Fourth weekend of February 2023

The Theatrical sector continues to get back to normal; and if you didn’t hear it last weekend, not only was the box office up substantially from President’s weekend last year (+55%), but it was up from President’s weekend 2019 (+15%). And on a YTD basis, we’re up an astounding 45% from 2022 so far. This weekend should double 2022’s last weekend in February as well, but it probably will fall about 20% short of what 2019 did. So, it’s clearly a step forward and the steady cadence of releases should slowly build this back up to where we were pre shutdown. And once again, it’s the movies stupid.

The next two years or so in the business are going to be crucial to our survival. And since next week voting opens for the Oscars, and a lot of you are Academy Members, I’d like to bring up some points that need to be talked about; and as usual I’m going to kick a couple of sacred cows and point out things that feel awkward right now, but will help the business (kinda like asking where the profit was in taking movies straight to a platform 2 years ago…). I’m not campaigning here, just putting out some ideas that could help this sector long term, think of this as a suggestion for activism through voting. Here’s the big idea, if we don’t course correct the way we vote for Oscars, the show is headed to Hulu. Instead of voting the way we’ve been doing lately, voting for friends’ films (personally guilty) or voting for your company’s film, consider votes that will be good for the business and good for the show (and of course to a deserving film/actor).

Let’s start with Best Picture. Just in case you forgot, here are the last 10 Best Picture Winners: Coda, Nomadland, Parasite, Green Book, The Shape of Water, Moonlight, Spotlight, Birdman, 12 Years a Slave, Argo. Yeah, you can see how since Argo, it’s been movies that the consumers that go 4 or 5 times a year, and they are the core to our business, never saw. No wonder no one watches the show anymore, and as usual, Ben Affleck ruins everything. And here’s where my first inconvenient point comes in, all these movies play better at home on TV than on the big screen, and that’s where most of you are watching them. 12 Years a Slave beat Gravity, Spotlight beat The Revenant (and The Martian and Mad Max), Moonlight beat La La Land and Arrival and so on. It started with Z Channel in the late 70’s, then it was VHS tapes, then DVD’s and now the app. They tried to make it convenient for us, but unfortunately we’ve lost sight of how movies play differently on the big screen vs your flatscreen. So not only are we voting for films that play better on the small screen, we’re kinda giving the middle finger to the average moviegoing consumer, who isn’t really attracted to art house films we keep giving awards to. So, again, we wonder why the ratings keep leaking year after year. So, my first ask is when you vote for something as important as Best Picture, consider how much different films are when seen in a theater.

As a business (and I’m talking about the entertainment business as a whole) the media beats us up all the time about being out of step with the normal American consumer (especially in the middle of the country). Imagine if we responded with ‘oh yeah? We’re not out of touch elitists, hold my Bellini (light on the peach juice and exactly 2 1/2 mini ice cubes, otherwise I’ll make you do it again)’, and we give the Best Picture Oscar to Top Gun Maverick. I know most of you will push back on that idea because of that whole pesky ’success’ issue that seems to block your consideration, but a vote for a film people saw might reset how people view the Oscars (and they might actually view the Oscars in the future). And if you recalibrate why you would vote for a film, is there a better theatrical experience in this group of nominees? In addition, there is one aspect that we should also consider; to paraphrase Spielberg ‘it saved our ass’. But not only did it reset the box office, can’t we give some credit to the film for waiting 2 years to do it (and didn’t take ’the bag’ even though they were offered), to save our ass? Why aren’t we thinking more seriously about a film that had a higher Rotten Tomatoes score than all the other nominees? Do we really take something out of consideration because it had a higher gross than all the other nominees? I know some of you will have to put something you either worked on or are adjacent to 1st on your ballot, but as a nod to the future of the industry it might be a good idea to put* Top Gun Maverick* 2nd. And since we have this stupid ranked choice system (for Best Picture only) that none of us asked for or the membership approved (but was probably rammed through by the industrial awards complex), it would be a bonus if it won because of 2nd place votes.

