First weekend of November 2019

We had a robust slate of films to begin November last year (Bohemian Rhapsody, Nutcracker and Nobody’s Fool) and this year it’s not even close. So it looks like we’ll be down from last year by a big percentage, probably in the 30% range. Only one new film is going more than 2000 theaters this week and that’s Terminator Dark Fate. Unfortunately, just like It Chapter 2, Rambo Last Blood, Gemini Man and Maleficent; it’s one more film that had a campaign that’s as good as you can ask for but will be looked at as a disappointment because tracking put out numbers that were way too high (more on this below). So with the accuracy of NRG’s 4 week out numbers on It Chapter 2, Rambo Last Blood,* Gemini Man*, Maleficent and Terminator Dark Fate (that all magically go down the day before release when they may or may not be getting a peek at pre sales), here’s my best take on the weekend box-office.

#1 Terminator Dark Fate - By now you’ve probably read in the trades that this is not that great, the bad news is it might be a little worse than you’re reading. However, any of you who would instinctively start pointing the finger at Marketing, don’t you even. In this latest remake chapter in the series, they decided to forgo the time tested high wattage Star Power of Emilia Clarke and Jai Courtney and instead went old school and put Linda and Arnold up front. Unfortunately, the nostalgia of that idea will only get you so far, since outside of a V.O. role in Terminator Salvation, Linda hasn’t really done anything substantial for 21 years. And Arnold, well, you know. This almost feels like there was a ‘put’ picture deal in Linda’s divorce to Cameron that had a deadline on it. So when you look at the package of this film, it’s kind of a head scratcher, especially at the number it got made for. And although (again) Paramount Marketing did as good a job on the campaign as one could ask for, with Arnold and Linda up front, this film skews old AF. So right now this film is looking like it’s in line with what it did last night for the previews, figure it’s in the mid 20’s for the weekend. Now back to the tracking rant I started in the prologue. When this came on tracking 4 weeks ago the forecasts were in the mid 40’s (magically it dropped to the mid 30’s yesterday) and unfortunately this is becoming the rule rather than the exception. So, the question is: since there are several poll based tracking services out there who don’t charge for their data, and the company that does charge has data that’s about as hard to get as the AOL free trial disks and is just as relevant today, why is anyone paying those 6 and 7 figure sums for poll based tracking anymore?

#2 The Joker - With the softness of the new films, it’s pretty normal that the WOM holdovers to rise up. Joker looks terrific right now, figure it’s off only about 30% for the weekend for a gross of about $13 million.

#3 Maleficent: Mistress of Evil - Looks a little better than a normal 3rd weekend (once again, when the new films falter, the holdovers pick up the slack), so figure down 45% for $10 or $11 million.

#4 *Harriet *- On these historical biopics (especially the more serious ones like this that can easily feel like school work), the smarter marketing departments do a ton of group pre sales to schools, churches, etc. Focus did an excellent job of that, and this film has some very solid numbers in so far. The question though is what’s behind it, this could behave like a normal film and grow tonight and all weekend or they could have their best day today. Because I don’t have access to that data, I’ll give a wide range here and say it’s somewhere between $7 and $10 million for the weekend.

Motherless Brooklyn - Went semi wide (1300 runs) and it’s about the same as some other sophisticated adult skewing films. Looking inside the numbers it’s much better on the coasts and in the more sophisticated situations than deeper into the burbs, but figure it ends up in the $3 to $4 million range for the weekend.

Arctic Dogs - Looks the low side of really soft, figure $2 million for the weekend.

The Irishman - Of course I don’t have grosses on this, just like their TV/online viewing numbers they don’t report theatrical. But poking around the interwebs (mostly because as a card carrying Scorsese fan boy, I wondered how tough it would be to go to this weekend), you can look at the seating charts for some of these theaters and see how it’s doing. They went 3 theaters in NY (IFC, Landmark 57 and the Belasco) and 5 theaters in LA (Monica, Landmark, The Village, The Egyptian and the Alamo Drafthouse DTLA); and it’s really a tale of two cities. The NY theaters all seem to be sold out, however both the Landmark and the IFC have pretty small capacities. And I’ve got to give kudos to the Belasco’s online ticketing system; for anyone looking to buy tickets it’s a great history lesson in how difficult it was in the mid 90’s to find and order a pay per view movie on any cable/satellite system (who was it again that came in and revolutionized that, oh yeah, it was Netflix). LA is a different story, and that may have something to do with having a lot more seats here, but (as of this writing) not a lot is sold out right now (although some are mostly full), which I found very surprising. This film is rolling out slowly to other markets over the next couple of weeks, and it will be interesting to see how those markets perform; there really wasn’t a lot of the traditional push you would see for a normal theatrical release here, and maybe that’s the whole point it’s all about the drop date on Netflix. But with all the talk these days about breaking the traditional windows and making everything day and date (and this possibly being the best film of the year), it seemed like there was an opportunity here to show both markets could exist side by side; but without a proper push to say ’this is a theatrical film’ this doesn’t look like it’s going to change any minds. It’s clearly a win for the art of movies that Netflix has the model to make films like this, but I still wonder; with a film like this that’s of the highest quality and more than likely will have sensational word of mouth, would a traditional wide release with traditional marketing support and traditional windowing have a greater value once it got on the mothership’s platform? Because of their treasure trove of data, a company like Netflix is uniquely qualified to understand if that’s a valid plan, it would have been interesting to see.