Fourth weekend of June 2021
As you may have heard we have a really big movie this weekend, and as far as I can tell, the trades haven’t fucked it up by publishing numbers that were way out of line. Of course, Universal probably just did a good job of keeping a (necessary) lid on them. I was a little concerned about this film (expectations wise) because going back to early 2020 when this film was opening in April 2020 (and then for a quick cup of coffee, May 2020) I kept hearing $100 million, $100 million, $100 million. Obviously that was just the usual industry laziness, and even though a couple of the editions in this series have reached those lofty heights; apparently they didn’t notice this film was new and not so improved with 100% less Dwayne Johnson, and (curiously) the materials also had 100% less villain, mission or stakes. However, (villain wise) after going with Idris Elba in Hobbs & Shaw, where is there to go but down; so maybe they just didn’t have the elements. But I don’t mean to disparage anything Universal did on this film, and they marketed the hell out of this, putting their money on the line with a post Covid high marketing spend. The bright spot here is that this is going to be very good this weekend and at this point I can’t find much difference between the market today and the market pre Covid.
F9: The Fast Saga - Looking terrific so far, well above anything we’ve seen since the shutdown last year. The key aspect of this film is how it grows later tonight. Over the last couple of months, films like Godzilla v Kong, Mortal Kombat, Conjuring, *A Quiet Place II, *etc started the day with massive numbers and then were pretty flat the rest of the day. Talking to some people who went during those opening weekends (or tried to go), the capacity caps and social distancing policies seemed to make it difficult to get a ticket later in the evening; so the robust presales might mean that moviegoers are guarding against either being frozen out of a showing, or (since most of these major market theaters are reserved seats now) when they went to go buy a ticket in online they didn’t want to sit in the front couple of rows. So after they got burned once, they bought early the next time so they could make sure and get the seats and showings they wanted; and we might have seen a behavioral shift in consumer purchase cadence. You might say ‘but what about states like Florida and Texas, they were open a long time ago?’ The circuits still were distancing movie goers on a National basis and the capacities were still reduced, and they were waiting for California to get to June 15th. F9 is the first film of size since capacities are back to normal, and although we’re still seeing the same hour to hour growth in the numbers as the last couple of weeks, hopefully that will change later tonight because of the extra capacity. Considering things might have changed a little (consumer behavior wise) over the last couple of weeks, it’s a little difficult to say with confidence where this is going, but at this point it looks solidly in the 60’s with a decent shot at 70 if we get more growth tonight than we’ve seen over the past couple of weeks. On the flip side the history of this series says you don’t want to stand underneath it on Saturday, cause they tend to be kind of front loaded. Either way this is terrific, and considering this edition is missing a few elements from the previous more successful films, it’s right where it should be.
*A Quiet Place Part II *- Still chugging along (quietly), looks down about 45% for a weekend of about $5 million.
The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard - Looks fairly normal for a 2nd weekend, but they had a massive Father’s Day driven Sunday last week that they’ll have a big drop on Sunday this weekend. Figure it’s down 60% for a weekend in the mid 4’s.
Peter Rabbit 2 The Runaway - In another sign the market is getting back to normal, when you have the only kids film (or the only Comedy) in the marketplace, your holdover weekends over perform. This is certainly following that rule, and if they didn’t have the same Sunday drop from Father’s Day last week that all the holdovers are going to have, the drop here would be around 25%. Even with the Sunday drop, it’s looking like an excellent -35% drop for a weekend of about $4 million.
I Carry You With Me - Opened 4 theaters in NY/LA and other than a really big number in the Angelika NYC (and we might be back to filmmaker Q & A’s that drive the big limited grosses, I don’t know if that’s true though), there’s very little going on here.