Cinema
Movies, film, and the business of cinema
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The Marathoners: The Films That Owned the Box Office the Longest
Most event movies own the box office for a single week. These held on for a month or more. The endurance kings, 2006-2026.
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The Betelgeuse-Betelgeuse Week Has Happened Once in Twenty Years. Our Editor-in-Chief Bets December 18 Won’t Be the Second.
There is a shape a box-office week can take that is so rare it has occurred exactly once in twenty years of American moviegoing. Two films, released within days of each other, each so large that each one alone swallows between 38.2% and 61.8% of every dollar spent at the domestic box office that week…
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The Box-Office Calendar: The Months Movies Take Over, and the Dead Zones Nobody Wants
Blockbusters cluster in a few launch windows and leave the rest of the year empty. Mapping 20 years of event movies to the calendar.
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You Can Never Have Four: The Hidden Math That Governs the Box Office
The box office has 10 possible weekly shapes. In reality, 41% of weeks have no event movie and monopoly weeks are rising fast – up 5x in 20 years. What each composition means, and where a ’52-red’ year would leave the industry.
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The Billion-Dollar Club, Ranked: Every Star Movie That Crossed the Line
59 films have earned a green star for every $1B earned worldwide. Only five wear two. The full ranked roster.
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One-Week Wonders: The Box Office’s Shooting Stars
68% of all event movies since 2006 owned the box office for exactly one week, then vanished. Meet the shooting stars.
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IMAX at Home: Every Film That Opens Up to the Expanded Frame — and Why It’s Never the Real 1.43
Which 4K Blu-rays and streams give you the expanded IMAX picture at home – and the catch that means you’re never actually seeing the true 1.43:1 frame. A collector’s guide.
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The 630-Pound Movie: The Absurd Logistics of Showing ‘The Odyssey’ in 70mm IMAX
An 11-mile, 630-pound film print. Projectors nobody has built in 50 years. Only ~90 people who can run them. Inside the strange operation behind The Odyssey’s 41 IMAX 70mm screens.
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The 10 Most Dominant Weeks in 20 Years of American Moviegoing
Avengers: Endgame once took 88% of all U.S. box office in a single week. The record book of total domination, 2006-2026.
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One Movie, Most of the Money: How Total Box-Office Domination Went From Exception to Norm (2006–2026)
Combine the box office’s two top tiers — every film that took 38.2%+ of a whole week — and a 20-year pattern appears: ‘Dominant’ films nearly doubled per year, and by 2025 made up 74% of all event movies. The market is going winner-take-all.