Sunday, January 19, 2025

THE MOVIES, BOOKS, THEATER, CONCERTS, ALBUMS I'VE SEEN/HEARD/READ SO FAR IN 2025

  Updated as of January 19, 2025  


KEY: star rating is on the four star scale
          meaning of "/" or "\"
          *** is three stars out of four
          ***/ is three stars leaning towards  3 1/2
          ***\ is three stars leaning towards 2 1/2


The Movies, Books, Theater, Concerts, CDs I've Seen/Read/Heard So Far In 2025

BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS
(Increasingly, I am sampling books, reading 10%, 20% even 40 or 50% before deciding to move on. The books below are only the ones I've read completely. That also explains what looks like generous grading -- more and more, if I sense a book is not going to be among my favorites, I stop reading. Too many books; too little time!)

1. Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfield *** 1/2 
2. The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams *** 1/2 
3. The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon ***/ 
4. Monster in the Woods by Dave Shelton *** 1/2 
5. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (1939) **** 
6. The Sitaford Mystery by Agatha Christie ** 
7. Orbital by Samantha Harvey ***/ 
8. 


CDS CDS CDS CDS CDS CDS CDS CDS CDS CDS CDS CDS CDS CDS CDS CDS CDS CDS CDS CDS CDS CDS CDS CDS CDS CDS CDS CDS CDS CDS CDS CDS CDS CDS CDS CDS (A strong emphasis on the ones I like, so don't think I love everything I listen to -- I just don't bother really listening to the ones I don't )

1. Dizzy Gillespie -- The Complete RCA Victor Recordings 1937-1949 (1995) *** 1/2 
2. Traffic -- John Barleycorn Must Die (1970) ** 
3. Jane Weaver -- Modern Kosmology (2017) *** 
4. The Lijadu Sisters -- Horizon Unlimited (1979) *** 
5. Yes -- Close To The Edge (1972) ** 1/2 
6. Flamin' Groovies -- Teenage Head (1971) ***/ 
7. Giant Sand -- Chore of Enchantment (1999) ** 
8. Liam Bailey -- Zero Grace (2024) *** 1/2 
9. Boards of Canada -- Music Has The Right To Children (1998) ** 1/2 
10. My Bloody Valentine -- mbv (2013) ** 1/2 
11. Liz Phair -- Exile To Guyville (1993) *** 1/2 
12. The Darkness -- Permission To Land (2003) ** 1/2 
13. Ice-T -- O.G. Original Gangster (1991) ** 
14. Goldfrapp -- Seventh Tree (2008) *** 1/2 
15. Napalm Death -- Scum (1987) ** 
16. The Cardigans -- First Band on the Moon (1996) ** 
17. The Notorious B.I.G. -- Ready To Die (1994) ** 1/2 
18. The Rumble -- Stories From The Battlefield (2024) *** 
19. Lady Blackbird -- Slang Spirituals (2024) *** 1/2  
20. Beta Radio -- Waiting For The End To Come (2024) *** 1/2 
21. Fat Boy Slim -- Better Living Through Chemistry (1996) *** 
22. Kelela -- Take Me Apart (2018) *** 
23. Hanoi Rocks -- Back To Mystery City (1983) ** 
24. The Gun Club -- Fire of Love (1981) ** 1/2 
25. Echo and the Bunnymen -- Porcupine (1983) ** 1/2 
26. Ducks Ltd. -- Harm's Way (2024) *** 
27. Charlie xcx -- Brat (2024) ** 1/2 
28. The Softies -- The Bed I Made (2024) *** 
29. Brian Eno x Bloom -- Small World (2024) (Amazon exclusive) *** 1/2 
30. Sabrina Carpenter -- Short 'n' Sweet (2024) *** 
31. Fontaines D.C. -- Romance (2024) *** 
32. The Rifles -- Love Your Neighbor (2024) *** 
33. Future & Metro Boomin -- We Don't Trust You (2024) ** 1/2 
34. Wunderhorse -- Midas (2024) ** 1/2 
35. Doechii -- Alligator Bites Never Heal (2024) ** 
36. Yasmin Williams -- Acadia ** 1/2 
37. Jamey Johnson -- Midnight Gasoline (2024) ** 1/2 
38. Amaia Miranda -- Mientras vivas brilla (2024) *** 
39. Fabiano do Nascimento & Sam Gendel -- The Room (2024) ** 1/2 
40. Nils Hoffmann -- Running in a Dream (2024) ** 1/2 
41. Alvaro Diaz -- Sayonara (2024) *** 
42. Shovel Dance Collective -- The Shovel Dance (2024) ***/ 
43. Wishy -- Triple Seven (2024) ** 1/2 
44. Tyla -- Tyla (2024) ** 1/2 
45. Bizhiki -- Unbound (2024) *** 
46. Tierra Whack -- World Wide Whack (2024) ** 1/2 
47. 



MOVIES TV MOVIES TV MOVIES TV MOVIES TV MOVIES TV MOVIES TV MOVIES TV MOVIES TV MOVIES TV MOVIES TV MOVIES TV MOVIES TV MOVIES TV MOVIES TV MOVIES TV MOVIES TV MOVIES TV MOVIES 

(Not TV movies, of course, but movies and TV shows -- and TV movies if it comes to that. Mostly I only list TV shows when I've tackled an entire season at once or reappraising an entire series after it's over This doesn't really capture my ongoing watching of current TV.)

1. A Complete Unknown (2024) ** 1/2 
2. Nickel Boys (2024) ***\ 
3. Nosferatu ** 1/2 
4. Interstellar (2014) ** 1/2 
5. 




THEATER CONCERTS THEATER CONCERTS THEATER CONCERTS THEATER CONCERTS THEATER CONCERTS THEATER CONCERTS THEATER CONCERTS
(The names after the shows are the people who joined me at the performance.)

1. 


  Updated as of January 19, 2025  


Saturday, January 18, 2025

THE 250 BEST ALBUMS OF THE 21ST CENTURY...SO FAR

THE 250 BEST ALBUMS OF THE 21ST CENTURY...SO FAR

Rolling Stone posted a feature on the 250 Best Albums of the 21st Century...So Far. To me–a diligent, obsessive list-maker–them's fighting words. At first, I thought, "already?" But oops, we're 25 years into the century so maybe it's not too soon to take a first look at all the great albums already out. I haven't counted them up, but my list is substantially different from RS. I've got more jazz, more world music, certainly more cast albums (Not even Hamilton? Really, Rolling Stone!) and let's face it, more NPR-type music for adults.

Are they right? Am I wrong? Nope. It's just a reflection of how much terrific music is released (literally, thousands of albums worth every week and I'm not even counting A.I.-generated crap!) Plus, we've all got our biases. Rolling Stone needs to be hip and reflect the radio, the kids, the cool stuff. Not me. I'm so old fashioned I listen to albums–not playlists and certainly not random singles. So enjoy this list for what it is, a grab-bag of music from the past 25 years I've loved, some of which I've been playing and enjoying for longer than you've been alive (if perhaps we're talking about one of the older albums and you're, say, 21.) Unlike Rolling Stone, I am allowing only one album per act so I can offer up as many different artists as possible. (But I cheat a little.) So enjoy! And let me know what albums are missing from this list!

They're not in any particular order, though perhaps my initial ten picks are ten of my absolute favorites. But to prove they're not ranked, I end with Joni Mitchell's magisterial covers album Both Sides Now and I'm not about to tell Joni Mitchell one of her albums ranks #250 out of 250. Uh-uh. It's great and I could easily put it at the top. So there.

Pro tip: if you get to the bottom, you'll find a bonus list of the best reissues/boxed sets and a bonus bonus list of the best Christmas albums.

First, if you're interested, I've also got a list naming my favorite album for every year from 1924 to the Present. Yes, 100+ years of great albums! And then I list all of my favorite albums for each year. What great albums came out the year you were born? Have you heard them all? Check it out!

The Best Albums of the Year: 1924 to the Present

If you prefer to stroll through my library or wonder exactly how crazy I am about Paul McCartney or Prefab Sprout or Joni Mitchell or whomever, here are a bunch of albums I've listened to over the years, arranged by artist, going from ABBA to ZZ Top, as well as lists of cast albums, soundtracks, Christmas music and various artist compilations. 

Michael's Music Library: Arranged By Artist From A to Z

Like I said, I like lists!

Okay, let's get streaming! Here are my picks for...


