Third weekend of October 2019

I hate to sound like a broken record, but we’ll be down a decent amount from the same weekend last year, mostly because the reboot of Halloween was so massive. There seems to be a new trend in School Holiday’s, apparently we now have a Fall Break (apparently instead of a week it’s a couple of days, usually at the end of the week), so there’s a very spring like 18% of K-12 out of school today. So, based on something I heard at a Tulsi Gabbard Vodka themed Luau, here’s my best take on the weekend Boxoffice.

#1 *Maleficent: Mistress of Evil *- Sequels (non-Marvel division) are a tough racket these days; gone are the days you used to just remake the movie, throw a Roman numeral on the end of the title and reap the 30% increase in opening weekend. Of course these days it doesn’t help when the sequel is based on a film that people liked but didn’t love, so you can’t quite say that this is a sequel no one asked for (cough, Rambo, cough). But it’s certainly a sequel that when you asked the fans if they wanted another one they shrugged and said…. sure. The big question looking forward to the rest of the weekend is how sticky this is for adult audiences and how much it bounces tomorrow with the kids. If it plays okay to both, it’s mid 30’s but if they get a lift from either the kids tomorrow or the adults tonight, they’ll get a little more.

#2 Joker - Doesn’t look nearly as good as last week, plus they got a tiny lift last Sunday since a lot of the Northeast still takes off Columbus Day/Indigenous People’s day the second Monday in October. Figure it’s down 50% for a weekend in the high 20’s.

#3 *Zombieland 2: Double Tap *- Speaking of sequels, here’s another sequel based on a liked film from the era of wine and roses (pre-Netfilx). Unlike Maleficent, in this case it seems like the critics didn’t have much a of a problem with the film and were actually kinda positive, which makes things much easier. Right now it looks like it’s going to gross about the same this weekend as the first film, about $25 million. Considering the environment we’re in right now, that’s a huge win.

Parasite- Expanded to 33 runs today and still looks pretty strong. The runs from last week are only down about 50% right now, and that is a very good sign for longevity. I wouldn’t be surprised if this ended up with another eye opening psa, probably 40k or so.

*JoJo Rabbit *- Opened Exclusive in the classic 4 in NY/LA plus a 5th run in Brooklyn and it’s very strong. For some reason the Landmark and the Union Sq are about half the other runs right now, but this should end up with a psa of about 70k.

The Lighthouse - Opened exclusively in 8 runs in NY/LA/SF/DC and Boston. They’ve got a Q and A tonight at the Dome in Hollywood, so that theater is way ahead of the rest of the theaters, but overall the grosses are very good. Figure a psa of about 30-35k.