Matthew Monagle

It feels like we’ve been watching the same six or seven movies shift places on the charts for weeks now, which makes what happened this weekend such a breath of fresh air. With four new releases all cracking the charts, we’ve at least got a little bit of variety in the titles we’ll be discussing, and no The Emoji Movie near the list. I’ll put that down as a win in my book any day of the week. Here’s the estimated box office grosses as of Sunday afternoon:

Every year, Hollywood releases a movie that sparks up so much pre-release controversy that I find myself discouraged from ever seeing it in theaters. For example, I still have yet to see La La Land, the 2016 Best Picture runner-up, owing mostly to the ugly back-and-forth I saw regarding the movie. This year’s contender for that slot? mother!, the brilliant or terrible or visionary or derivative thriller by brilliant or terrible or visionary or derivative filmmaker Darren Aronofsky (depending on who you ask). Like La La Land, I know I’ll see the movie eventually, I just need some of the shouting to die down a little before I give it a chance.

It’s hard to imagine Hollywood without Steven Spielberg. Spielberg’s career as a filmmaker serves as a perfect parallel for contemporary film history. From his humble beginnings outside the collection of University of Southern California wunderkinds to his commercial dominance at the multiplex, Spielberg did more than just make movies that wowed millions of people around the world: he also disrupted an entire industry, changing the way Hollywood approached filmmaking and establishing the format for blockbuster films that persists to this day.

It’s getting progressively more difficult to find anything of value to say when Ron Howard teases more behind-the-scenes photos from the Han Solo set. On the one hand, we get it, Opie, you’re deeply immersed in the Star Wars universe and doing all kinds of cool [expletive] and we’re not. On the other hand, though, we’ve reached a point where our collective interest in little tidbits is starting to wane. Let me put it to you like this: I love a good tapas restaurant as much as the next guy, right? But sometimes you just want the full three-course meal.

If you’re like me, you’ve probably gotten a little confused about the various Godzilla adaptations currently underway in Hollywood, so let’s take a moment to clear that up. First there’s Godzilla: King of the Monsters, the sequel to Gareth Edwards’ 2014 film. You have Godzilla: Monster Planet, the animated series heading to Netflix later this year. You have the in-development sequel to Japanese franchise reboot Shin Godzilla, which technically cannot begin production until 2020. And you have Adam Wingard’s Godzilla vs. Kong, which will bring the two major monster franchises together.

It’s now been two weekends since Pennywise the Dancing Clown was unleashed upon unsuspecting audiences, and Hollywood may never be the same. Seriously. The kind of box office numbers we’re seeing right now will inspire, uh, major changes in how Hollywood tries to jump on specific trends. And while two new movies made a sort of solid showing for themselves over the weekend, the fact is this: it’s Pennywise’s world. We’re just living in it. Here’s the box office projections as of Sunday afternoon:

If there’s one bone I can pick about the most recent adaptation of Stephen King’s It, it’s that the movie doesn’t spend enough time with Pennywise the Dancing Clown. Sure, we get that incredible opening sequence where he lures Georgie to his death, but people are right to call Bill Skarsgard’s character one of the most iconic horror characters in decades: he’s fantastically creepy and desperately in need of a lot more screen time. And now, with Andy Muschietti working on a director’s cut for the home video release, we might have one of the first scenes we’d like to see added back in.

Well, that’s kinda awkward timing. On Thursday of last week, the New York Times published an article titled “Attacked by Rotten Tomatoes,” an in-depth look at the popular review aggregation site and the role it may have played in this summer’s disappointing box office numbers. The article ends with a prolonged examination of the various ways that studios are trying to “battle Rotten Tomatoes on multiple fronts,” seemingly accepting the idea that Rotten Tomatoes has been bad for the movie industry (despite the fact that Rotten Tomatoes is, in fact, owned by said members of the movie industry). The article may have been an interesting read for those unfamiliar with the controversy, but for those in the know, it was old news, part of an ongoing debate that tried to argue that critics were duping poor, easily misled moviegoers.

Oh, Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele. When are those two crazy kids ever going to get together? There’s is a love story we can all relate to: she, the inexperienced college student and would-be journalist, and he, the millionaire Seattle playboy, willing to teach her in the practice of love. Would their shared appreciation for BDSM be enough to overcome their differences and help them find true love? I don’t know for sure, but based on this first teaser trailer for Fifty Shades Freed, I’m going to venture that the answer to that question is yes.

As we head deeper into September, two things have become pretty clear about 2017 box office numbers: one, Hollywood desperately needs to bounce back a little bit from the doldrums of August, and two, whoever decided to hedge their studio’s bets with a September release date for a movie about a killer clown is looking like a [profanity] genius right about now. We’ll get to all of that in a moment, but first, here are the box office numbers as of Sunday afternoon: