustment of the component monthly figures for May…

In considering what the final DCEU film, Aquaman 2, may make later this year one can find a basis for guesses in analogies with other comparable films — and application of these to what might be expected for it on the basis of the original Aquaman. An obvious starting point…

The pandemic dealt filmgoing a serious blow, but it has been recovering for quite a while now, with Spider-Man: No Way Home’s near $2 billion gross (achieved without even a release in China) showing that a movie that excited the public could be as big a hit as ever. Of…

One film critic of which I know, addressing the question of whether this or that big-budget superhero film was a success, tells his readers that not every such movie has to make a billion dollars — and as the Marvel Cinematic Universe amassed its recent track record, told them this…

Recently writing about the pattern of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) grosses from Thor 4 forward I found myself hitting on the subject not just of what it portended for Guardians of the Galaxy 3, but also The Marvels, still half a year away — enough so that it seemed…

Some time ago I made an estimate of how well (or poorly) Indiana Jones 5 is likely to do commercially based on the reported cost of the film, the grosses of prior films in the series, and the “headwinds” I saw the film facing (e.g. an aging fan base, waning…

A couple of weeks ago I offered an estimate of Guardians of the Galaxy 3’s box office gross (that now, perhaps unsurprisingly given the movie’s coming out Friday, seems to be getting a lot of traffic). At the time I concerned myself with the film’s overall box office performance, not…

I have written about the “writing life” from time to time — often out of exasperation at the nonsense about it which the media so often inflicts on us. …

A recent poll regarding the public’s attitude toward climate change funded by the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC) and conducted by the university’s National Opinion Research Center (NORC) and the Associated Press (full results here) is getting some mention in in the more general press. According…