THE 250 BEST ALBUMS OF THE 21ST CENTURY...SO FAR


SUFJAN STEVENS – (Come On Feel The) Illinoise  
MANU CHAO -- Proxima Estacion: Esperanza
CÉCILE MCLORIN SALVANT -- Dreams And Daggers 
GREEN DAY -- American Idiot
SHARON JONES AND THE DAP-KINGS -- 100 Days 100 Nights
PAUL MCCARTNEY -- Chaos and Creation In The Backyard 
MAXWELL -- BLACKsummers'night /blackSUMMERnights (two albums in a trilogy)
RUMER -- Seasons Of My Soul
A TRIBE CALLED QUEST -- We've Got It From Here...Thank You For Your Service
JOHN LUTHER ADAMS -- Become Ocean


ROBERT PLANT AND ALISON KRAUSS -- Raising Sand 
KAMASI WASHINGTON -- Heaven And Earth 
KATE BUSH -- Aerial 
ORCHESTRA BAOBAB -- Specialist In All Styles
RUFUS WAINWRIGHT -- Want One
KENDRICK LAMAR -- To Pimp A Butterfly
AMY WINEHOUSE -- Back To Black
ESLABÓN ARMADO -- Nostalgia 
AIMEE MANN -- Bachelor No. 2 or, The Last Remains of the Dodo
VARIOUS ARTISTS -- Music from The Singing Detective And More 


EMINEM -- The Marshall Mathers LP
ORIGINAL CAST ALBUM -- Spring Awakening
JOHNNY CASH -- American IV: The Man Comes Around
SOLANGE -- A Seat At The Table
WILCO -- Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
FLOATING POINTS AND PHAROAH SANDERS -- Promises 
COURTNEY BARNETT -- Sometimes I Just Sit And Think And Sometimes I Just Sit
THE WHITE STRIPES -- Elephant
ALI FARKA TOURE AND TOUMANI DIABATE – In The Heart Of The Moon
KING CREOSOTE AND JON HOPKINS -- Diamond Mine 


BRANDI CARLILE -- In These Silent Days (In The Canyon Haze edition) 
BRIAN ENO AND ROBERT FRIPP -- The Equatorial Stars 
KANYE WEST -- My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
DOLLY PARTON -- Little Sparrow
GRUPO FRONTERA -- El Comienzo 
ORIGINAL CAST ALBUM -- Hamilton 
TINARIWEN -- Aman Iman: Water Is Life
RYAN ADAMS -- Gold 
IMMANUEL WILKINS -- Omega
THE TALLEST MAN ON EARTH -- The Wild Hunt/Sometimes The Blues Is Just A Passing Bird ep


STURGILL SIMPSON -- Metamodern Sounds In Country Music
PJ HARVEY -- Let England Shake 
ARCTIC MONKEYS -- Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not
ALLEN TOUSSAINT -- The Bright Mississippi
ORIGINAL CAST ALBUM -- Hadestown (Off Broadway production) 
PESO PLUMA -- Génesis 
PETER GARLAND -- The Basketweave Elegies (performed by William Winant) 
KASEY CHAMBERS -- Dragonfly
WILLIE NELSON AND WYNTON MARSALIS -- Two Men With The Blues
BEASTIE BOYS -- Beastie Boys Music  


FIONA APPLE -- Fetch The Bolt Cutters 
OUTKAST -- Speakerboxxx/The Love Below
DIXIE CHICKS -- Home
AMADOU AND MARIAM – Dimanche a Bamako 
RICHARD SWIFT – The Richard Swift Collection, Volume One  
BRANFORD MARSALIS -- Four MF's Playin' Their Tunes
THE EELS – Blinking Lights and Other Revelations 
BETTYE LAVETTE – I’ve Got My Own Hell To Raise 
JOSH ROUSE -- 1972 
ORIGINAL CAST ALBUM -- The Scottsboro Boys


BRIGHT EYES – I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning 
YOUSSOU N'DOUR -- Nothing's In Vain
LEONARD COHEN -- You Want It Darker
ERYKAH BADU -- New Amerykah Part One (4th World War) 
JOSHUA REDMAN AND BRAD MEHLDAU -- Nearness
LORETTA LYNNE -- Van Lear Rose
MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE -- The Black Parade
LINA RODRIGUEZ -- Lina_  Raül Refree
NAS -- Nas
TEDDY THOMPSON AND KELLY JONES -- My Love of Country/Once More (w Jenni Muldaur)


MIDLAKE -- The Trials of Van Occupanther
IRMA THOMAS -- After The Rain
BRIAN WILSON -- Brian Wilson Presents Smile
THE ROOTS -- The Tipping Point
RADIOHEAD -- Kid A 
KENNY BARRON -- Book Of Intuition
PAUL BUCHANAN -- Mid Air
BOUBACAR TRAORE -- Mali Denhou 
MADELEINE PEYROUX -- Bare Bones
BUZZARD BUZZARD BUZZARD -- Backhand Deals 


THE STROKES -- Is This It?
EVERYTHING BUT THE GIRL -- Fuse  
THE LEMON TWIGS -- A Dream Is All We Know 
CAROLINA CHOCOLATE DROPS -- Genuine Negro Jigs
ORIGINAL CAST ALBUM -- Avenue Q
BAD BUNNY -- X100PRE
TONY BENNETT AND BILL CHARLAP -- The Silver Lining: The Songs Of Jerome Kern
iLe -- Almadura
JASON ISBELL -- The Nashville Sound
JOHANN JOHANNSSON -- The Miners' Hymns 


KAISER CHIEFS -- Education, Education, Education and War
BECKY G -- Esquinas 
KEITH JARRETT -- Somewhere
BOYGENIUS -- The Record 
CHANCE THE RAPPER -- Coloring Book
ORIGINAL CAST ALBUM -- Billy Elliot
LIZZO -- Cuz I Love You
DWIGHT YOAKUM -- 3 Pears 
C. TANGANA -- El Madrileño 
BARRY MANILOW -- Night Songs 


MAVIS STAPLES -- Live: Hope At The Holdout
BOB DYLAN -- Fallen Angels 
BOMBINO -- Agadez
CAT POWER -- The Greatest 
D'ANGELO -- Voodoo
THE MAVERICKS -- En Español 
TERENCE BLANCHARD -- A Tale of God's Will
LINDA THOMPSON -- Won't Be Long Now
THE MAGNETIC FIELDS -- 50 Song Memoir
THE FEELING -- Boy Cried Wolf


WILLIAM BASINSKI -- The Disintegration Loops
SAULT -- Untitled (Black Is) and Untitled (Rise)
JOAN BAEZ -- Day After Tomorrow
BALLAKE SISSOKO AND VINCENT SEGAL -- Chamber Music
TRACEY THORN -- Love and Its Opposite
CHRIS STAPLETON -- Traveller 
ORIGINAL CAST ALBUM -- Grey Gardens 
SONNY ROLLINS -- Road Show Vol. 1
TANYA TUCKER -- Sweet Western Sound 
VARIOUS ARTISTS – I Believe To My Soul 


A GIRL CALLED EDDY -- Been Around 
WYNTON MARSALIS -- Standards and Ballads
FLEET FOXES -- Helplessness Blues
SOLOMON BURKE -- Nashville
DARYL HALL AND JOHN OATES -- Do It For Love 
ROSEANNE CASH -- Black Cadillac 
MAX RICHTER -- The Blue Notebooks 
ORIGINAL CAST ALBUM -- The Wild Party (Michael John LaChuisa)
KONONO NO. 1 -- Congotronics
PETER WOLF -- Midnight Souvenirs


BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN -- We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions American Land Edition
JILL SCOTT -- Woman 
RON SEXSMITH -- Long Player, Late Bloomer
BASSEKOU KUYATE AND NGONI BA -- Segu Blue
SUZANNE VEGA -- Beauty and Crimes 
FOUNTAINS OF WAYNE -- Welcome Interstate Managers
kd lang -- Hymns Of The 49th Parallel
BRAD PAISLEY -- American Saturday Night
ORIGINAL CAST ALBUM -- The Band's Visit
BRAD MEHLDAU -- Your Mother Should Know: Brad Mehldau Plays The Beatles


WEYES BLOOD -- Titanic Rising 
ELO aka Electric Light Orchestra -- Zoom
CASSANDRA WILSON -- Thunderbird
NEIL DIAMOND – 12 Songs 
THE LICKERISH QUARTET -- Threesome 
MARGO PRICE -- All American Made
AFRICAN HEAD CHARGE -- A Trip To Bolgatonga
CLARICE JENSEN -- The Experience Of Repetition As Death 
PANIC! AT THE DISCO -- Pray For The Wicked
LOUDON WAINWRIGHT -- High, Wide And Handsome: The Charlie Poole Project 


NORAH JONES -- Come Away With Me
DAVID BOWIE -- Heathen
THE JOHN SALLY RIDE -- Now Is Not A Great Time 
PATTY GRIFFIN -- Children Running Through 
FATOUMATA DIAWARA -- Fatou
JAMES HUNTER -- People Gonna Talk
ANDY BEY -- American Song
REGINA SPEKTOR -- Begin To Hope
VARIOUS ARTISTS -- O Brother, Where Art Thou?
THE MONKEES -- Good Times!


