Cinema
Movies, film, and the business of cinema
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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 Event 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.
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Holding the Throne: The Films That Stayed a Box-Office Phenomenon Two Weeks Running (2006–2026)
In 20 years, only nine films held box-office Phenomenon status two straight weeks — and two were pandemic flukes. Avatar: The Way of Water is the only one to manage three. Fifteen years produced none.
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The IMAX Passport: 55 of the Last 58 Box-Office Phenomenons Opened on the Giant Screen (2006–2026)
51 of the last 53 box-office Phenomenons opened in IMAX — 96%. The only two that didn’t, Unhinged and Tom & Jerry, topped empty pandemic weeks. A 20-year USA Times study of the giant screen.
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The Event Movies of Indian Cinema, 2025: Dhamaka, Toofan, Tsunami
The Indian companion to the USA Times Event-Movie Index: 52 weeks of 2025, tracked against Sacnilk India-net data, sorted into Dhamaka, Toofan, and Tsunami weeks. Dhurandhar’s December run is the year’s defining Tsunami.