The 'I'm back' weekend, April 2021

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 As anyone can see by venturing out in the world, it’s a different feeling
lately.  With Vaccinations becoming more of the norm rather than the
exception (except for those snowflake conservative males, who don’t seem to
remember that a core American value is ‘It’s not that difficult, just do
your part’), we’re seeing out of the house activities explode.  We’ve
already seen this in other countries (that got the virus to a manageable
place before us), moviegoing in theaters would eventually have that one
weekend where it announces ‘I’m back bitches’, and as a studio head in the
30’s said ’there’s nothing wrong with the business that a few good films
can’t solve’.  Ever since the business started opening back up at the end
of last Summer, we’ve been approaching each weekend with caution and
careful measurement, since consumer behavior was still sitting in a place
where we weren’t sure they were comfortable in a public setting (and of
course the marketplace was limited by closings and restrictions). As we
looked towards the future in the release schedule, we knew one of these
weekends would be the ‘announcement’ weekend; and until it happened and we
saw some true marketplace expansion, it wasn’t going to happen until it
happened.  Well it looks like this weekend is a massive step forward, not
just that we have a film that is going to over perform what we would expect
during the covid era (and is blowing away any formula we were using to
understand the discount you would apply off normal grosses because of
covid), but we have a 2nd film doing a ton of business as well.  When you
look at the grosses for both films you can’t see any difference between
today and a similar movie pre pandemic.
We also have the end of the awards season this Sunday, wait, what?
that’s happening this weekend?  So good luck to all the Emmy + nominees*;
but as a voter I’ll share something with you, it was much more challenging
this year to vote.  Although the rules state that any film that played for
one week in a theater was eligible (with a variance this year for films
that had a release date but decided not to put it in theaters), the last
couple of years it just didn’t feel right to vote for any film that didn’t
make a serious attempt at a theatrical release (obviously categories like
the shorts are a different scenario), even this year.  I felt bullied by
the attempt to be swayed by 9 figure awards dept budgets for TV Movies; and
I’m sure there are several of you who are reaping the rewards of those
budgets, but I really don’t want my inbox flooded 2 years from now with FYC
emails for Lifetime and Hallmark TV movies because someone decided that an
Oscar would boost their profile on Wall Street, so they spent some money
and rented a theater in Panorama City for a week.  The Oscars are for
Theatrical Movies, not for TV movies that showed in theaters only to
contend for Oscars (and beaten by Neon), instead of being shown in
theaters to be seen in theaters.  To be fair, they are just following the
rules, but there’s a difference between the letter of the rule and the
spirit of the rule.  And even though it’s a little snowflakey, I’m just
doing my part.
Anyway, based on something I heard in a chatroom that sells streamer
passwords for pennies on the dollar, here’s my best take on some films at
the box office this weekend.
Mortal Kombat - There’s a couple of pretty amazing things going on with
this movie. First the numbers, driven by pre-sales, are fantastic.
Assuming there is some downward effect with this being available online day
and date, these numbers show zero effect from consumer hesitancy due to
covid; and because we’re still not loaded up with a full quiver of movies
in the theaters, the limited capacity shouldn’t hold this down.   2nd,
because this film is based on a video game IP, and therefore appeals
primarily to gamers, just getting those gamers to put down the controller
and go to the theater (especially when they can multitask by playing and
watching at home at the same time) is an achievement.  Third, this is now 4
for 4 from WB since the beginning of the year (I’m leaving out Judas and
the Black Messiah because it was almost an art film, and it probably would
have struggled even in a normal pre pandemic world, so who knows), and they
are consistently outperforming high end expectations.  Lastly, something
interesting happened with this film on Tuesday.  WB released the first 7
minutes of this film as a quasi ’trailer’, and that might have changed
everything this weekend.  If the materials for a movie do their job, they
leave you saying ‘I want to know what happens next’, which should move you
from intent to purchase to an actual purchase.  One of the challenges for
video game IP’s is that ever since video games became narrative, the gamer
was able to control a better narrative at home, and we’ve never been able
to convince them that a filmmaker’s narrative was superior.  It’s entirely
possible that by chumming the waters with that first part of the movie,
they got the gamers off the fence by selling them on a better theatrical
storytelling experience.  So what’s it gonna do this weekend?  That’s a
tricky question right now, the pre-sales were awesome but they’re not
moving very much right now and it’s pretty flat. So we might see a ‘one day
wonder’ here or it might pick up later tonight and for the rest of the
weekend.  I can’t see a path right now where this isn’t in the mid teens
even if it completely falls apart after today, and if it plays more like a
normal film it should be well into the 20’s. But even in the lower
scenario, this is way over where covid marketplace models put it.  Of
course, we always talked about consumers being shot out of a cannon (and
everything over performed) once they felt okay to go out (and that might be
what we’re seeing here), but it doesn’t take away the courage of a studio
to be the ones who were there to capture it.  Especially since a lot of
them ran away.
Demon Slayer the Movie: Mugen Train - Clearly some great things happening
this weekend and one of them is this movie.  Up till this point, the over
performance of (mostly WB) films has been when a single film has opened on
a weekend, and had pretty much the whole market to itself.  Now we have two
movies that are both bringing in pre pandemic sized (appropriate to the
film) crowds.  This Anime monster has already grossed insane amounts of
money internationally, and has been one of the beacons of hope that
audiences will come back to theaters when you give them product they want
to see.  Every once in a while these Anime movies come along and do some
business, we saw that happen in Jan ’19 with Dragon Ball: Super Broly, so
clearly whey they hit, they hit big.  Assuming this plays similar to Super
Broly, it would end up just short or barely into the teens.  But if it
holds up at all tomorrow and Sunday, it will get into the mid teens.
However, one thing that was super depressing this week; seeing some trade
articles saying that WB fucked up by moving back a week to give Godzilla
some more breathing room and shot themselves in the foot by underestimating
this movie.  No no no no, that’s just a dumb opinion, just STFU.  This
audience for Anime is super specific and anyone who thinks there was some
sort of massive overlap between this audience and the audience for Mortal
Kombat is just guessing.  The only thing these two audiences have in common
is that they are both super pale from spending most of their life in their
parents basements, and they both get sunburns from fluorescent lightbulbs,
but they’re activities in that basement aren’t similar. And WB really
fucked up how?  By blowing away all expectations on Mortal
Kombat…uh-huh…please…..again…STFU.
*Together Together *- Bleecker Street went 600 runs on this Ed Helms Rom
com, and it’s looking quite a bit better than we’ve seen from these upscale
films during the covid era, mostly because we’ve got LA, NY and SF back
online.  Looks like they could get around 500k for the weekend.
One more aspect of the weekend.  With two films coming in and doing
terrific business, we would want to see the holdovers performing normally,
that would show a market expansion.  The holdovers look really good, and
they actually look a little better than good.  Although Godzilla is down
50%, Raya, Unholy and Nobody all are having very slight drops today.
However, if both of the new films continue to do well, you might see some
of the holdovers showtimes magically disappear to create more seating
inventory for the new films.  Not the worst thing.
*If you win, I’m sure all your friends outside the business will think it’s
terrific, but everyone in the business will refer to you as an ‘Oscar
winner’ using their fingers for air quotes when you’re not there.