The California reopening, March 2021
Congratulations to all the Emmy + Oscar Nominees. Normally we would see a big bounce this weekend at the box-office for all the newly minted nominated films (and some of them are up substantially today); but very few of them really positioned themselves as a theatrical proposition, so the grosses are very low. However, the entire film industry should give a Laurel, and hardy Paul Hollywood handshake to the Southern California theaters being back online. They are flexing their (sorely missed) box-office muscles today, and for example, as of this writing 7 of the top 10 grosses on Raya and the Last Dragon are in the Los Angeles DMA. And there are a couple of IMAX grosses on Tenet in LA that are pretty decent as well. In fact, with the NYC theaters open (for the most part), most of California being open plus a couple of major markets on Spring break, only 2 of the top 10 films on the gross sheet are down from last Friday. So with better times coming sooner than later (more than likely a good deal of the major markets in California including the LA, Orange and Bay Area County theaters should be at 50% capacity weekend after next), we should be at a place where the theatrical infrastructure should support a major film campaign. Hopefully soon we’ll think of the Covid year as painful, boring and a lot of extra work that ended up as a big shrug, kind of like Mank.
The Courier - This well reviewed Spy thriller from Roadside looks pretty good right now, and looks a lot like The Marksman looked a couple of months ago. There are two interesting things with this film. First, the theaters at the top of the gross sheet (for a film like this that should play upscale) aren’t the newly opened theaters in NY and LA, they’re in places that have been open for quite a while; Utah, Texas, Tennessee and Florida. So we’ll need a couple of weeks in the NY and California markets to get back in the swing of things. Second, just like The Marksman, it looks like this film will come close to grossing their TV spend in the first 3 days of release, and without knowing the other financial elements of either film, that doesn’t sound terrible. Since this film only has 2/3 of the runs that The Marksman had, figure it ends up in the low mid $2 million range.
City of Lies - This fresh off the shelf release opened in about 500 runs and doesn’t look like anything special. Figure this ends up at a couple hundred grand.