Entertainment
Cinema, TV, music, theater, and the culture beat
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The Decade Shift: How the Box Office Became Winner-Take-All
Compare 2006-2015 to 2016-2025: the same number of star movies, but nearly 4x the Geuses. The box office concentrated, measurably.
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When the Rules Broke: The Pandemic Movies That Owned an Empty Box Office
In 2020 a $250K horror film took 98.8% of the U.S. box office. The 12 pandemic anomalies that forced us to add a floor to the definition.
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The Weeks Nobody Won: How the Shared Box Office Disappeared
There used to be plenty of weeks where no single film dominated. They’re vanishing – and it reveals how winner-take-all the box office has become.
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The Efficiency Champions: How Cheap Horror Owns the Box Office
Domination isn’t about budget. The most efficient star movies are micro-budget horror films returning 100x or more. The ROI leaderboard.
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The Marathoners: The Films That Owned the Box Office the Longest
Most star 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 star 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 star 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 star movies since 2006 owned the box office for exactly one week, then vanished. Meet the shooting stars.