GILLIAN WELCH -- The Harrow and the Harvest
BECK -- Sea Change
THE AVETT BROTHERS -- I And Love And You 
DIANA KRALL -- The Look Of Love
THE LAST SHADOW PUPPETS -- The Age Of The Understatement
JOHN MORELAND -- Big Bad Luv
DR. JOHN -- Locked Down 
M. WARD -- Hold Time 
CHUCK PROPHET -- 
Night Surfer
MUDCRUTCH -- Mudcrutch 2 


JANELLE MONAE -- The Electric Lady
THE WHIFFS -- Take A Whiff 
COWBOY JUNKIES -- Notes Falling Slowly
KALI MALONE -- The Sacrificial Code
VAMPIRE WEEKEND -- Modern Vampires Of The City
JUDY COLLINS -- Silver Skies Blue
JAMES COTTON -- Cotton Mouth Man
LORDE -- Pure Heroin(e)
JESSE WINCHESTER -- Love Filling Station
BOZ SCAGGS -- But Beautiful 


JOHN MAYER -- Born And Raised
CAROLINE SHAW -- Orange
THE CORAL -- Coral Island 
SHELBY LYNNE -- The Servant
JAMEY JOHNSON -- Living For A Dream: A Tribute To Hank Cochran
TAME IMPALA -- Currents
CHARLIE GABRIEL AND THE PRESERVATION HALL JAZZ BAND -- 89 
ALLISON RUSSELL -- Outside Child  
CHEAP TRICK -- The Latest 
VARIOUS ARTISTS -- Once Upon A Time...In Hollywood  original soundtrack 


NELLIE MCKAY -- Normal As Blueberry Pie: A Tribute To Doris Day 
BETA RADIO -- Seven Sisters 
TOM WAITS -- Bad As Me 
IRIS DEMENT -- The Trackless Woods 
ANDY BURROWS AND MATT HAIG -- Reasons To Stay Alive
JAY-Z AND KANYE WEST -- Watch the Throne
RICK SPRINGFIELD -- The Snake King 
BETTY BUCKLEY -- Ghostlight
STEVE EARLE -- Ghosts Of West Virginia 
SPANISH HARLEM ORCHESTRA -- Across 110th Street


JOE JACKSON -- Mr. Joe Jackson Presents Max Champion in "What A Racket!"
KEITH JARRETT AND CHARLIE HADEN -- Jasmine
MIRANDA LAMBERT, JACK INGRAM, JON RANDALL -- The Marfa Tapes
OLAFUR ARNALDS -- Some Kind Of Peace
ELVIS COSTELLO -- The Boy Named If  
MELODY GARDOT -- My One And Only Thrill
THE FRATELLIS -- Eyes Wide Tongue Tied
MANDY PATINKIN -- Diary: January 27, 2018/April May 2018
AMY LAVERE -- Runaway's Diary 
NICK HEYWARD -- Woodland Echoes 


HARRY STYLES -- Harry's House 
TONY BENNETT & k.d. lang -- A Wonderful World
IKE REILLY -- Born On Fire 
GLEN CAMPBELL -- Ghost on the Canvas 
WET LEG -- Wet Leg 
BEYONCÉ -- Cowboy Carter
RICHARD THOMPSON -- 13 Rivers 
BON IVER -- For Emma, Forever Ago
THE VINES -- Wicked Nature
ANGELIQUE KIDJO -- Remain In Light 


NICK CAVE -- Ghosteen 
MARIA MCKEE -- La Vita Nuova 
PAUL KELLY -- Songs From The South: Paul Kelly's Greatest Hits 1985-2019 
KRONOS QUARTET AND TRIO DA KALI -- Ladilikan
MATTHEW SWEET AND SUSANNA HOFFS -- Under The Covers Vol. 1
MARCUS KING -- Mood Swings
TIM CHRISTENSEN -- Honeyburst
BUDDY GUY -- Living Proof
PET SHOP BOYS -- Super
THE FINN BROTHERS -- Everyone Is Here 


CORINNE BAILEY RAE -- Corinne Bailey Rae 
THE SMILE -- Wall of Eyes / Cutout 
KELLY WILLIS -- Cheater's Game (w Bruce Robison) 
ARI LENNOX -- Shea Butter Baby 
TOUMANI DIABATE'S SYMMETRIC ORCHESTRA -- Boulevard De L'Independance
FRANK TURNER -- Tape Deck Heart
BILL FAY -- Life Is People
BONES -- Skinny and Rotten and Seabeds (all 2014)
WYNTON MARSALIS AND ERIC CLAPTON -- Play the Blues
ELLIOT BROOD -- Town and Country  


THE CURE -- Songs Of A Lost World
SZA -- Ctrl
FRANK OCEAN -- Channel Orange 
DAVID BYRNE AND BRIAN ENO -- Everything That Happens Will Happen Today
LADY BLACKBIRD -- Slang Spirituals
KASEY CHAMBERS AND SHANE NICHOLSON -- Rattlin' Bones 
HOWARD TATE -- A Portrait Of Howard
ADELE -- 21 
LADYSMITH BLACK MAMBAZO -- Songs From a Zulu Farm
JONI MITCHELL -- Both Sides Now





BONUS! THE 20 BEST REISSUES/BOX SETS OF THE 21ST CENTURY...SO FAR 

ELLA FITZGERALD -- Twelve Nights In Hollywood 
BOB DYLAN -- Another Self Portrait 
BOBBIE GENTRY -- The Girl From Chickaswaw County 
JOHNNY ADAMS -- South Side Of Soul Street (The SSS Sessions)/Only Want To Be With You comp 
VARIOUS ARTISTS – Does Anybody Know I’m Here? Vietnam Through The Eyes of Black America 
JOHNNY CASH -- Unearthed
VARIOUS ARTISTS -- Night Train To Nashville: Music City Rhythm And Blues 1945-1970 Vol. One/Two
THE WATERBOYS -- Fisherman Box 
BARBRA STREISAND -- Live At The Bon Soir
THE REPLACEMENTS -- Tim: Let It Bleed Edition
GARNET MIMMS -- Looking For You: The Complete United Artists and Veep Singles
THE BEACH BOYS -- The Smile Sessions boxed set 
LINDA LEWIS -- Reach For The Truth: Best Of The Reprise Years 1971-1974)
EDDIE CONDON -- The Eddie Condon Collection 1927-1961
VARIOUS ARTISTS -- Nigeria Special: Modern Highlife, Afro-Sounds And Nigerian Blues 1970-1976
ROLLING STONES -- Live At The El Mocambo
LONE JUSTICE -- Viva Lone Justice 
EMMYLOU HARRIS, DOLLY PARTON, LINDA RONSTADT -- Trio: The Complete Collection
TABU LEY ROCHEREAU -- The Voice Of Lightness 
THE BEATLES -- 1962-1966 (The Red Album expanded)/1967-1970 (The Blue Album expanded) 



BONUS BONUS! THE 13 BEST CHRISTMAS ALBUMS OF THE 21ST CENTURY...SO FAR 

SIA -- Everyday is Christmas
SUFJAN STEVENS -- Songs For Christmas/Silver & Gold boxed sets
AIMEE MANN -- Drifters in the Snow
LOS LOBOS -- Llegó Navidad 
TRACEY THORN -- Tinsel and Lights
WYNTON MARSALIS/JAZZ AT LINCOLN CENTER BIG BAND -- Big Band Holiday 
JUDY COLLINS -- Winter Stories  
BRISTOL BRASS CONSORT -- Festive Brass
TORI AMOS --  Midwinter Graces
ROBBIE WILLIAMS -- The Christmas Present 
STILE ANTICO -- A Spanish Nativity  
THE LIVING SISTERS -- Harmony Is Real: Songs For A Happy Holiday 
VARIOUS ARTISTS -- Where Will You Be Christmas Day


Monday, January 13, 2025

WORLDWIDE BOX OFFICE FOR WEEK ENDING JANUARY 19, 2025

WORLDWIDE BOX OFFICE FOR WEEK ENDING JANUARY 19, 2025 

A film's gross for the last seven days, followed by its total worldwide gross. I begin with data from 

Comscore and then pull from every other source available. 


1. Mufasa: The Lion King–$48m / $588m worldwide

2. Sonic The Hedgehog 3–$35m /$420m ww 

3. Moana 2–$20m / $1,010b ww

4. Nosferatu–$20m / $156m ww  

5. Octopus With Broken Arms aka Wu Sha 3 (Manslaughter 3)–$19m / $115m ww

6. Den of Thieves 2: Pantera–$16m / $36m ww  

7. Wolf Man–$15m worldwide debut 

8. One of Them Days–$14m ww debut

9. Wicked–$11m / $709m ww 

10. Big World–$11m / $103m ww

11. Honey Money Phony–$11m / $52m ww

12. A Complete Unknown–$10m / $61m ww 

13. Conclave–$7m / $76m ww

14. Gladiator II–$4m / $459m ww 

15. Paddington in Peru–$4m / $60m ww 

16. Babygirl–$3m / $31m ww

17. Harbin–$3m / $30m ww 

18. Better Man–$3m / $13m ww

19. The Brutalist–$3m / $6m ww

20. Fake Dad–$3m / $5m ww

21. Detective Conan: Crossroad in the Ancient Capitol (2003)–$2m / $50m ww

22. The Prosecutor–$2m / $36m ww 

23. Finist. The First Warrior–$2m / $22m ww

24. Hot Pot Artist aka Huo Guo Yi Shu Jia –$2m / $6m ww 

25. The Firefighters–$1m / $25m ww 

26. The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim–$1m / $21m ww

27. Homestead–$1m / $20m ww

28. The Last Showgirl–$1m / $3m ww

29. Game Changer–??


Bold: movies that have or likely will triple their reported budgets. That's my standard for a movie being a box office hit from theatrical alone. Many films will be profitable for a studio even if they don't triple their reported budget, but it's a good marker to indicate a big hit. 


