Gareth S. Young - - 1000 Trillion Suns

2015 had the second biggest summer box office haul of all time. With more competition than ever for good spots in the summer schedule, some valuable "tent pole" movies had to position themselves differently to avoid being smooshed. Here are my post-Summer blockbuster movie picks. Matt Damon gets stranded on the Red Planet The Martian   (10/2) What is it? Movie adaptation of the surprise best selling book about an Astronaut stranded on Mars who has only his brains and a black belt in snark to help him survive. What to expect You had me at Ridley Scott. Sir Ridley is still one of the best in the business and Matt Damon is perfectly cast as the titular Martian, Mark Watney. The Martian was my favorite book of 2014, and I've been really looking forward to seeing how it is adapted for the big screen...since Watney spends a large portion of the book on his own and it's very heavy on the science. The cast is stellar, the previews looks great, and, if the mov...

Every summer, the movie studios release what they call "tentpole" movies. Normally, these are big-budget, effects-driven franchise movies, designed to prop up the studios and make them their profits for the year. I call them programmed franchises because they're not acquired with one movie in mind. The philosophy from the start is to produce at least a trilogy. So much money is invested in these movies that failure can cripple a studio. Trivia Blast!! - New Line Cinema had to merge with its parent company Warner Bros after the (relative) failure of  The Golden Compass:   Budget: $180M  Box Office: $70M ( The Golden Compass  was intended to follow the trilogy of His Dark Materials books by Phillip Pullman) Jaws   Stephen Spielberg is sometimes credited with creating the first summer "Blockbuster" movie with  Jaws .  Jaws  was the first movie to be distributed with a "wide release," meaning that it opene...