Ep. 74 - ‘F1’ Blue-Shells 'M3GAN 2.0' as 'Elio' Slips on Its Own Banana Peel

The Box Office Podcast

Ep. 74 - ‘F1’ Blue-Shells Blumhouse as Pixar Slips on Its Own Banana Peel

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Ep. 74 - ‘F1’ Blue-Shells Blumhouse as Pixar Slips on Its Own Banana Peel

The trio wonders if Brad Pitt's checkered-flag finish will encourage Apple to recommit to theaters while mourning both Blumhouse and Pixar's self-inflicted wounds.

Scott Mendelson

Jul 03, 2025

Transcript

The good news is that F1, whether it counts as an original movie or, as Jeremy Fuster argues, closer to a “new to cinema IP,” just nabbed a big win for Apple’s bumpy theatrical ambitions.
The bad news is that M3GAN 2.0 continued Blumhouse’s less-than-stellar track record with sequels, which was less of an issue a generation ago (or even a few years ago) when their originals and non-sequels were kicking ass on the regular.
And the truly ugly news drops at around the hour-mark as Lisa Laman reads as-it-drops reporting confirming all our worst fears about why Pixar’s Elio was delayed and what was changed from the allegedly nearly finished initial cut.

In terms of the written word…

Scott Mendelson wonders out loud whether Warner Bros. can, this time for real, actually, become a big-deal contender in the realm of theatrical animated movies.
Jeremy Fuster provided another in-depth update on the recently passed $750 million tax credit legislation aimed at bringing film and TV production back to California.
Lisa Laman discusses how Michael Bay’s potential return to Transformers will signal that the theatrical incarnation of the property remains in neutral, and why bringing back the original director won’t save a franchise that commercially peaked amid specific circumstances well over a decade ago.
Ryan Scott’s latest “Tales from the Box Office” details the 20th anniversary of Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds, a film that was greatly overshadowed by Tom Cruise’s publicity-specific melodramas even as it became, at the time, the star’s biggest domestic ($234 million) and global ($608 million) grosser ever.

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