ANALYSIS 

Some people are now calling Mufasa a "sleeper" hit. Umm, no $200mb Disney film can be called a sleeper, especially a threequel to two movies that each grossed more than $1b worldwide. Yes, it opened lower than expected in North America. But it opened during the holiday season from Christmas to New Year's when every day plays like a Saturday because people traditionally flock to the movies, especially family films like Mufasa. That's why I don't look at just North American box office but worldwide box office. (And the box office for all seven days, not just the weekend, a bizarre practice everyone else still follows.)

Worldwide, Mufasa: The Lion King opened at #1 with $122m. Its second week? Mufasa grossed $206m worldwide. Third week? $148m. Those are not the grosses of a sleeper. 

I wouldn't say Conclave or A Complete Unknown are sleepers either. They've got legs, though. Conclave is still bringing in bucks, proving a force at the box office (which seemed obvious from opening weekend) and the Oscar race (which I thought less likely because the film was meh). The Bob Dylan biopic ticked up this week from $9m to $10m, exactly what you want in an Oscar hopeful geared towards adults. Word of mouth is clearly great, it should get plenty of Oscar love (though maybe not Best Director?) and adults are turning out. If it turns on more people to Bob Dylan's great music, all the better. 

Oh and the streaming miniseries turned blockbuster film Moana 2 crossed $1 billion worldwide. If nothing else, Bob Iger gets credit for pushing it into theatrical. It and Red One are perfect arguments for why any streamer spending $100m+ on a movie is crazy not to give them wide releases in theatrical with big windows. In the case of Moana 2, they're printing money. In the case of Red One, theatrical was essentially a worldwide marketing campaign that paid for itself and set the movie up for massive success on Amazon's Prime. My gosh, if the movie does really week next holiday season and proves likely to be a perennial, I'll bet in 2026 we see a sequel greenlit. 

Moana 2 is the 54th film in history to gross $1 billion worldwide. Soon, the Top 100 Films of All Time list will be renamed The Billionaire's Club. How soon? If we generate four more each year, we'll get to The Billionaire's Club by 2035. Just ten years. Probably sooner. What movies in 2025 could hit the mark? Well, Avatar: Fire and Ash is a given, plus almost certainly Jurassic World: Rebirth (the last three films have all grossed that much) and Superman. Outside possibilities include The Fantastic Four: First Steps, Thunderbolts*, Zootopia 2 (what took them so long?) and even the live action remakes of Lilo & Stitch and How To Train Your Dragon. No, people are not remotely tired of comic book movies or sequels. And surely one of them will prove a big enough hit, so that makes four more likely movies grossing $1 billion. Or in the case of Avatar: Fire and Ash, easily $2 billion. 

I saw Nosferatu, Nickel Boys and the reissue of Interstellar last week. Nosferatu and Nickel Boys were both mightily impressive on a technical level. I found Lily-Rose Depp terrific in a very difficult role. But overall, the 1922 Nosferatu remains far creepier. It just didn't get under my skin. I thought the lead in Nickel Boys was weak. I didn't like his vocal performance long before I even saw the actor. (The film is shot from the point of view of one character for much of the film, so we hear him long before we see him.) However, I think costar Brandon Wilson is very talented. As for Interstellar, I found it a puzzle box, a la Inception. Happy to see it once but doubt I'd ever watch it again and it's not match for Dunkirk, which remains my favorite Christopher Nolan film by far. 

NOTE: One movie fell off my box office radar. The Indian action-drama Game Changer opened to $31m last week. This week? I can't get any update. By all accounts it collapsed at the Indian box office. But even a 90% drop worldwide would mean it still made $3m. I'll update when numbers appear.  


NOTES 

mb = a film's budget in millions of US dollars; ww = worldwide


1. Mufasa: The Lion King–$200mb 

2. Sonic The Hedgehog 3–$120mb 

3. Moana 2–Is the budget lower since it was intended for tv, at first? Or higher because they had to rethink everything? Disney says it cost $150mb, just like the original. You can bet Dwayne Johnson gets more than his share of coconuts, but that won't matter with a hit like this.  

4. Nosferatu–$50mb for Robert Eggers, acclaimed director of The Witch, The Lighthouse and The Northman. That had his biggest budget and was not a commercial success. I saw him as more of an arthouse guy. But backers stuck with him, gave him a big budget and a starry cast for a remake of Nosferatu, which I guess is classier than remaking Dracula but still a hard sell I thought. And on Christmas Day? That's counter-programming I was not behind. Happily, I was wrong and Eggers looks more like the next Peter Jackson/Guillermo Del Toro than a guy given big budgets too fast or for the wrong projects. Good for him! 

5. Octopus With Broken Arms aka Wu Sha 3 (Manslaughter 3)–Chinese drama about businessman's daughter kidnapped from his home. 

6. Den of Thieves 2: Pantera–$40mb for Gerard Butler action flick. 

7. Wolf Man–$25mb 

8. One of Them Days–$14mb. It's always good to gross your budget during a film's opening week. So yea for producer Issa Rae and this comedy starring Keke Palmer and SZA. (What a week for SZA! Her movie opens well and she makes my list of The 250 Best Albums of the 21st Century...So Far.

9. Wicked–$150mb for each part, so $300mb total plus beaucoup marketing. It's a big movie! 

10. Big World–$29m ww debut. Chinese drama starring pop star and actor Jackson Yee as a young man living with cerebral palsy. Yee has gone from boyband TFBoys to having the Mandarin song of the year in 2017 to success in TV and film. How's his English, asks Hollywood? 

11. Honey Money Phony–Chinese rom-com about young woman suddenly burdened with debt who falls for a (very handsome) young con man. Will he go straight for her or teach her his wicked ways so she can get out from under this financial disaster? 

12. A Complete Unknown–$60mb+ for this Bob Dylan biopic? That's a lot of money for a film about Dylan going electric at Newport. I mean, I want to see it but then I'm a Dylan fanatic. Off to a very good start and star Timotheé Chalamet is sure to get an Oscar nomination, so it should keep going. But $180m worldwide seems highly unlikely to me, if not impossible. (Do other countries give a toss about this? Is Chalamet a big enough draw for this story? I doubt it.) I'm glad it was made, but it was made for too much. Like Gladiator II, this will be seen as a commercial success, but it's not. 

13. Conclave–a reported $20mb for this Vatican thriller means this is a hit. It's at $60m and still going strong, with a boost from potential Oscar noms. I do not see the point in putting it on PVOD and flooding the market with bootlegs while potentially harming box office. This is exactly the sort of film that can play and play in theaters.  

14. Gladiator II–$250mb for Ridley Scott sword and sandals epic. It needs $750m worldwide for me to call it a hit from theatrical alone but $600m would be just fine. It's got swords. It's got sandals. Does it have legs? No, it does not. This is the sort of film that everyone thinks of as a hit, but actually didn't deliver. The talk of Gladiator 3 is nonsense. Maybe many years from now they'll use the name to launch a new franchise, but this is the end for now. 

15. Paddington in Peru–$50mb? I'm just guessing. (That's sort of midpoint between the original and Paddington 2.) Sadly, three times is not the charm artistically for this once-perfect franchise.

16. Babygirl–$20mb for this Nicole Kidman sexy drama about a powerful businesswoman finding her kink with a younger, dominating man..her intern, no less! No milk was harmed in the making of this movie. 

17. Harbin–A South Korean historical drama set in the early 1900s about rebels fighting against the Japanese occupation of Korea. When one rebel leader shows mercy to Japanese prisoners and his men pay the price, he vows to redeem himself by assassinating the first Prime Minister of Japan. So this one will probably not have a good run in Japan. 

18. Better Man–$110mb!!! I just gasped when I saw the budget. Oh dear. I love the craziness of this movie. But that's a LOT of money for such a nutty idea. And forget the nutty idea. It's a musical biopic about an artist whose music I really like but has virtually no profile outside the UK. For heaven's sake, Queen is one of the biggest acts in the world and their biopic cost literally half of this one. Better Man would have been a big gamble at $30mb. 

19. The Brutalist–$10mb; Adrien Brody in this architect-as-hero period drama.

20. Fake Dad–Chinese comedy. 

21. Detective Conan: Crossroad in the Ancient Capitol (2003)–China reissue of Japanese animated franchise entry. Film had $32m before reissue in China. I mean, they keep making them so I assume they're profitable. 

22. The Prosecutor–Chinese drama starring Donnie Yen, who uncovers a deep conspiracy when a poor young man is framed for drug trafficking. Not on Donnie's watch!

23. Finist. The First Warrior–a Russian fantasy film starring actor Kirill Zaytsev as "the strongest, most agile, and handsome hero of Belogorye," according to Wikipedia. Zaytsev certainly fits the bill, though since Belogorye currently has fewer than 3000 people, that may not be such a major claim. Russians are surely starved for homegrown cinema; it's been a while since Russian films made the charts. But I couldn't even find a trailer for it on YouTube.

24. Hot Pot Artist aka Huo Guo Yi Shu Jia –A young Chinese man dreams of becoming a film director, but somehow ends up running a hot pot restaurant for artists, instead. 

25. The Firefighters–Korean drama with hot young newbie joining firefighter squad, only to butt heads with a legendary veteran. 

