Midnight box office: The Amazing Spider-Man earns $7.5m at 12:01am. Will it fall closer to $112m or $155m by Sunday?

The official numbers are in, and The Amazing Spider-Man is off to a decent if-not amazing start.  The reboot earned $7.5 million in midnigh...

Less is more. Why Marvel's decision to increase Iron Man 3's budget by $60 million may not be a net-positive.

This is old news , but it broke while I was busy and I suppose the release of the first official still is as good a time to discuss this as ...

5 comic adaptations that bucked the mold, and still failed.

Actor Tom Hiddleston wrote an eloquent essay  yesterday for The Guardian basically praising and defending the sub-genre known as the superh...

Yesterday's News Today: Jon Favreau off Iron Man 3.

We all saw this coming from as far back as mid-summer 2008, when Marvel basically played hardball with Jon Favreau in regards to financial c...

Shrek Forever After wins Memorial Day box office derby, while Sex and the City 2 and Prince of Persia crash. Weekend box office review (05/31/10).

Usually the above picture would make me sad, but Allison is actually napping again! As expected, Shrek: The Final Chapter was able to easi...

Mendelson's Memos Flashback - As Sex and the City 2 opens, a look at female escapist fantasy and how it differs from male escapist fantasy.

I have a heck of a lot more readers now than I did in September 2008, when I first published this massive essay on gender and escapism. Sin...

Shrek: The Final Chapter opens with $71 million, while MacGruber crawls to $4.1 million. Weekend box office review (05/23/10).

By any normal standards, a movie opening with $70.8 million in three days would be a pretty big success. So, before we get into what this ...

Shrek 4, MacGruber crash and burn in Friday box office (05/21/10).

It's tough to call anything grossing $20.7 million in a single day a disaster, but expectations and precedence tell the tale. The firs...