Apocalypse Now

In the note Despite some of the drama going on this weekend at the box-office, we’re still going to be way ahead of the same weekend last year (Exorcist: Believer). We’ll take a step back for the next couple of weeks, mostly because of TAYLOR SWIFT last year, but once we get to the end of the month we should be competitive or better each weekend than last year. There’s something that Sports and Entertainment have in common, success can be an enemy. On the sports side, you will often see teams start a season with a hot streak (you’ll see this a lot in College Football), and then they start walking into games with an attitude of ‘we’re soooo good, just look at what we did the last couple of games’. But you still have to play the game, and there’s an old cliche that says ‘yesterday’s scores don’t win today’s ball games’. So that ‘hot’ team gets their heads kicked in by a team that is actually playing the game that day, instead of thinking their history will win it for them. But sports is really hard, and unless you play every game to win, you’ll get your head kicked in. As all of you know, Entertainment is hard too (and oddly enough can be just as physical, but that’s a different conversation), and I’m not sure there’s a harder sector than Theatrical. So unless you use all the tools and resources at your disposal, you’re probably not playing to win. And unfortunately success in this sector can lead to an attitude of ‘I know more than anyone, so I don’t need any of those pesky resources or tools’; and putting that bubble around you often leads to getting your head kicked in. We’ve been seeing this a lot lately, I’m sure a lot of smart people tried to get Kevin Costner to put Horizon in front of some fresh eyes before he locked it, and there were probably the same amount of knowledgeable industry experts that said to him ‘Cannes…..really?….why?’. But success feeds into the very human reaction of ‘yeah, I was told I was wrong before and I was right, so that must be the case every time’. Same with Francis Ford Coppola and Megalopolis, but there’s a key difference with that movie. He did put it in front of some fresh eyes when he showed it to studios for pickup, but instead of listening to what they thought and went back to work, he went straight to……Cannes. What’s super interesting about Coppola is that one of his greatest achievements benefited from putting another of his films in front of fresh eyes. Back in the late 70’s, before Joe Farrell revolutionized the screening process with curated audiences and test screenings, film makers would have ‘Major Studio Sneak Previews’; they would take out a full page ad (usually out of town) and screen the movie, followed by cards from the audience. Coppola screened Apocalypse Now at the Northpoint in San Francisco, and the reaction was on the low side of Megalopolis.

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