26. The Lord of the Rings: War of the Rohirrim–per Screendollar, the budget is $30mb for this animated prequel to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings movies. Even at that price, it's a flop.  Taken solely from minor footnotes in the novels, it was a gamble but a smart one. An animated film won't be compared to Peter Jackson's masterpiece. (See: the TV series.) And it's not retelling stories we've already heard. (See: superhero movies that go back to the well by redoing an origin story for Superman, Spiderman, et al.) Unfortunately, you still have to be good. The trailer I saw disappointed and audiences are not responding. A pity.

27. Homestead–faith-based post-apocalyptic drama from Angel Studios. A survivalist fantasy. Based on a series of ten, poorly reviewed novels.

28. The Last Showgirl–$2mb for Pamela Anderson's performance as Vegas showgirl whose revue suddenly closes after 30 years. Not so fast, Demi, says Anderson. 

NOTE: Game Changer–$45mb for Indian-Telugu political action film w new politico uncovering corruption and kicking ass. Opened to $32m, fell hard in India but surely it made some money in its second week.


THE CHART AND HOW IT IS COMPILED 


This column is a week by week tracking of box office around the world. It is compiled by pulling from every possible source: ComScore, Box Office Mojo, Variety, Hollywood Reporter, Deadline, charts for countries like China and India and South Korea, individual stories in trade or general interest newspapers, Wikipedia and anyone else discussing box office. 


ComScore Weekly Global Box Office Chart


The weekly charts contain the total gross for every movie in theaters around the world during the last seven days. If a movie opens on a Thursday, we include all the box office from Thursday through Sunday. If it opens on a Tuesday night, we cover all six days. If it opens on a Sunday (as some movies do in India or wherever, depending on holidays), then we include the box office for that one day. If a movie was released before the current week, we include the box office for all seven days. Why ignore the box office from Monday through Thursday, as most charts do when tallying the latest weekend and focusing on new releases? 


How do we arrive at this number? We take the total worldwide box office we have for a movie, subtract from it the previous week's total worldwide box office...and that's how much it made during the past seven days. Naturally, territories and movies sometimes fall through the cracks but we are as up to date as we can be, given our dependence on other outlets for the basic info. 


First, I list box office on every film we can from around the world. Any movie grossing at least US $1 million will be on here if we get info on it. Then I give some thoughts on the box office overall and individual films. That's followed by notes where I give info on each movie, with a focus on films not from Hollywood. So Despicable Me 4 you know. But a small Korean comedy or French drama? That I'll identify for you as best I can. 


--30--    

Sunday, January 12, 2025

WORLDWIDE BOX OFFICE FOR WEEK ENDING JANUARY 12, 2025

WORLDWIDE BOX OFFICE FOR WEEK ENDING JANUARY 12, 2025 

A film's gross for the last seven days, followed by its total worldwide gross. I begin with data from 

Comscore and then pull from every other source available. 


1. Mufasa: The Lion King–$64m / $540m worldwide

2. Sonic The Hedgehog 3–$49m /$385m ww

3. Nosferatu–$36m / $136m ww 

4. Game Changer–$31m www debut

5. Moana 2–$30m / $990m

6. Octopus With Broken Arms aka Wu Sha 3 (Manslaughter 3)–$20m / $96m ww  

7. Den of Thieves 2: Pantera–$20m 

8. Wicked–$17m / $698m ww 

9. Big World–$13m / $92m ww 

10. Babygirl–$12m / $28m ww

11. Honey Money Phony–$11m / $41m ww 

12. Finist. The First Warrior–$11m / $20m ww 

13. A Complete Unknown–$9m / $51m ww

14. Conclave–$8m / $69m ww 

15. Gladiator II–$5m / $455m ww 

16. Paddington in Peru–$5m / $56m ww 

17. Harbin–$3m / $27m ww 

18. Detective Conan: Crossroad in the Ancient Capitol (2003)–$2m / $48m ww 

19. The Prosecutor–$2m / $34m ww 

20. The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim–$2m / $20m ww  

21. Homestead–$2m / $19m ww  

22. Better Man–$2m / $10m ww

23. Hot Pot Artist aka Huo Guo Yi Shu Jia –$2m / $4m ww 

24. The Last Showgirl–$2m ww debut

25. Fake Dad–$2m 

26. Red One–$1m / $186m ww 

27. The Firefighters–$1m / $24m ww

28. The Fire Inside–$1m / $8m ww 

29. The Brutalist–$1m / $3m ww 


Bold: movies that have or likely will triple their reported budgets. That's my standard for a movie being a box office hit from theatrical alone. Many films will be profitable for a studio even if they don't triple their reported budget, but it's a good marker to indicate a big hit. 


ANALYSIS 

Boy, is it January! I went to see A Complete Unknown at my local multiplex on Sunday afternoon and the parking lot was practically empty. After a huge run from Thanksgiving to New Year's and lots of different movies doing well, everyone needed a break, apparently. The massive winter storm didn't help either. Oscar hopefuls like The Brutalist and Nickel Boys are expanding nicely while A Complete Unknown holds well. Meanwhile, Nicole Kidman proves her star power as Babygirl passes $30m worldwide. (He makes her drink milk! I just wish he'd made her wear that AMC promo spangly pant suit.) 

Wicked foolishly went to Premium Video on Demand, even though the blockbuster film could expect two more months of attention from Oscar nominations and sing-along screenings and needs to raise its profile in other countries. (Unlike most big Hollywood spectacles, it made most of its money in North America. But a sequel comes in November and they should position it to do even better overseas.) Nonetheless, the film went to PVOD and Universal proudly announced it grossed $70m right off the bat. They're thrilled of course: the studio gets roughly 80% of PVOD grosses but only 50-60% or so from box office. So the movie needed to make say $110m or so for them to make the same amount of money. And maybe if they'd waited, the PVOD take would have been substantially less. Sure, but everytime they rush a hit film onto PVOD,  they're undercutting theatrical, releasing a pristine bootleg into the world and arguably making a film less special. Wicked is substantially more fun in theaters than sitting at home alone. It's a huge film. And it's got part two coming out later this year. The cash grab "worked" but at what expense. And how disappointing for the exhibitors Universal depends on 365 days a year, for upcoming films like Wolf Man, Dog Man, Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy, the live action How To Train Your Dragon, Jurassic World: Rebirth, Downton Abbey 3 and Wicked: For Good in November. The shorter the window for hit films, the shorter the days they can expect exhibitors to support them and the shorter the time before theatrical dies entirely. 

We've got more data from 2024, the year when wide releases in North America were down 25% from what Hollywood turned out in the peak years pre-COVID. Naturally, one would expect box office to be down 25% but we did better than that. Ticket sales? That's another story, with some 740m being sold and that's a slight underperformance. (It's down 26% from the roughly 1 billion sold from 2016-2019. One billion, minimum.

Now pretending we know admissions is a joke. For North America, the MPA takes the box office gross and divides it by the average ticket price to get a very rough estimate of ticket sales. You've got matinees and kid price tickets and people who use monthly passes but they just pretend they can track admissions. Still, since they've always done this it's a fair measure to compare against itself. It's not good to see box office stronger but ticket sales slowing. That means more people are paying more money for fancy tickets like IMAX and such. You want movie-going to be a regular event for people, not a special big night two or three times a year. But again, no chain wants to release a breakdown of actual admissions and I've no clue how those passes (like my AMC A-List!) factor into this. So I'll take this one metric with a big grain of salt and yet still wish it were showing admissions back where they were seven years ago. Maybe 2025! 

I did see a lot of trailers on my Dylan outing and from 28 Years Later to Rami Malek as The Amateur to Anthony Mackie as Captain America: Brave New World to Love Hurts with Ke Huy Quan making like Jackie Chan in an action comedy, it looks like some big movies will be popping up regularly. I've got my eye on Dog Man, which I think will handily outperform expectations. 

And how was A Complete Unknown? As a Dylan fan (not fanatic, but huge fan) I should have found it ridiculous but didn't. The acting (and singing!) were generally very strong. Edward Norton is very good in what might have been a jokey or tiresome role. It sort of fell apart for me towards the end when Dylan became more "Dylan" but all in all a fine movie, with some very strong musical moments. It became a little too broad brushstroke by the end to get across the ideas they wanted, but still. It might easily have been laughable and really, it wasn't. A lovely image at the end says it all about Dylan and Pete Seeger. Dylan is riding away alone on his motorcycle (too fast, I might add!). He's leaving the 1965 Newport Folk Festival he just upended by going electric. Dylan pauses for a moment near the stage area and sees Pete Seeger, ever the folkie and man of peace, helping to collect the folding chairs and stow them on a truck. Of  course Pete Seeger is helping clean things up! 

NOTE: I still don't have good final box office info on two of the biggest hits of 2024: India's apparent all-time India and worldwide smash Pushpa 2: The Rule and Hong Kong's all-time local smash The Last Dance. 


