The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1

In the note And here we are, we finally got to Glicked tm weekend. And it looks like it’s going to deliver at a level that might put us in the running for biggest weekend before Thanksgiving ever, and as a bonus (with Moana 2 coming in next Wednesday) we're in the game to set a new Thanksgiving weekend record as well. The combination of this weekend being at or near record setting levels, and last year (this was Thanksgiving weekend last year) being pretty sucky (Napoleon, Wish), we’ll either double or get close to doubling last year's weekend total. The same should hold for Thanksgiving weekend, even though last year it was the weekend after Thanksgiving (which is normally very quiet), we had a couple of bigger than normal films for that weekend in Renaissance: A Film by Beyonce and Godzilla: Minus One. So we’re gonna start chipping away at the deficit from last year really quickly. I don’t see a weekend for the rest of the year where we’re going to be behind last year; we’ve got the same number of wide releases (10), but the films are considerably bigger this year and that’s a great step towards getting back to normal. Today we’re going to talk about release dates, and how (like a lot of aspects of this business, or any business for that matter) it’s sometimes difficult to take a step back and look at what’s actually the best business decision, because the idea of who wins the short term battle doesn’t always mean you won the war. Over and over again we’ve had situations where two films end up on the same release date that would probably be better off if they were on separate days. You can go way way back to crazy examples like The Empire Strikes Back and The Shining both opened on the same day. There was The Love Guru vs Get Smart in 2008 or Fast & Furious 6 vs Hangover 3 in 2013, the list goes on and on. But Glicked tm almost didn’t happen because both Wicked and Moana 2 were both originally supposed to open next Wednesday. How did that happen? Wicked was originally dated for Christmas this year, but in March 2023 it moved to the day before Thanksgiving. Disney (as many studios do) had a ‘placeholder’ on the same date as Disney Untitled Animation, which would follow the rich history Disney has had on that date (Frozen, Tangled, Coco, Moana, etc). Considering when Universal placed Wicked there, Disney animation was going through a rough patch and the last 3 films on that date were Encanto, Strange World and Wish; there was nothing to be afraid of competition wise. But in February this year Disney saw what they had in the Disney + bound Moana 2, decided to upgrade it to a theatrical release and dated it for next Wednesday. Here’s where it gets dicey, and you can call this by any non-PC name you want (schoolyard shoving match, dick measuring contest, Mexican standoff, etc); they both said ’the other film should move because we were here first’. And you can see how they both had a point, Wicked moved there because sometimes those ‘placeholders’ just go away, and until there’s a real movie there, why not go there? Disney had a point because ’they always deliver a movie there’, so we ended up with 5 months of ’no, they’re the asshole’. And here’s where the idea of winning a battle and winning a war come into play. You have two movies on the same date, and if you looked at a Venn Diagram for the two audience makeups, it would pretty much just be one circle, with an edge towards Disney’s Animation audience as opposed to Wicked's someone finite Musical Theater audience. While both studios were sitting in opposite corners of the day before Thanksgiving room with their arms folded, there was this big shiny beacon of light next door coming from the weekend before Thanksgiving, where little ol’ Gladiator II was sitting there all by it’s lonesome self, and either Wicked or Moana 2 could move there and not really have much of an effect on it, and would have a much better competitive landscape without the other film on the same date. And as you’ve seen with BarbenHeimer and now Glicked tm, maybe the whole is bigger than the sum of the parts if one moved there? But there’s a key fact that was being overlooked while both studios stewed and said ‘f them’, Paramount was there because they were smart enough to know the weekend before Thanksgiving is the best release date of November (especially when the calendar sets up the way it did this year), and it’s a far better release date than the day before Thanksgiving; and neither studio wanted it. Let’s take a look at the data, here are the five biggest openings on the weekend before Thanksgiving: - Hunger Games - Catching Fire $158 million - Twilight Saga - New Moon $143 million - Twilight Saga - Breaking Dawn Part II $141 million - Twilight Saga Breaking Dawn Part I $138 million - Frozen 2 $130 million Pretty impressive, right? Here are the top 5 (3 day grosses) for opening the day before Thanksgiving: - Frozen $67 million - Moana $57 million - Ralph Breaks the Internet $57 million - Coco $51 million - Tangled $49 million. What is especially compelling is if you look at the insanely high quality (combined with Disney’s marketing prowess) of those day before Thanksgiving openings, they all live in the mid 8 figure range, but the films opening the weekend before go well into 9 figures.

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1

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