Fourth weekend of October 2022

Before we get to today, I want to share with you something I wrote last Saturday morning.

As part of my usual Saturday morning routine, I look at what I wrote on Friday and judge myself. I’ll look at where I was right and where I was wrong, sometimes I think that there was a better way to say something, sometimes I realize what I said makes no sense, and every once in a while I say to myself ‘I probably went a little too far there’. But yesterday I went way over the line and I owe an apology to Ted Sarandos and Netflix. Every once in a while we all have days where the darkness overcomes the light, and there’s a perfect storm of things going on in your life that manifests itself in your behavior, but that shouldn’t have been projected on anyone. Netflix has saved several sectors of the business, especially the neglected sectors of Documentaries, Shorts and Foreign Language Cinema; as well as providing an insane amount of work for the industry. Even though this is a personal dialogue I’m having with you as someone I know, that was just rude and I shouldn’t have talked that way. I am sorry to Ted and Netflix.

So let’s have a redux on the situation and have a more level headed conversation about why the streamers should pay attention to experiments like Glass Onion, because with so much new competition there, little things might add up to the difference between being a player and falling by the wayside. Most of the streamers count on their algorithm/landing page to steer members to various content, some (if not all) refer to it as their ‘lobby’. Since I like to compare everything to a movie, think of their ‘lobby’ as ‘Christopher’ from The Imitation Game, a brilliantly constructed computer that could break the enigma code (and enigma is a great way to describe the modern consumer, so that term kinda works). But Christopher was ineffective as an entry point with no direction, and just spun and spun until they were able to give it enough of a data ‘primer’ to allow it to break the code based on the primer; which in the case of the movie was the Germans signing every communication with ‘Heil Hitler’*.

One of the recent examples of a ‘primer’ was when The Batman broke records for HBO Max, after a robust and successful theatrical run; so it didn’t appear as if going theatrical took all the wind out of the platform drop, but instead may have lifted it. Could that be the primer that unlocks the streaming potential for the big ticket movies destined for a streaming platform? Many of the streamers have committed substantial resources to big ticket movies, but they’re struggling to get them to separate on their platform from more modest fare (especially in the long term). So maybe the primer here is content with a higher unaided profile (that a theatrical run brings), and once on the platform members are driven to the platform (and consume the destination content), the ‘lobby’ keeps them there. Since Netflix used to be the only game in town, maybe that’s why they’re being more cautious about different ways of driving members to the platform, and before it got competitive it wasn’t an issue. The lobby used to be fine at directing people to the first stream once they got there, but with so much competition, they might need to rethink that and understand that in this new competitive marketplace, there’s more than one lobby in town now, and the first stream might have to be driven by old fashioned marketing as well as marketplace lifts like theatrical.

My hope is that come the 1st of the year, once Glass Onion has its successful theatrical run (like I said last week, the presales are pretty good) and then does about what it would have done (or better) on the platform, they take a step back and see that there is something to this. And my hope is that they’ll see a legitimate theatrical release, backed up by a real spend as a way forward, not a trip to the past. If this is as good as I think it’s going to be, that 600 theater break could work in their favor because that per screen average should be very very sexy. That should eventize the platform drop significantly if they tell people about the theatrical grosses. The key to this is just straight up economics, and like I said before, the little things can add up. If that limited run generates about the same film rental as what they spent to open it theatrically (and the platform drop is about the same as what content like this does on the platform), then they basically found a free marketing tool, so whatever they usually spend on a title of this size (when it drops) essentially became zero.

Back to this weekend’s box office. Halloween weekend can be a little tricky (because of the parties), and when it falls on Friday or Saturday, it pretty much snuffs out business. When it’s on a Tuesday or Wednesday, the effect is low but when it’s on Sunday or Monday it’s a little murkier. The general rule of thumb is that the older the demo skew, the less the effect will be. So the adult skewing films should look pretty normal, the younger films will take a little bit of a haircut, and of course anything horror should do okay.

Anyway, with the alleged accuracy of a Sasheen Littlefeather biography**, here are some thoughts about the weekend box office.

Black Adam - Everything I’ve heard from my civilian friends has been the absolute opposite of what the critics have been saying, ‘they went to see The Rock kick ass and that’s what they saw, and it was a lot of fun and the audience was cheering’. That’s showing up today and the matinees look really good, in line with the better holding DC IP’s like Shazam. But we might see a different story tonight and tomorrow night with the Halloween party clutter. But for now figure it’s down about 55% for a weekend in the high 20’s with a shot at 30.

Ticket to Paradise - It’s amazing how year after year there’s a fun little comedy that dominates the fall box office (although we haven’t had one for a while), and the hold here looks like it’s going to be very strong. This could be down as little as 40% this weekend for a 3 day of about 10.

Prey for the Devil - There’s been an evolution in the way studios (and Indies) market theatrical horror movies, they’ve been moving away from standard TV campaigns and are beginning to crack the code of digital campaigns. The issue here was that digital is ‘destination’ based (you have to opt in) and TV was more ‘passive’ (it comes to you more organically); so digital was better at growing the seed, but TV was more effective at planting the seed. A while back, none of the films marketed only on digital opened; but innovative distributors like A24 seemed to crack the code and got a couple of modestly priced horror films open with no TV. Now we’re seeing it more and more, and the films are getting open to a number where there’s a profit. This

Religious horror from Lion’s Gate is looking to open about the same or a little better than we see from this genre with very little TV spent. Just like all movies in this genre, we’ll have to wait to see what tonight brings, but for now it looks like about $7 million or so.

All the other Horror films (Halloween Ends, Terrifier 2, Smile) - Nothing is really popping, they’re all just kind of there. Figure normal 40-45% drops for all of them.

Till - Expanded to a wide release today (2000 runs) and it’s obviously showing its strength in the AA skewing theaters. What’s especially encouraging today is that the 100 or so theaters they were in last week got surrounded by the new runs, but are mostly even or up from last Friday’s matinee. Normally you see those theaters fall apart when you bring in new runs. Figure it’s about $3 million for the weekend.

TAR - Expanded to 1000 runs this week and it’s decent, but not spectacular. Looks like $1 million or maybe a little more.

Armageddon Time - Went 6 theaters (3 in NY, 3 in LA) and although NY is better than LA, they are both kinda soft for a film of this pedigree. Right now, the psa looks like about $7k - $8k.

• Apple Mail won’t spell check Heil Hitler, so just to be sure I had the right spelling I googled it. Wondering how many alarms that set off at Google and now I’m on some sort of list……

** for those of you who are a certain age, or have watched a decent amount of pre 1970 westerns (which didn’t care about that pesky ‘accuracy’ for a Native Americans) the joke here would be… How. did we not know about this sooner.