Crowd Pleaser
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‘The Odyssey’ Is Sold Out Through August — and Theaters Fear an IMAX Trap
The premium-format boom is minting money — and convincing audiences that regular screens aren’t worth the trip
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The Video Game IP Boom Is About to Hit the Wall
More than half the 50 best-selling franchises are taken. What’s left — and changing habits — is worse than Hollywood thinks
Latest Crowd Pleaser stories
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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
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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
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.