Final weekend of July 2021

As I told you last week, we were in for a couple of bumpy weeks at the box office, nothing to do with variants or attendance issues, or the eroding of theatrical; it’s just the movies. I’m sure you’ll read the usual lazy headlines predicting the end of times based on this weekend, but none of these films were going to set the box office on fire in any marketplace (pre or post pandemic shutdown, with or without a streaming component). Of course you’ll hear ‘but it’s The Rock! + Disney + Rides’, blah blah blah, but you still have to create movie magic, and Disney Live Action is really good at that, but even they get a case of the twisties.

Let’s take this one issue at a time; as much as Dwayne Johnson has earned his place as a big movie star, he is not plug and play (remember Skyscraper?) and he doesn’t turn everything into box office gold just by saying yes. Of course, just like they used to say about Tupac after he died but kept releasing albums ‘we can’t miss you until you go away for a while’, Dwayne might need to take a little break. Oh wait, here comes Red Notice… Now let’s talk about the movie versions of Disney rides; only one meant anything at the box office. Pirates of the Caribbean burst onto the scene with the definition of movie magic, and when an alchemy of seasoned and creative talent taking some really big creative risks (including a breakout performance by Johnny Depp that if you believe the lore, Disney tried to shut down when they saw the early dailies), it played and played and played. 6 months after Pirates opened (and was probably still playing back then) Haunted Mansion opened….decent. Considering it was drafting off Pirates and Eddie Murphy was still a pretty big star, the $27 million it opened to was just okay. And then there’s Tomorrowland, which was…Tomorrowland (even back then they got the twisties every once in a while). Now comes Jungle Cruise, which in the big scheme of Disney rides isn’t that exciting to begin with, in fact (only those of you old enough to appreciate this will understand) it was only a D ticket to ride when it opened. So even Disneyland knew the IP was kind of a snore in the 60’s, otherwise it would have been an E ticket. Disney is smart, they’ve backstopped these films that they probably knew had theatrical issues with the PVOD releases or even just took them straight to Disney Max, because these films are pretty expensive and they won’t get called out on the numbers if they just dump expensive movies into the streaming black box (the non-Theatrical streamers do it on a weekly basis). That’s the great thing about streaming, no one knows what’s really happening number wise and it’s more than likely just a bunch of phoniness and inflated income; think of it as The Real Housewives of Streaming. However, because Jungle Cruise was an expensive film and it would have probably been a better move on Disney’s part to just put it on the platform, and even though the theatrical numbers are light, there’s only one thing the theatrical sector should say (to Disney); thank you. Next week should be better, but we really won’t be back as a business until October. Anyway based something I heard at a Russell Westbrook seminar entitled ‘Always pass the ball’, here’s some thoughts on the weekend box office.

Jungle Cruise - As the old saying goes as part of the Humpty Dumpty story, “all the king’s horses and all the king’s men”; my goodness did Disney leave it all on the field for this film. It didn’t matter where you were or what you were doing, you were crushed with Jungle Cruise, Jungle Cruise, Jungle Cruise. And in the old world of Disney live action, that would mean a really big opening, but as I pointed out above this is Humpty Dumpty we are talking about and you can only do so much. The numbers are pretty good, but as we’ve seen with these day and date PVOD releases, there’s a big difference between Thursday night (with a 1 day window) and then the rest of the weekend. And this will be interesting to see how this plays over the weekend; because the falloff seems to be getting worse and worse as the public realizes (because of shared passwords mostly) they can get this for free. For now let’s call this mid 20’s, but as we saw a couple of weeks ago when we thought a solid number on Black Widow was 90 and it ended up at 80, who knows?

The Green Knight - This started the day pretty strong but has looked super flat all day. In fact, this was almost double Stillwater at the beginning of the day and now it’s only about 10% better than it. Of course this might do much better tonight, but this might be a case of the fanboys getting all worked up but not being able to attract any of their friends to go with them. And maybe A24’s TV free marketing model might not work as well in this marketplace? This could go just about anywhere, but figure around 7 for the weekend.

Stillwater - Like I said with Green Knight, this started really soft but where Green Knight has been super flat, this has behaved (and grown) like a normal movie. What’s unusual here is that the middle of the country is performing like a $10 million weekend and the coasts are performing like a $4 million weekend, so yes, we’re still a divided country. This skews pretty old so I’m not sure it will have much growth, however these adult skewing films tend to go up nicely on Saturday. Figure it’s 6 or 7 for the weekend.