New Year's weekend 2022
I hope everyone is having a good holiday, and I appreciate all the responses to my Christmas Day email. But I’ve been obsessing a little (and since I didn’t go anywhere this week, I’ve had a decent amount of time on my hands here in rainy LA) about why we keep seeing these non-tentpole/non-family films struggle when they get released the week before Christmas, because it didn’t used to be that way. So I went back and looked at each year, and there was a fairly clear period where everything changed.
But let’s back up a little here. Why do (or did) we consider the week before Christmas to be a fertile box office period? It’s actually pretty simple, up until recently when linear TV was still the dominant ‘at home’ entertainment choice, they shut down from the middle of December to early January. Other than news and live sports, there was nothing on TV and movies were the next activity up (or a trip to the video store), which generated strong box office. But then Netflix pivoted from being a catalogue streamer to generating original content, and (of course) over the last couple of years others followed. Since the streamers didn’t feel the need to go on Vacation over the Christmas Holidays and actually targeted that period to drop expensive movies (and TV series that had a platform presence like 1923), instead of a TV wasteland that drove people to the theaters, the content landscape on TV looked just like the other 50 weeks of the year. Now if you add in the social clutter of the holidays (and of course some nasty weather this year) it makes complete sense why some movies are struggling to compete. Avatar or Spider-Man No Way Home (or the Star Wars films) offered an upgraded experience compared with watching a TV movie at home, so they did just fine. Family films like Sing 2 or Puss in Boots this year cut through as well, but that might have more to do with getting kids out of the house. Looking at how films play from Christmas Day on, there’s not that much difference as there was before, and maybe that’s just the difference between all the scheduling clutter you have before Christmas and the free time you have after.
So is this here to stay? Interesting question, and because the streamers (just like other new age companies like Uber, WeWork, Blue Apron, etc) are looking to move on from the ’spend whatever you have to and grow this’ period to making a profit, and this could all change very quickly. Since the key phrase for all the new age businesses seems to be ‘revenue streams’, and ad supported tiers are going to be a big part of that, will the streamers take the holiday period off just like linear TV does? The main reason linear TV went fishing for 3 weeks is that once you get to the 3rd week of December, advertisers have made their Christmas pitch already and the demand for ad inventory goes down significantly, so the TV networks didn’t want to burn a fresh episode with a low rate card. In addition, and kind of ironically, could theatrical become one of those key revenue streams for films that in the past have gone straight to the platform? Since the golden eight days of Christmas are such fertile territory for box office, we could see films that would normally hit the platform over Christmas in theaters instead. Top Gun Maverick seemed to set records for Paramount Max, did all that box office cache affect the viewership of Glass Onion? And if Glass Onion had a wider and longer run in theaters, would that have made a difference, and made it even better? So it’s an evolving world for everyone.
In the past one of the debates at Christmas was ‘do we go on Christmas Day when everything does more business, or are we missing those good box office days’? The way it looks to me, unless you have a tentpole or a family film, those days aren’t that good. Just like any other time of the year you need to launch a film, instead of just releasing it.
Anyway, with the expected accuracy of a Mariachi Band’s Diversity and Inclusion officer’s performance review, here are some thoughts about this weekend’s box office.
The box office this weekend should be better than last weekend, today and Sunday are really good days and New Year’s eve is a little down but doesn’t take the hit that Christmas Eve takes. Plus we don’t have the weather issues we had last weekend.
Avatar: Way of the Water - The key number this weekend here is +10% from last week. The would put the weekend at around $69 million, comfortably ahead of the $68.5 million for weekend #3 on Avatar (and way ahead of the weekend #3 on Spider-Man No Way Home at $56 million), so even though some of the entertainment press couldn’t get off the idea of ‘disappointing’ two weeks ago, it’s still Avatar and this is what Avatar films do. And looking at today, I’m not sure +20% from last weekend is out of the question. But I’ll stay conservative and it will be somewhere around $70 million for the 3 day, and mid 80’s for the 4 day.
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish - Showing how much the weather was having an effect last week, it’s way up today. Figure it’s up 30% from last weekend for a 3 day of in the mid high teens, and a 4 day around 20.
*Black Panther: Wakanda Forever *- I haven’t seen a lot of stories written about how this film really stretched its legs over the holiday period, but it’s having another great day today. Looks like it will be up 50% or more for a weekend of 4 or 5 million.
Whitney Houston I Wanna Dance with Somebody - The good playability is showing here, but it got such a slow start last week, it can only go so far. At this point it looks like it will end up around the same number as last week, but without the preview gross. So figure a 3 day in the low/mid 4’s and a 4 day around 5.
Babylon - Same story here as Whitney, looking normal for NYE weekend, but it started so low last week. Looks like a 3 day of about 3 million and a 4 day in the mid 3’s.
A Man Called Otto - Opened 4 runs Exclusive in NY and LA and it’s fine for a limited film these days. As we’ve seen before, Century City, The Grove and Lincoln Sq are good, but the Regal Union Sq still just isn’t working so it’s dragging the psa down. Figure a psa of about $10k for 3 and $12k for 4.