Welcome to BigScreenBiz.com

http://www.imdb.com/
The Internet Movie Database has information an almost every film you can imagine. It is owned by Amazon.com.
http://movies.yahoo.com/movies/
Yahoo has better capsule reviews and more photos than IMBD.
http://www.aint-it-cool-news.com/
Harry Knowls has an ireverent style for his reviews and frequently has information on films before the release date.
http://filmjournal.com/
Good source for running times, picture and sound formats.
http://www.mrqe.com/
Movie Review Quiry Engine lists all review available on the web for a particular title.
http://www.filmratings.com/
This is the MPAA's site that lists the ratings and the reasons behind the ratings.
http://www.roughcut.com/
The Hot Button has timely news on films and festivals.
http://www.film-tech.com/
This projectionist run site has a great forum and a photo page par excelance. Great technical information and lots of equipment manuals.
http://www.landmarktheatres.com/Index.htm
The nations largest art cinema chain has the best capsule reviews of upcoming art releases.
http://www.boxofficeguru.com/
Good for weekend numbers and statistics.
http://www.showbizdata.com/
Realy good for independent film, numbers and statistics.
http://www.suntimes.com/index/ebert1.html
Since our paper uses Ebert the most, it is nice to read up on his site first.
http://www.laemmle.com/
L.A.'s premier art house chain.
http://boxoffice.com/
Exhibitors phone directory.
http://www.variety.com/
Industry News.

This is great. Nice to have them all in one place. Do you know if any of them or others post over night grosses. I think EDI does but they cost an arm and a leg to get them. I would love to know if Dalmatians is as disappointing everywhere else as it is here.

Box Office Guru posts weekend numbers on Saturday.

"Disney's other holiday offering, the family comedy 102 Dalmatians, premiered on Wednesday with $2.3M and rose 69% on Thursday to $3.9M, according to early studio estimates. The single-day gross figures for the Glenn Close family film were down 51% and 43%, respectively, from 1996's predecessor 101 Dalmatians which also launched over Thanksgiving weekend. With $6.2M in two days, 102 Dalmatians hopes to finish in third place this weekend and may take in $20-25M over the five-day holiday session."



[This message has been edited by Large (edited November 24, 2000).]

We've got about 60% of these on our links page and some are truly extrordinary: IMDB is top of the world, Film-Tech (though I do have a searing sensation from a bad yet innocent blunder) is great, and Aint-it-cool news has saved me on occasion from booking bad pictures and passing up good ones. FI I was going to pass on Charlie's Angels but their rave saved me and they were right. Etc/etc. if you can't go to screenings: they do. I'll add a bunch of these to our links page, Merci Mssr. Largeian.

As for grosses! I have inked a deal with EDI's competition; Exhibitor Relations Company to e-mail out their weekend grosses (normally a 40.00 per week service!) for free to all of you and if I can get my web guys to finish the work it will be up soon. Stay tuned!

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Mike Hurley
www.bigscreenbiz.com

Overnight grosses are generally available for the top 10 - 20 films at [url=http://www.showbizdata.com.]www.showbizdata.com.[/url]

On the main page, which you can view for free they post the top 10 overnight. For $29.95 per month you can subscribe to the site and get much more indepth info out of it. (By the way they are having a special on subscriptions right now, just visit the site and the special deal thing pops up).

Caveat - they sometimes miss days in posting the dailies - for instance yesterday (sunday) the overnights were still from the previous Tuesday. Seems they are very much a 9 t0 5 organization that takes all major and minor holidays off - which is very weird considering the industry they serve.

Good thing - if you do independent/art/foreign films, the indies in release section is quite helpful as you can access a breakdown of the week by week grosses and avg. per engagement of a particular title. I find this data useful in looking at smaller films for our calendared screen. Note that the early weeks of any film tend to skew towards the major markets, so be sure you don't factor in the NYC/LA grosses as they are always much higher than the smaller markets.

For a timely beat on the weekend at hand, Box Office Guru's Saturday and Sunday updates are quite helpful.

Hope this helps.