The reopening, August 2020

Hello Everybody! Did you miss me? I missed all of you. The biggest fear in sending this report is that I’m hoping I don’t get many bounce backs, hopefully none of you have been forced to move on, and I hope all of you are safe. We’ve got our first wide release today, and I think all of us need to extend a hearty Paul Hollywood handshake to our heroes at Solstice Films. The grosses so far have some good news, there are some theaters that look pretty good, and the pre-sales look robust; so it looks like there was a pent up desire to get back to the cinema. Both films (Unhinged and Sponge Bob) that went last week in Canada are holding up pretty nicely in their 2nd weekend as well. As far as what’s open today here in the US, clearly we’re missing a bunch of top grossing DMA’s including NY, LA and SF, so as a rule of thumb, figure this weekend is about 50% of the grossing potential of what we would see pre Covid. We’ll have to see how that grows over the next couple of weeks. Considering the fragmented idiots at NATO have resembled a tarantula with a nervous disorder since this all began, it’s (finally) comforting to see today’s press release about ’Safe Cinema’, and we should all hope it will help to get all the theaters open. So, with the same accuracy and dependability of anything the MAGA crowd believes in, here’s my best take on the weekend box-office.

Karen v. Karen Unhinged - As I mentioned above, the pre-sales for this were pretty good, there are some decent numbers in the core Red State territories. The problem is it’s not growing very much. Depending on how front loaded this is, it’s looking like somewhere in the $3.5 to $4 million range, and that’s on about 1900 screens. But once again, a big thank you to Solstice Films for leading us back.

Words on Bathroom Walls - This well reviewed gem (that you probably never heard of, but it’s certainly worth your time to watch), opened today on about 900 runs supported by a small but targeted TV campaign. Unfortunately, a lot of the markets that this film would have thrived in are still closed, so it just looks fair today. Hopefully, with not much film coming in behind it, the exhibitors will give it a chance to grow. For now, figure it’s in the 600-800k range for the weekend.

Tulsa - Opened today on 230 screens. Figure about $100k for the weekend.

Tesla - Opened today on about 100 screens. Figure about $40k for the weekend.