NOTES 

mb = a film's budget in millions of US dollars; ww = worldwide


1. Mufasa: The Lion King–$200mb 

2. Sonic The Hedgehog 3–$120mb

3. Nosferatu–$50mb for Robert Eggers, acclaimed director of The Witch, The Lighthouse and The Northman. That had his biggest budget and was not a commercial success. I saw him as more of an arthouse guy. But backers stuck with him, gave him a big budget and a starry cast for a remake of Nosferatu, which I guess is classier than remaking Dracula but still a hard sell I thought. And on Christmas Day? That's counter-programming I was not behind. Happily, I was wrong and Eggers looks more like the next Peter Jackson/Guillermo Del Toro than a guy given big budgets too fast or for the wrong projects. Good for him! 

4. Game Changer–$45mb for Indian-Telugu political action film w new politico uncovering corruption and kicking ass.

5. Moana 2–Is the budget lower since it was intended for tv, at first? Or higher because they had to rethink everything? Disney says it cost $150mb, just like the original. You can bet Dwayne Johnson gets more than his share of coconuts, but that won't matter with a hit like this.  

6. Octopus With Broken Arms aka Wu Sha 3 (Manslaughter 3)–Chinese drama about businessman's daughter kidnapped from his home. 

7. Den of Thieves 2: Pantera–$40mb for Gerard Butler action flick. 

8. Wicked–$150mb for each part, so $300mb total plus beaucoup marketing. It's a big movie! 

9. Big World–$29m ww debut. Chinese drama starring pop star and actor Jackson Yee as a young man living with cerebral palsy. Yee has gone from boyband TFBoys to having the Mandarin song of the year in 2017 to success in TV and film. How's his English, asks Hollywood? 

10. Babygirl–$20mb for this Nicole Kidman sexy drama about a powerful businesswoman finding her kink with a younger, dominating man..her intern, no less! No milk was harmed in the making of this movie. 

11. Honey Money Phony–Chinese rom-com about young woman suddenly burdened with debt who falls for a (very handsome) young con man. Will he go straight for her or teach her his wicked ways so she can get out from under this financial disaster? 

12. Finist. The First Warrior–a Russian fantasy film starring actor Kirill Zaytsev as "the strongest, most agile, and handsome hero of Belogorye," according to Wikipedia. Zaytsev certainly fits the bill, though since Belogorye currently has fewer than 3000 people, that may not be such a major claim. Russians are surely starved for homegrown cinema; it's been a while since Russian films made the charts. But I couldn't even find a trailer for it on YouTube. 

13. A Complete Unknown–$60mb+ for this Bob Dylan biopic? That's a lot of money for a film about Dylan going electric at Newport. I mean, I want to see it but then I'm a Dylan fanatic. Off to a very good start and star Timotheé Chalamet is sure to get an Oscar nomination, so it should keep going. But $180m worldwide seems highly unlikely to me, if not impossible. (Do other countries give a toss about this? Is Chalamet a big enough draw for this story? I doubt it.) I'm glad it was made, but it was made for too much. Like Gladiator II, this will be seen as a commercial success, but it's not. 

14. Conclave–a reported $20mb for this Vatican thriller means this is a hit. It's at $60m and still going strong, with a boost from potential Oscar noms. I do not see the point in putting it on PVOD and flooding the market with bootlegs while potentially harming box office. This is exactly the sort of film that can play and play in theaters.  

15. Gladiator II–$250mb for Ridley Scott sword and sandals epic. It needs $750m worldwide for me to call it a hit from theatrical alone but $600m would be just fine. It's got swords. It's got sandals. Does it have legs? No, it does not. This is the sort of film that everyone thinks of as a hit, but actually didn't deliver. The talk of Gladiator 3 is nonsense. Maybe many years from now they'll use the name to launch a new franchise, but this is the end for now. 

16. Paddington in Peru–$50mb? I'm just guessing. (That's sort of midpoint between the original and Paddington 2.) Sadly, three times is not the charm artistically for this once-perfect franchise.

17. Harbin–A South Korean historical drama set in the early 1900s about rebels fighting against the Japanese occupation of Korea. When one rebel leader shows mercy to Japanese prisoners and his men pay the price, he vows to redeem himself by assassinating the first Prime Minister of Japan. So this one will probably not have a good run in Japan. 

18. Detective Conan: Crossroad in the Ancient Capitol (2003)–China reissue of Japanese animated franchise entry. Film had $32m before reissue in China. I mean, they keep making them so I assume they're profitable. 

19. The Prosecutor–Chinese drama starring Donnie Yen, who uncovers a deep conspiracy when a poor young man is framed for drug trafficking. Not on Donnie's watch!

20. The Lord of the Rings: War of the Rohirrim–per Screendollar, the budget is $30mb for this animated prequel to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings movies. Even at that price, it's a flop.  Taken solely from minor footnotes in the novels, it was a gamble but a smart one. An animated film won't be compared to Peter Jackson's masterpiece. (See: the TV series.) And it's not retelling stories we've already heard. (See: superhero movies that go back to the well by redoing an origin story for Superman, Spiderman, et al.) Unfortunately, you still have to be good. The trailer I saw disappointed and audiences are not responding. A pity. 

21. Homestead–faith-based post-apocalyptic drama from Angel Studios. A survivalist fantasy. Based on a series of ten, poorly reviewed novels.

22. Better Man–$110mb!!! I just gasped when I saw the budget. Oh dear. I love the craziness of this movie. But that's a LOT of money for such a nutty idea. And forget the nutty idea. It's a musical biopic about an artist whose music I really like but has virtually no profile outside the UK. For heaven's sake, Queen is one of the biggest acts in the world and their biopic cost literally half of this one. Better Man would have been a big gamble at $30mb. 

23. Hot Pot Artist aka Huo Guo Yi Shu Jia –A young Chinese man dreams of becoming a film director, but somehow ends up running a hot pot restaurant for artists, instead. 

24. The Last Showgirl–$2mb for Pamela Anderson's performance as Vegas showgirl whose revue suddenly closes after 30 years. Not so fast, Demi, says Anderson. 

25. Fake Dad–Chinese comedy

26. Red One–Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans action/Xmas comedy. A budget reportedly up to $250mb. It's a theatrical failure, but that failure would have been just as clear if it had gone straight to streaming. Now at least it is (almost) paying for a worldwide marketing blitz and that can only help. Remember how people rented crap movies at Blockbuster simply because they'd "heard" of it during the theatrical run? Same idea. 

27. The Firefighters–Korean drama with hot young newbie joining firefighter squad, only to butt heads with a legendary veteran. 

28. The Fire Inside–$12mb for this indie drama about the true story of female Olympian boxer from Flint, Michigan. It's a stellar week for director Barry Jenkins, who wrote and produced this film and sees his family film Mufasa: The Lion King finding its audience. 

29. The Brutalist–$10mb; Adrien Brody in this architect as hero period drama


THE CHART AND HOW IT IS COMPILED 


This column is a week by week tracking of box office around the world. It is compiled by pulling from every possible source: ComScore, Box Office Mojo, Variety, Hollywood Reporter, Deadline, charts for countries like China and India and South Korea, individual stories in trade or general interest newspapers, Wikipedia and anyone else discussing box office. 


ComScore Weekly Global Box Office Chart


The weekly charts contain the total gross for every movie in theaters around the world during the last seven days. If a movie opens on a Thursday, we include all the box office from Thursday through Sunday. If it opens on a Tuesday night, we cover all six days. If it opens on a Sunday (as some movies do in India or wherever, depending on holidays), then we include the box office for that one day. If a movie was released before the current week, we include the box office for all seven days. Why ignore the box office from Monday through Thursday, as most charts do when tallying the latest weekend and focusing on new releases? 


How do we arrive at this number? We take the total worldwide box office we have for a movie, subtract from it the previous week's total worldwide box office...and that's how much it made during the past seven days. Naturally, territories and movies sometimes fall through the cracks but we are as up to date as we can be, given our dependence on other outlets for the basic info. 


First, I list box office on every film we can from around the world. Any movie grossing at least US $1 million will be on here if we get info on it. Then I give some thoughts on the box office overall and individual films. That's followed by notes where I give info on each movie, with a focus on films not from Hollywood. So Despicable Me 4 you know. But a small Korean comedy or French drama? That I'll identify for you as best I can. 


--30--    

Monday, January 06, 2025

WORLDWIDE BOX OFFICE FOR WEEK ENDING JANUARY 5, 2025

WORLDWIDE BOX OFFICE FOR WEEK ENDING JANUARY 5, 2025 

A film's gross for the last seven days, followed by its total worldwide gross. I begin with data from 

Comscore and then pull from every other source available. 


