Podcast Time!

Although this is a new feature to ReelViews, it's not "new" in a general sense.  For several years now, I have been a regular on Sohaib Awan's Fictional Frontiers program. Sohaib and I have engaged in a number of spirited discussions about genre content in general and movies in particular. My appearances on Fictional Frontiers have been for both the weekly radio program and the related podcasts. My contributions aren't merely in the nature of reviews, however. Although I usually start talking about a particular film, it doesn't take much to send me spinning off topic. As a result, many of my appearances turn into stream-of-consciousness sessions. For those who lament the recent lack of ReelThoughts, here's the antidote. I don't self-censor for these podcasts so, although I don't set out to be controversial, some of what I say may cause some raised eyebrows.

The podcasts will be posted to ReelThoughts as they become available. In general, I appear on Fictional Frontiers about once every 2-3 weeks, depending on scheduling. The podcasts often run longer than the radio broadcasts so there's often more content here than in the over-the-air broadcasts.

This particular edition starts out with me talking about Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2. In addition to providing some thoughts about the movie, I ruminated about a recent trend - comic book movies, although doing well at the box office, not reaching prognosticator's expectations.  Guardians 2, for example, was forecast by Box Office Mojo to gross $158M during its opening weekend. The actual was about $146M.  That's obviously still a good number but it's about 8% below what was expected. (The second weekend mirrored this - forecast of $70M, actual $63M.) This has been a consistent trend with comic book movies, so the question is: Bad forecasting or a trend? In the podcast, I speculate about this and offer some possible reasons for it.

My thanks to Fictional Frontiers for providing this.

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