The Expendables

In the note It’s going to be a pretty quiet weekend at the box-office. How quiet? Well, not quite 49r fans at So-Fi quiet; but this will be the 2nd weekend in a row without a new film breaking $15 million, and when the quiver of films at the multiplex doesn’t get replenished with strong grosses, the total weekend keeps leaking. Unfortunately, we’ll probably fall a little behind last year's total (Don’t Worry Darling, Avatar Re-Issue), and we’ll be less than half of 2019’s total (Downton Abbey, Ad Astra, Rambo Last Blood). However, next weekend brings 3 fresh titles that should put us well ahead of the same weekend last year and competitive with the same weekend in 2019. Obviously we’re all thinking positive thoughts about the settlement meetings going on as I write this. All over town, Distribution heads are waiting with held breath, and once this issue gets settled the release calendar will look as stable as the mini bar in Rudy Guliani’s hotel room for the next couple of months after the settlement. So let’s all keep the positive thoughts coming. With the films opening this and last week, we're reminded that theatrical is driven by fanship (more on this below). Star fanship, IP fanship, genre fanship, toy fanship, thermonuclear war fanship; in order to get someone to leave their home and go to the movies, they've got to have a personal connection to the movie. And that's why you pay for a star or an IP. But what's sad about theatrical today is the lack of 'idea' fanship. If you have a great idea or a great story to tell, it can't normally survive without attaching it to some built in fanship, usually it's star generated fanship. We used to have a market environment where you could take a star free movie that played through the roof (because it was a great idea or a great story), start it in a few theaters and let the word build over the next several weeks. But with the tick tock tick tock of windowing, the economics are not for the faint of heart (not that any other part of the theatrical business is for the faint of heart), so it's really unusual for a 'great idea' to make it today without an engine to make it work theatrically. So for all the jabber you hear these days about how the movie business is just recycling, that's why. You can't succeed without fanship. Anyway, with the accuracy and efficacy normally associated with New Jersey's anti-corruption laws, here are some thoughts on the weekend box-office. Expen4ables - This bth 4th installment in this series got freshened up with younger talent (and this is an IP that has far better value outside the US than it does here), but the IP starting running out of gas here with the 3rd film back in 2014, so even though they freshened this up with younger talent, it's still Expendables and it's a finite fan base. However, it still should be good enough to open at #1 in a soft market. The refresh of the cast seems to be having a different effect on the grosses today; an older skewing IP like this would probably have it’s hotspots in the fly over states, but the best grosses are on the coasts (especially LA), and that’s probably a result of the younger cast additions.

Where it turns up