Fourth weekend of August 2022
It’s a pretty light weekend for new films at the box-office but the weekend before Labor Day has a history of light weekends. During the 5 years before the pandemic, 2 of the 5 years had similar gross totals for the new films, so even though this weekend looks kinda sucky, it’s a sucky kind of weekend. Over half of both K-12 and College students are back as of today, so we’ll continue to see Friday and Sunday get softer.
It’s interesting to see how each company is evolving on their release strategies as we see what optimizes a film’s revenue streams. WB picked a few lanes this week and made it clear that the quality of the product will dictate where it’s going to go first, which (if the deal the studio has with the filmmakers allows it) seems like the most logical way to take advantage of the current methods to distribute content. Universal on the other hand doesn’t seem to grasp the idea that consumers will pay more for content if you make them pay more; but instead decided to take the finale for Halloween (the current variant anyway) day and date, even though going exclusive to theatrical for 2 weeks and then dropping it on the platform for Halloween weekend seems like it’s the best of both worlds. But maybe this is more of an indication that they’re falling behind with Peacock, and this just showed their hand. Of course, then there’s Netflix, who doesn’t pick any lanes and seems to think it’s fine to put the same marketing muscle behind all their films, and that might be why a $5 million movie is kicking the ass of the $200 million movie on their platform. This attitude towards competent marketing seems to apply to the series world as well, and It will be interesting to see how Lord of the Rings stacks up viewership wise to last weekend’s debut of House of Dragons. The key aspect here is that on one hand you have a veteran marketing department that knows how to do things (HBO) and on the other hand you have a streamer, and just like the other streamers the higher ups have contempt for marketing departments.
Anyway, with the expected accuracy of Aaron Donald’s helmet, here are some thoughts on the weekend box office.
The Invitation - This is a pretty typical film for this weekend, a genre film that isn’t great (based on the current RT and exit scores), but you find a gap in the release schedule and drop it in. Since more than half of students are back in school, and this is a PG 13 film, it should bounce pretty good tonight, and if it does it should end up around $8 million for the weekend. However, the exits aren’t very good so far and word of mouth from the preview shows last night might hold it down a little lower.
Bullet Train - Looks pretty stable today, figure a drop of about 35% for a weekend in the mid 5’s.
Beast - Looks iffy today, down 60% for a weekend in the mid 4’s.
Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero - Um, I mentioned last week that these Anime films tend to be a tad front loaded, but this is falling apart faster than a Miami Beach Condo with a leaky pool. It’s entirely possible that this will drop 80% this weekend and will probably finish the weekend with a gross around $4 million.
*Three Thousand Years of Longing *- Went 2400 theaters this week and as is with most of these upscale dramas, the upscale coastal theaters are leading the charge. Looks like a weekend of about $3 million.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story - Speaking of gaps in the release schedule, they reissued this in IMAX theaters (about 300 runs) and the grosses are pretty good. This might be a one day wonder but if it plays anything close to a normal release it should end up with a psa of $7k or so, not bad at all.
Breaking - Went 900 theaters and it’s not good at all, but maybe a little better on the east coast than the rest of the country. Maybe $800k for the weekend.