Crowd Pleaser
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Christopher Nolan & the Short List of Directors Whose Names Open Movies
‘The Odyssey’ sold out before a single review. The three ingredients that turn a filmmaker into box office IP today
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Comedy Got Old. Now It Wants Its Own ‘Backrooms’ Moment
The genre killed by committee at the studios now faces online upstarts lining up to run horror’s same playbook
Latest Crowd Pleaser stories
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Old Dogs, New Clips: How Stars Are Turning Past Roles Into Fresh Fame
‘Oh, that guy!’: Inside the new playbook for adapting a catalog of film and TV work for a modern social-media following
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Star Wars’ Disney+ Hangover: A Fight to Make the Galaxy Feel Big Again
The fandom is deeply fractured as ‘The Mandalorian and Grogu’ arrives in theaters with low expectations
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Horror! A24’s Youngest Director Ever Started on YouTube
From the coming ‘Backrooms’ to ‘Obsession,’ studios find the next teen and twentysomething auteurs online
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CinemaCon’s Quiet Wars: Fewer Movies, Bigger Screens — and TikTok in Charge
Behind the optimism in Vegas lies a more fragile theatrical reality
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‘Mario’ and the New Fandom Flywheel Upending Hollywood
A $372M opening reveals the new power structure: Fans build, amplify and ultimately decide what wins
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Scenes from the Lobby: Why Movies Flop — The Audience Already Knows
Inside the exit-polling machine that captures what fans actually think: ‘Every movie, if made for the right price, should make money’
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Gen Z Will Make or Break These 7 Upcoming IP Films
From ‘Minecraft’ to ‘Snow White’ lies a divide between loser legacy brands and lived-in fandom. So where will Labubu fit in?
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Age of Cinemanesia: The Vanishing Afterlife of Movies
Name five classic films from this decade. I’m waiting
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MoviePass Is Back (Really). This Time, The Bet Isn’t On Tickets
For the first time, co-founder and CEO Stacy Spikes details the company’s collapse and comeback attempt through its own predictions market
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Timothée Chalamet’s ‘Marty Supreme’ Wheaties Sold Out. What That Says About Fandom Today
Merch is on fire even as movies and box office struggle
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Small-Town Theaters vs. Studios: ‘It Doesn’t Feel Like the Industry Wants Us to Survive’
Cinema owners tell me the two-week mandatory run for movies is crushing them. And that’s even before Warner Bros. falls into new hands
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How Paul Thomas Anderson Landed in Fortnite, as the Movies-as-Games Era Arrives
SCOOP: I get the story behind the director’s ‘One Battle’ crossover as studios also flood Roblox — and Disney’s Epic Games investment starts to deliver
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Ghosts in the Balcony: A Cross-Country Trip to 58 Theaters Fighting to Survive
In the worst October for moviegoing since the ’90s, I crossed 20 states to hear the primal screen from people keeping film alive — even when Hollywood won’t
Crowd Pleaser tracks what’s connecting with audiences — and isn’t — offering insight into what’s breaking through, Gen Z’s influence on the market, and which way fans are moving.