1. Mufasa: The Lion King–$148m / $476m worldwide 

2. Sonic The Hedgehog 3–$124m /$336m ww 

3. Moana 2–$77m / $960m

4. Nosferatu–$57m / $100m ww 

5. Octopus With Broken Arms aka Wu Sha 3 (Manslaughter 3)–$54m / $76m ww 

6. Big World–$49m / $79m ww 

7. Wicked–$47m / $681m ww

8. Honey Money Phony–$25m / $30m ww 

9. A Complete Unknown–$19m / $42m ww

10. Gladiator II–$15m / $450m ww 

11. Detective Conan: Crossroad in the Ancient Capitol (2003)–$9m / $46m ww 

12. Harbin–$9m / $24m ww 

13. Babygirl–$9m / $16m ww 

14. Finist. The First Warrior–$9m ww debut

15. Conclave–$8m / $61m ww 

16. Kraven The Hunter–$6m / $59m ww 

17. The Prosecutor–$4m / $32m ww

18. Homestead–$4m / $17m ww 

19. The Firefighters–$3m / $23m ww  

20. The Fire Inside–$3m / $7m ww 

21. Red One–$2m / $185m ww 

22. Paddington in Peru–$2m / $51m ww 

23. The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim–$2m / $18m ww 

24. Bogota: City of the Lost–$2m ww debut

25. Hot Pot Artist aka Huo Guo Yi Shu Jia –$2m ww debut 

26. Pushpa 2: The Rule–$1m / $210m ww 

27. Her Story aka Hao Dong Xi--$1m / $100m ww

28. I Am What I Am 2–$1m / $10m ww


Bold: movies that have or likely will triple their reported budgets. That's my standard for a movie being a box office hit from theatrical alone. Many films will be profitable for a studio even if they don't triple their reported budget, but it's a good marker to indicate a big hit. 


ANALYSIS 

Let me make several pointed comments this week. 

NORTH AMERICAN 2024 BOX OFFICE WAS GREAT -- The North American box office take of $8.5b for 2024 is terrific! Anyone suggesting it's a disappointment is crazy. Studios released 25% fewer wide releases than was typical from 2016-2019. So we reasonably expected 25% lower box office than was the average for those years. To be conservative, we hoped for $8 billion. But the movies that were released overperformed nicely and instead of a rock solid $8.3b we scored $8.5b.  China, by the way fell 23% and only grossed $5.8b. The reasons they're not equaling or surpassing North America as the biggest market? An economic downturn and government interference that's turned people from Hollywood films and made it harder to market those films even when they're granted permission to come to China. Further proof Hollywood should keep pushing to show their movies in China but not bother catering in absurd or offensive ways to its totalitarian government. 

Also, family films dominated, so the fear that families would never return to movie-going is utterly demolished. Indeed, from Barbie and Oppenheimer last year to a string of huge hits this year (the highest grossing R-rated film of all time, the highest grossing live action musical of all time, etc.) it's very clear audiences are more than ready to go see movies. Hollywood just needs to make them, release them and LEAVE THEM IN MOVIE THEATERS. 

HOLLYWOOD NEEDS MIDBUDGET AND SMALL BUDGET MOVIES --  A mix of movies is essential. Yes, Hollywood had lots of sequels and remakes and spin-offs. It always had them and it always will. But look at the key role played by horror, films for adults, and by mid-budget and low budget films. Nosferatu was a huge gamble and paid off with its $50mb for a horror flick based on an old silent movie most have never heard of before. It lines up director Robert Eggers as the next potential Guillermo Del Toro/Peter Jackson or maybe Christopher Nolan. But we also had Conclave and A Complete Unknown and Heretic and Anora and The Best Christmas Pageant Ever and Babygirl. They include mid-sized and very modestly budgeted films pitched to adults, families and a wide range of tastes. These movies are absolutely crucial for developing talent like Eggers and keeping theaters full. Not all of them will be hits of course. 

STUDIOS ARE WRONG ABOUT STREAMING WINDOWS -- Studios have mostly lost their minds on streaming windows. None of them will release actual grosses for their Premium Video on Demand. So they're either making so much money they don't want talent to realize that (which is the reason they treated grosses from DVD and BLuRay rental and sales like a state secret) OR the more likely scenario that the take isn't that impressive. They insist it isn't hurting box office. Bull. I was about to go see a movie and saw an ad saying it was already available in the home and it made me feel a bit of a fool for going anyway. And I'm a definite outlier when it comes to movie-going, since I will go all the time. 

Disney is perhaps the best about respecting windows, supporting the crucial theatrical experience and thus squeezing out every penny of profit at every stage. Universal is the worst. Even with a critically acclaimed leggy hit like The Wild Robot, they rushed it to PVOD in just 18 days. They of course would argue the film's success proves it's not a problem. But that's a remarkable word of mouth smash. And their ads for it almost kept me from going to see it in the cinema. And doing so teaches consumers to wait. Why bother going to a movie theater? You can just sit on your couch and wait. 

Putting Wicked onto PVOD when the film was still making money worldwide is bonkers. They have the sequel coming in November. They have Oscar nominations ahead. They have three months of little competition. AND they could be grossing a lot more worldwide. But Universal knows the second it's online there will be high quality bootlegs everywhere, discouraging people from going to see it in a theater. This film is an event and should be treated as such. One trade said it's not as well known in the non-English speaking world. (It's a huge hit of course in the UK, Australia and New Zealand.) Not true. The stage musical ran for a blockbuster nine years in Japan. It saw productions in Germany, Mexico, Amsterdam, Norway, Sweden, Poland and so on, with a new production opening in Spain in October. It also toured many other countries not mentioned. Plus, a mini-version played in theme parks around the world seen by tourists coming from countless countries. It is a worldwide property and treated right, Wicked should squeeze out every penny from every country and grow its overseas take for the sequel. Rushing it to PVOD when it's making oodles of cash is counterproductive in every way and a slap in the face to exhibitors. And not for nothing, but Wicked is far more enjoyable on the big screen with an audience than seeing it at home. 

INDIA SHOULD TOUT ITS FILMS TO THE WORLD -- India and other countries need to learn the power of boasting about their box office. Too often, producers in China and India and Hong Kong and elsewhere care only about their home markets. They don't even bother to tout the grosses of their hits to Comscore and the trades, any easy step that brings them great press and free marketing. Why ever not? Two cases in point. Pushpa 2: The Rule is the top-grossing film of all time in India, passing Baahubili 2. (By the way, those are both Telugu films, showing how the outdated idea of Bollywood and its Hindi language films dominating Indian box office is long gone.) Now Pushpa 2: The Rule is about to challenge 2016's Dangal to become the highest grossing Indian film of all time worldwide. Simiarly, Hong Kong's The Last Dance is the highest grossing Hong Kong film of all time and has made oodles of money in China and elsewhere. Both films should be on the lips of anyone reading the trades but I have struggled just to get an accurate read on their grosses week to week. Producers in these countries and the film industry honchos are missing out. Report your grosses! Bang the drum for your big hits! 

Happy New Year!

NOTES 

mb = a film's budget in millions of US dollars; ww = worldwide


1. Mufasa: The Lion King–$200mb 

2. Sonic The Hedgehog 3–$120mb

3. Moana 2–Is the budget lower since it was intended for tv, at first? Or higher because they had to rethink everything? Disney says it cost $150mb, just like the original. You can bet Dwayne Johnson gets more than his share of coconuts, but that won't matter with a hit like this.  

4. Nosferatu–$50mb for Robert Eggers, acclaimed director of The Witch, The Lighthouse and The Northman. That had his biggest budget and was not a commercial success. I saw him as more of an arthouse guy. But backers stuck with him, gave him a big budget and a starry cast for a remake of Nosferatu, which I guess is classier than remaking Dracula but still a hard sell I thought. And on Christmas Day? That's counter-programming I was not behind. Happily, I was wrong and Eggers looks more like the next Peter Jackson/Guillermo Del Toro than a guy given big budgets too fast or for the wrong projects. Good for him! 

5. Octopus With Broken Arms aka Wu Sha 3 (Manslaughter 3)–Chinese drama about businessman's daughter kidnapped from his home. 

6. Big World–$29m ww debut. Chinese drama starring pop star and actor Jackson Yee as a young man living with cerebral palsy. Yee has gone from boyband TFBoys to having the Mandarin song of the year in 2017 to success in TV and film. How's his English, asks Hollywood? 

7. Wicked–$150mb for each part, so $300mb total plus beaucoup marketing. It's a big movie! 

8. Honey Money Phony–Chinese rom-com about young woman suddenly burdened with debt who falls for a (very handsome) young con man. Will he go straight for her or teach her his wicked ways so she can get out from under this financial disaster? 

9. A Complete Unknown–$60mb+ for this Bob Dylan biopic? That's a lot of money for a film about Dylan going electric at Newport. I mean, I want to see it but then I'm a Dylan fanatic. Off to a very good start and star Timotheé Chalamet is sure to get an Oscar nomination, so it should keep going. But $180m worldwide seems highly unlikely to me, if not impossible. (Do other countries give a toss about this? Is Chalamet a big enough draw for this story? I doubt it.) I'm glad it was made, but it was made for too much. Like Gladiator II, this will be seen as a commercial success, but it's not. 

10. Gladiator II–$250mb for Ridley Scott sword and sandals epic. It needs $750m worldwide for me to call it a hit from theatrical alone but $600m would be just fine. It's got swords. It's got sandals. Does it have legs? No, it does not. This is the sort of film that everyone thinks of as a hit, but actually didn't deliver. The talk of Gladiator 3 is nonsense. Maybe many years from now they'll use the name to launch a new franchise, but this is the end for now. 

11. Detective Conan: Crossroad in the Ancient Capitol (2003)–China reissue of Japanese animated franchise entry. Film had $32m before reissue in China. I mean, they keep making them so I assume they're profitable. 

