Presidents Day weekend 2023

As promised, today is another step forward in the rebirth of the Theatrical sector. Because of the 2 year rule (and 2 years ago we were seeing the results of the Vaccine) green lights were happening all over town back then, and we’ll start seeing the fruits of that and the sector will get a more normal rhythm of releases now. Those weeks where the best new film does $2 million (if that) are behind us now, and we’ll see some consistency to the release schedule. Right up to the start of the Summer season, we’ll see a consistent flow of $20+ million openings, and we’ll have a couple of weeks where movies will do a multiple of that opening weekend. One of the factors we’ve missed at the box office since theaters started opening back up was the habitual moviegoer, the consumer who looked at the local multiplex offerings every weekend. They are the consumers who prop up the box office on iffy weekends, because they’ll catch up on films they missed in the first couple of weeks. Since the release schedule lacked a rhythm the last 2 years, they had other ‘go to’ forms of entertainment. I’m not sure we’ll quite get to the 2019 levels of box office performance this year, but this year’s performance should be the bridge that gets us to full normal in 2024.

Today’s rant is loosely based on a question I hear from a lot of you out there (especially since we started opening back up), ‘what about the mid-level movie?’ A mid-level movie from your point of view is budget, but from my point of view today it’s Rotten Tomatoes. Here’s the problem, the ‘binary’ nature of the Fresh/Rotten measurement isn’t accurate for films that have reviews at the mid-level. Most movies have some reviews that are either 4/4 stars or 1/4 stars, and some films are mostly 4/4 stars or 1/4 stars, so in those cases where it’s really good or really bad, that’s easy. But more often than not you’ve got a lot of reviews in their sample that are in that 2.5/4 stars or 3/5 star range, and how the critic designates that review (Fresh/Rotten) isn’t consistent, but can have a profound effect on the overall score. Unfortunately, Rotten Tomatoes has become a language for consumers, and an insanely powerful one. And as a key part of the information funnel once a consumer considers a purchase, it’s a go to site for a quick bite of critical opinion and (as you know) can clearly have a big effect on opening box office.

Here’s two examples of the mid-level effect that I found interesting; M3gan and* Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody*. If you look at those mid-level reviews both films received, for some reason a lot of those 2.5/4 star reviews were marked fresh by the critics on M3gan and rotten on Whitney. Just doing a back of the napkin calculation and making all those mid-level reviews ’neutral’ so they don’t figure into the score, M3gan goes from a powerfully positive 94% RT score to a more accurate score in the mid/high 70’s. Whitney goes from a box-office killing rating of 43% up to a rating in the low 60’s. What’s especially troubling about both examples here is that the audience score on M3gan is 78% and it’s 92% for Whitney, so it’s a two fer; the Rotten Tomatoes score didn’t paint an accurate picture of what the critics thought and it wasn’t predictive of real audience’s enjoyment. Of course, once that audience rating populates, hopefully that’s a better metric for the consumer to use. But because opening weekends are so important in our sector, the critics score carries a lot of weight, and if it’s not predictive we (as an industry) probably need to do something about it.

There’s a possibility we would need to get together with pitchforks and torches at their offices to get this done (or just start withholding ad dollars, but the pitchfork thing is way more cinematic), but I’d suggest a change in their measurement metrics. As I mentioned above, what’s wrong with critics being able to label their reviews as ’neutral’, in addition to the choices of fresh or rotten? And if they mark it ‘neutral’ (or something like that, maybe 🤷‍♂️),it doesn’t go into the fresh/rotten rating. They need to take those mid level reviews out of the sample, because when it’s a ‘mixed’ review, no one should make a critic choose a positive or negative label, it’s not fair to the critic or the film/TV show. I wouldn’t be surprised if the critics welcome the ability to take a middle ground and not make it so binary. It’s kind of like an auto critic reviewing a Honda Civic, it’s not good or bad it’s a Honda Civic.

I’m not bashing Rotten Tomatoes here. It took an industry where local critics had a lot of influence (and you ended up with box office results that were all over the board) and made it more democratic; however in order to make it tip they had to also make it simple, so they went with binary. Since we’re talking about art here, it seems like a small adjustment might serve the art better.

Anyway, with the accuracy and efficacy normally associated with Rihanna’s Super Bowl microphone, here are some thoughts on the weekend box office.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania - This is really good today. And even though it’s not going to be at the level we’ve seen lately from Disney/Marvel, this is a great opening. As you know, my normal battle cry here is ‘it’s the movies, stupid’; but for Disney/Marvel it slightly changes to ‘it’s the Characters, stupid’. Of all the MCU characters introduced pre-pandemic, Ant-Man seemed to have the slightest fan base, and the box office performance reflected that. The first movie opened to $57 million and the follow-up grew to an opening of $75 million; and both of those films opened in July, when marketplace factors drive the grosses higher. Marvel also combines characters in their films, so you bring that other character’s fan base into the gross. In this case, they brought Jonathon Majors as Kang, who came over from the Disney + side of the MCU; so having a streamer character (and a star who is clearly very talented but hasn’t quite tipped as a movie star) isn’t a guarantee of value added. Plus, Ant-Man and the Wasp had a lot more of those mid level reviews marked fresh which yielded a RT score of 87%. This film was saddled with a lot of 2 1/2 star reviews marked rotten and is currently at 49%, so we’ll have to see if that affects the weekend; and oddly enough the audience score so far is higher on this than Ant-Man and the Wasp. If this film decays at a more severe rate over the weekend than the usual non Summer Marvel, we know which metric consumers are paying attention to. If you look at the grosses today using *Black Panther Wakanda *or Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness to project the gross, it’s a little less than half of both of them (which is consistent with last night’s preview gross) so it’s saying about $90 million in 3 and about $110 in 4. But both of those films did much better in the mid level reviews on RT, and if the lower score has an effect here, we’ll see that as the weekend goes on. However, the fact that Disney got this film to a gross that’s a step forward from the last Ant-Man film with a soso RT score, that’s a great accomplishment. Because it’s the Character that drives the gross, this is a step forward, not a step backwards.

The holdovers are all doing normal holdover stuff today, there’s 25% of K-12 out, so the kid skewing films like Puss in Boots and Avatar are having very good days today.

Marlowe - Oh I know you, didn’t you used to be Liam Neeson? Liam Neeson’s last 4 movies before this film were Honest Thief, The Marksman, Blacklight and Memory, none which opened to more than $3.6 million. You would think he would do what the settlers in the 1800’s did when they were migrating west and decided to settle in Ohio, because they thought to themselves ’this just keeps getting worse, let’s stop here’. It’s super weird to see him out in the press today criticizing Star Wars for diluting the franchise with too many spin offs. Maybe worry about your own brand? This curiously opened on Wednesday (with 25% critic score and a 49% audience score on RT), so that word of mouth clearly helped with those extra two days leading into the weekend. Figure a 3 day of about $2 million and a 5 day around $2.7 million.

Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey - This horror take went on 300 screens and actually did a little business when it opened on Wednesday, it grossed $750k. But it looks like your classic one day wonder, and it did $70k yesterday. Looks like more of the same today as yesterday, so figure about $300k for 3 days and about $1 million for the 5 days.