Fourth weekend of September 2022
It should be a pretty normal fall weekend this weekend, and we have a couple of films opening right at the norm for what September films open to. Of course it helps when we have a couple of holdovers out there that audiences like in Barbarian and Woman King.
Anyway, based on something I heard at a Boston Celtics HR seminar on sexual behavior from positions of power in the workplace, featuring a keynote speech by Olivia Wilde, here’s some thoughts on the weekend box-office.
Don’t Worry Darling - WB crushed this campaign as you can see by the strong $3.1 million gross for the previews, and the grosses this afternoon are strong as well. Sometimes activating fan bases for performers who aren’t primarily actors can be a tough road, otherwise The Giver and Cats would have opened huge based on Taylor Swift’s inclusion in the cast (as for Amsterdam, 🤷♂️); but in this case they made Harry Styles make sense as an actor, and it looks like his fanbase is driving a decent part of this gross so far (and of course the rest of the cast here has fans too). But any aspect of a film (Actor or IP) that activates a group of fans should also do something else, it should make it easy for the fan to bring other consumers with them, and it shouldn’t alienate the habitual moviegoers. So what is the biggest aspect of a film that makes that happen? Yeah, it’s that whole ‘good movie’ thing, and weird distractions can be disruptive. Unfortunately, the press has been dining out on this film for the past couple of weeks, and because the critics are being pretty rough on it (I might actually call it bitchy with a capital “C”) this film is all about what it does tomorrow and the days after. WB got the fans coming, now the film has to do it’s part. The fan scores are actually pretty good, and we’ve seen several instances where the critics and the fans don’t align, and depending on which metric has more say here will determine how the weekend plays out. If the rough press and critical scores carry the most weight, this looks headed for the low 20s, but that would mean a pretty sizable collapse tomorrow. If it plays more like a normal film, it should end up in the mid 20’s. Obviously if this is on the low side, it’s a self inflicted wound. Humans can be very human and the heart wants what it wants; but when there’s a lack of discipline and professionalism in your work, just don’t blame the result on Marketing.
*Avatar *- Taking advantage of the light release schedule, and giving some attention to an IP that’s been pretty dormant for a long time before the sequel comes out this Christmas, 20th/Disney really leaned into the re-issue this weekend. They had a campaign more aligned with a first run film than a re-issue and spent a good amount on TV, and that is showing up in the grosses. Of course it doesn’t hurt that they included some footage from the upcoming sequel. It’s really good, and since they have the bulk of the IMAX theaters, it should be (your last Vacation pictures would do decent business in IMAX these days). Assuming it plays out the way the re-issues of No Way Home and Jaws played out a couple of weeks ago, figure it’s somewhere in the high single digits.
The Woman King - Driven by the strong RT score and the A+ cinemascore this is holding up pretty nicely today. Maybe not as strong as those exit metrics would indicate, but since Don’t Worry Darling is Female skewing and this is Female skewing, maybe this is Female on Female Box-Office violence. The norm for a 2nd weekend for a film in this genre is a drop of 50-55% and this looks a good 10 points better than that, so figure it’s down 40% for a weekend of about 11 or 12.
Railway Children - Went just short of 1000 runs and there’s very little going on here. Looks like a weekend of about $150k.