12. Harbin–Comscore has this at $8m but the Korean box office shows it with $15m total. It opened Dec 24, so I assume the national chart is more accurate. Harbin is a South Korean historical drama set in the early 1900s about rebels fighting against the Japanese occupation of Korea. When one rebel leader shows mercy to Japanese prisoners and his men pay the price, he vows to redeem himself by assassinating the first Prime Minister of Japan. So this one will probably not have a good run in Japan. 

13. Babygirl–$20mb for this Nicole Kidman sexy drama about a powerful businesswoman finding her kink with a younger, dominating man..her intern, no less! No milk was harmed in the making of this movie. 

14. Finist. The First Warrior–a Russian fantasy film starring actor Kirill Zaytsev as "the strongest, most agile, and handsome hero of Belogorye," according to Wikipedia. Zaytsev certainly fits the bill, though since Belogorye currently has fewer than 3000 people, that may not be such a major claim. Russians are surely starved for homegrown cinema; it's been a while since Russian films made the charts. But I couldn't even find a trailer for it on YouTube. 

15. Conclave–a reported $20mb for this Vatican thriller means this is a hit. It's at $60m and still going strong, with a boost from potential Oscar noms. I do not see the point in putting it on PVOD and flooding the market with bootlegs while potentially harming box office. This is exactly the sort of film that can play and play in theaters.  

16. Kraven The Hunter–$120mb. Ouch. 

17. The Prosecutor–Chinese drama starring Donnie Yen, who uncovers a deep conspiracy when a poor young man is framed for drug trafficking. Not on Donnie's watch!

18. Homestead–faith-based post-apocalyptic drama from Angel Studios. A survivalist fantasy. Based on a series of ten, poorly reviewed novels.

19. The Firefighters–Korean drama with hot young newbie joining firefighter squad, only to butt heads with a legendary veteran. 

20. The Fire Inside–$12mb for this indie drama about the true story of female Olympian boxer from Flint, Michigan. It's a stellar week for director Barry Jenkins, who wrote and produced this film and sees his family film Mufasa: The Lion King finding its audience. 

21. Red One–Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans action/Xmas comedy. A budget reportedly up to $250mb. It's a theatrical failure, but that failure would have been just as clear if it had gone straight to streaming. Now at least it is (almost) paying for a worldwide marketing blitz and that can only help. Remember how people rented crap movies at Blockbuster simply because they'd "heard" of it during the theatrical run? Same idea. 

22. Paddington in Peru–$50mb? I'm just guessing. (That's sort of midpoint between the original and Paddington 2.) Sadly, three times is not the charm artistically for this once-perfect franchise.

23. The Lord of the Rings: War of the Rohirrim–per Screendollar, the budget is $30mb for this animated prequel to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings movies. Even at that price, it's a flop.  Taken solely from minor footnotes in the novels, it was a gamble but a smart one. An animated film won't be compared to Peter Jackson's masterpiece. (See: the TV series.) And it's not retelling stories we've already heard. (See: superhero movies that go back to the well by redoing an origin story for Superman, Spiderman, et al.) Unfortunately, you still have to be good. The trailer I saw disappointed and audiences are not responding. A pity.  

24. Bogota: City of the Lost–Korean drama about immigrants in Colombia who fall into illegal smuggling out of a desperate need to survive. No the best tourism ad for Bogotá.

25. Hot Pot Artist aka Huo Guo Yi Shu Jia –A young Chinese man dreams of becoming a film director, but somehow ends up running a hot pot restaurant for artists, instead. 

26. 28. Pushpa 2: The Rule–$60mb. This is now reportedly the highest grossing Indian film of all time, passing Baahubili 2! The Telugu language action film is also closing in on 2016's Dangal to maybe become the highest grossing Indian film of all time. It's a big hit, but it's been off the worldwide charts for a few weeks now, in part perhaps because Indian companies wrongly don't recognize the power of marketing box office hits to promote both the movie at hand and Indian cinema overall. We're an afterthought for an industry that historically focused on its domestic market alone. But now Indian films regularly debut in the Top 10 in North America. Since Pushpa 2 grossed at least $140m in India that means it's grossed a huge $70m overseas, more than most of their movies make in total. They should be boasting about it. I'm in London and jaws dropped when I asked some Indian workers at Pret a Manger if they'd seen it yet. You've heard of it, they asked? One worker called over another worker and then asked me what I thought of it in front of her, just so she could be astonished as well. 

First notes: The original Indian/Telugu film cost half as much and only grossed $46m. So the sequel cost more than the original movie's total gross.  But it doubled the original's entire gross in its first week. Originally, a chunk of the two films were shot at the same time, but they did significant reshoots, so just 10% came from the first go-round. Yes, it was the highest grossing Indian movie of 2021; yes it's the highest grossing Telugu films of all time.  But even the lowest estimate of the original's budget is $23mb, so it wasn't a huge hit to begin with. I am puzzled. Are the economics different for Indian films? I wouldn't be surprised if the calculations were different. There are no reports of the first film being a particular hit on streaming or on demand etc, which might justify all this. I think it's another example of Indian films committing to a sequel before there's any demand. Indeed, this film was cut into two parts before the first release. A number of other films seem to be two-parters, which is a very rare thing in Hollywood but less so in India. Is it a good idea? I don't think so.   

27. Her Story aka Hao Dong Xi --Chinese drama, literally translated as "Nice One." Single mom moves in with another single gal; adventures ensue. I don't like calling film's hits without some reporting on its budget. But I can't imagine this type of film costing even $20m, so it's a hit!

28. I Am What I Am 2–Chinese animated film is a sequel to a 2021 animated action comedy. This time, a newcomer to Shanghai agrees to fight in a boxing/martial arts tournament to raise money for his ailing dad. It's a spiritual sequel to the first film, which was critically praised but only grossed $40m ww. In that film, a kid competes in a lion dancing competition while his ailing dad is in a coma. 



THE CHART AND HOW IT IS COMPILED 


This column is a week by week tracking of box office around the world. It is compiled by pulling from every possible source: ComScore, Box Office Mojo, Variety, Hollywood Reporter, Deadline, charts for countries like China and India and South Korea, individual stories in trade or general interest newspapers, Wikipedia and anyone else discussing box office. 


ComScore Weekly Global Box Office Chart


The weekly charts contain the total gross for every movie in theaters around the world during the last seven days. If a movie opens on a Thursday, we include all the box office from Thursday through Sunday. If it opens on a Tuesday night, we cover all six days. If it opens on a Sunday (as some movies do in India or wherever, depending on holidays), then we include the box office for that one day. If a movie was released before the current week, we include the box office for all seven days. Why ignore the box office from Monday through Thursday, as most charts do when tallying the latest weekend and focusing on new releases? 


How do we arrive at this number? We take the total worldwide box office we have for a movie, subtract from it the previous week's total worldwide box office...and that's how much it made during the past seven days. Naturally, territories and movies sometimes fall through the cracks but we are as up to date as we can be, given our dependence on other outlets for the basic info. 


First, I list box office on every film we can from around the world. Any movie grossing at least US $1 million will be on here if we get info on it. Then I give some thoughts on the box office overall and individual films. That's followed by notes where I give info on each movie, with a focus on films not from Hollywood. So Despicable Me 4 you know. But a small Korean comedy or French drama? That I'll identify for you as best I can. 


What about when I blithely state a film has opened in TK% of the world? For example, I claim The Lord of the Rings: War of the Rohirrim opened in about 9% of the worldwide market. I long wanted to know how "wide" a movie has opened around the world. It's easy to know how wide a film opened in one country. In the US/Canada, a limited release might be two theaters or 20. A wide release used to mean 1000 theaters and now big movies easily open on 2000 or 3000 or even 4000 theaters. (We talk about theaters, not screens, since screen count can and does change daily or even hourly. A movie can play at one mulitplex and be on five screens or eight or one.) I really hated not knowing how many countries a movie had already opened in and how "big" those countries are in the worldwide market. So I got a list of the 20 top countries and how much of the worldwide box office they represented in 2019, the last typical year/ Those 20 countries accounted for 90% of the worldwide box office in 2019. For example, Australia was responsible for 2.13% of the $42.2 billion worldwide total in 2019. China was responsible for $22.04%. The 86 or so other countries outside the Top 20 represent well less than 1% and are equally weighted as representing just 0.116% of the total worldwide box office. 


So, The Lord of the Rings: War of the Rohirrim opened in Spain (1.66%), Mexico (2.37%) and Brazil (also 1.66%) and 28 other countries (none major). The three big markets total 5.69% of the worldwide box office. (Roughly!) The other 28 countries (28 times 0.116%) account for 3.248%. So altogether the film has opened in 8.938% of the world, which I simplified as about 9%. This DOESN'T mean the film will make 90% more in other markets. A movie might open in China or Korea and do little or nothing anywhere else for various reason. Another movie might open in France and prove a worldwide smash. All this number is meant to indicate is how much of the world a movie has opened in already. If it's a big hit and might play elsewhere, it's good to know a film that's making headlines has only opened in 10% of the world. 


If two big films like Moana 2 and Wicked are facing off, it's good to know if one of them still has big markets like Japan still to come. No, I haven't done all the math on those two yet. But Wicked still has Germany, South Korea and Japan ahead of it and they represent 12.3% of the worldwide box office; Moana 2 has already opened in them. I'm hoping to get a program that will do all this for me automatically. Stay tuned. 

--30--