Showbiz Sandbox 333: Predicting The Biggest Box Office Flops of 2016

August 31, 2016

Much has been made about the decline in box office this summer, with franchise sequels underperforming and certain pricey movies failing to attract an audience. Kevin Lincoln, a senior editor at New York Magazine and Vulture, takes a look at this summer’s biggest flops and predicts which mega-budget releases might suffer a similar fate as we round out the year.

In China it might be more difficult to know which movies are box office disappointments or crowd favorites since online and mobile ticketing companies have been offering hefty subsidies to cinemagoers in their heated battle for market share. This means the gross of any release is almost always higher than what moviegoers actually paid to see it.

We’ll also dip back into audience figures from the recently completed Summer Olympics in Rio. This time however we have some data about viewership in Europe, Canada and elsewhere. To nobody’s surprise, more people streamed coverage online than ever before.

Of course we also cover the week’s top entertainment news including how Netflix international subscribers will soon outnumber those in the United States, a changing of the guard at Twentieth Century Fox gets expedited and the late Prince’s home and music studio is set to become a museum.

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Showbiz Sandbox 69: The Emmys Shine In Google TV’s Shadow

August 30, 2010

Host Jimmy Fallon helped pump some energy into this year’s Emmy Awards where a lot of new names and shows walked away with trophies.  Rick Porter, staff editor at Zap2it, provides some details about who won and who lost.  And the Emmy telecast received rave reviews.  One of the shows writers was David Wild, a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, and he gives us all the dirt on what went on behind-the-scenes.

In the future, the shows that win Emmys may not air on television, but instead be found online.  Alex Ben Block, a senior editor for the Hollywood Reporter and author of “George Lucas’s Blockbusting” fills us in on how we’ll be watching television in the future. . . that is if Google and Apple have their way.

As always, we review the week’s top entertainment headlines during Big Deal or Big Whoop.  Our Inside Baseball topic focuses on the news that video retailer Blockbuster may soon file for bankruptcy.

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