Third weekend of September 2022

Looking at the ratings for Monday’s Emmy broadcast, it seems like the streamers have fragmented that sector too, so no one will tune in to root for their favorite show. Although I’m sure both Coda and Power of the Dog would have done just fine there, because that’s where they belonged.

We’re beginning to get some normal Fall films this week, and the titles we’ll see over the next month or two are pretty typical of what September and October bring.

Anyway, with the expected accuracy of a 9th inning 2 out Fastball from Craig Kimbrell, here are some thoughts on the weekend box-office.

The Woman King - I’m going to introduce you to a new ‘operator-ism’ this week, it’s called the ‘Bubble Wrap Movie’; movies that are really hard to open and if you’re not careful you’ll cut yourself. The Woman King has some amazing characteristics; first of all it’s got one of the best Actors working today in Oscar Winner Viola Davis. Second, it’s clearly a good movie and as of this writing the Rotten Tomatoes score is 95%. Third, it was supported by a robust and creative campaign from Sony Marketing. So why is it a Bubble Wrap Movie (BRM)? As great as Viola Davis is as an actor, she doesn’t have a history of action movies. In fact she hasn’t been asked to be the commercial engine on any theatrical movie yet, so the match of the actor to the genre doesn’t make sense to an audience, and audiences know her as a supporting character instead of a lead. It’s like a Michael Bay action film starring Meryl Streep as the action hero; it doesn’t matter how great it is, it’s just really hard to sell that to an audience. Look what happened to West Side Story, that was a classic BRM. As great as Spielberg’s following is, doing a Musical didn’t make any sense to an audience because it’s not what he normally does, so it was really tough to open. So all that being said, this movie looks like it connected amazingly well to an audience, but most of that audience is African Americans that live in the East, especially the mid-Atlantic part of the east. Back there it’s gangbusters, but out here in the west, the theaters that are doing well are the upscale theaters that are probably more influenced by the Rotten Tomato score; the AA theaters are just good, but not as great as the eastern seaboard. So, very similar to what Sony accomplished on Where the Crawdads Sing, they got a BRM to connect with a specific region, and that was enough to make it successful. Where this ends up this weekend depends on how much it grows tonight, generally AA skewing films do very well at night, but the exits on this film show it’s skewing pretty old, most of the audience is over 35. And the grosses haven’t really moved very much today (and they started the day great) indicating the pre-sales were robust, which also correlates to an older audience. However, the exits are also sensational, so we could see this grow over the weekend. Figure if it’s consistent with an older audience and it’s fairly flat tonight, it’s in the low/mid teens. If it pops tonight or gets some inertia because of the great word of mouth clearly it will wander into the high teens. But either way this was a BRM and this is a great accomplishment.

Barbarian - Even though the exit polls that I was privy to were just okay, all week I’ve been hearing really good word of mouth on this thriller. That’s showing up this afternoon and the drop from last Friday is about 30 points better than a thriller should be in the 2nd week. Could be off as little as 35% for a weekend of about 7.

See How They Run - This comedy from Searchlight ended up taking advantage of available theaters and went 2400 runs. Looks decent right now and the weekend looks like it will come in around $3 million.

Pearl - This offshoot/sequel based on A24’s X went really wide, about 2900 runs. To give you an idea who A24 reached on this film, the top 25 theaters are dominated by the Alamo Drafthouse circuit. Looks like it will come in close to where See How They Run will be, about $3 million.

Moonage Daydream - This David Bowie doc went IMAX only in the 170 IMAX locations. The numbers are really good but they are clearly all presales and haven’t moved much since the start of the day. Unless it’s a one day wonder, figure it’s in the $1 million to $1.2 million range.

Clerks III - Went 800 theaters on Tuesday day and date with VOD. The weekend looks like it’s going to be about $400k-$500k.

Running the Bases - Went 1000 theaters and there’s nothing going on here, maybe $400k for the weekend.

Confess, Fletch - Went 500 theaters day and date with VOD, it might scrape it’s way to $150k for the weekend.

God’s Country - Went 800 theaters and is looking up at Fletch, maybe $100k for the weekend.