Second weekend of October 2020

We actually have something to talk about today, we have a wide film opening and the results look pretty promising. Basic logic tells you, if you don’t tell anyone about your movie, no one is going to show up. And although there has been a steady stream of films opening since we started putting things back together, no one has spent anything close to a normal amount (before the pandemic) on TV (yes, including Tenet). You will hear the battle cry of ‘Digital is the future, and that’s how we’re gonna get this open’, yeah…sure, no. Although it seems as if we would have figured this out by now, for some reason online marketing doesn’t get films open, TV marketing does. Unfortunately, unless we can get these major markets 100% open (NY, LA and SF), TV feels like mostly waste to the majors, and I can’t say I blame them. So we’re back to the chicken and egg thing. Anyway with the warmth and camaraderie of the gross reporting room where Sony and WB are sitting in opposite corners not talking to anyone, here’s my best take on the weekend grosses.

The War with Grandpa - This orphan from the Bob Weinstien Dimension days that’s been around for a while is opening today on 2200 screens; and with a RT score in the mid 20’s right now, you can see why it’s been around for a while. What’s interesting here is that the TV spend was very close to what we would see for a film like this pre Pandemic, and by far the biggest TV spend since the reopening (yes, including Tenet). In a normal (pre Pandemic) world, a film like this would open in the mid/mid-high single digits, and looking at the matinees now, if those major markets were 100% open it would be pretty close. Of course, those markets aren’t 100% open and because of the general state of exhibition, they’ve got about 800 runs less than they would normally have, so this will be less; and of course since this is a kid film, we’ll need to see the normal surge tomorrow and Sunday. However, just looking at the screen average right now for a 3rd tier kid film on a non holiday, it looks very normal.

Just like the last couple of weeks, the holdovers just keep going and going (granted, at a very low level). But Unhinged, New Mutants and Infidel, all films which in a normal marketplace would be long gone keep holding with 10-15% drops from last week.