Speaking of the industrial awards complex (IAC), there are a couple of other categories where you can use your vote to push back about what’s going on with these awards. When Andrea Risenborough got nominated, the IAC freaked out and had to explain to their patrons why a bunch of actor tweets kicked their ass. What’s troubling is there’s a narrative out there that Andrea ’stole’ the nomination from Danielle Deadwyler in Till. Huh? It’s interesting how the IAC won’t turn on each other, but will instead point a finger at a film that didn’t employ them. This is a really tough category and all the nominees gave performances that belong here (including Deadwyler), but what if other movies just plain outspent Till in FYC? Is outspending stealing? It’s interesting to see a film like Blonde in this category with a 42% RT critics score and a 32% audience score, but spent a ton on FYC. Of course I’m not saying that Ana de Armas’s performance isn’t deserving*, I’ve heard it’s exceptional, but it’s weird that the ‘honor among thieves’ effect took hold here and didn’t seem to point a finger at the film no one seems to like. I know some of you who get this email are on this gravy train (and I’m happy it built a pool for you at your 2nd vacation home), but for the rest of you it might be time to shut out all the FYC clutter and vote for a film that got here organically. Seriously, if we stopped all this FYC nonsense, and all those 50 page Hollywood Reporter and Variety ’supplements’ that arrive in the mail and go straight into the trash, how many trees could we save? So the activism point here is to vote for the nominee that got here with a performance and not a checkbook.

So as you fill out your ballots, maybe do something good for the long term health of the business.

Anyway, with the thought of how many moviegoers will go see either Cocaine Bear or Jesus Revolution and wander into the wrong theater, and then consider that mistake a fork in their life journey; here are some thoughts on the weekend box-office.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania - Disney did something pretty miraculous last week. At this time last week, I thought it would be closer to 90 in 3 than the 105 in 3 it got to, mostly because the RT score was in the high 40’s and the exits were below what we’ve seen for Disney/Marvel, so I was being a little conservative. But it grew like crazy Friday night, and then it outperformed the Friday to Saturday growth of the last 3 Disney/Marvels (all with much better RT and Exit scores). I’m not sure if that was just their late breaking marketing campaign or something else, but it wasn’t what it should be, it was much better considering those factors that usually become an issue. However, this week we started to see those exit polls catch up to it and we’re seeing more of that decay today. It’s behind what we would normally see a Disney/Marvel’s 2nd Friday, and the drop looks like it’s going to be 70% or so (and maybe more) off last week. Figure a 3 day in the mid/low 30s.

Cocaine Bear - This internet sensation that seems to be answering the question ‘what if Snakes on a Plane didn’t suck?’, got off to a pretty good start last night and looks solid today. I’ve heard that the exhibitors were on the fence about adding extra concession stand staff this weekend. One one hand the concession line would be full of people asking ‘why isn’t this line moving faster?’ or they would go over and start rearranging the condiment station. But they also considered the possibility that no one would be very hungry. Never heard how it turned out. Anyway, the movie has been gaining steam all day and the exits so far have been really solid, so this might dispel the vibe around town that ‘comedies never work theatrically’. It’s not the genre, it’s the movies, stupid. This has all the markings of doing business later into tonight, so this might be conservative but it should get to at least to the low mid 20’s in 3.

Jesus Revolution - Another example of how the critics are out of touch with the moviegoers a film is intended for. The critics score on RT is 58% and the audience score is 100%. I wish critics would understand that by seeing 5 to 8 movies a week (and usually more) which makes them jaded, they’ve got to write for people who go to the movies 5 to 8 times a year, if that. This film is doing pretty amazing business today, and the psa is holding its own, right there with Cocaine Bear and Ant-Man. Of course these faith based films have a lot of presales, but with the 5 star exit polls this film is getting, it might go flat tonight but it’s probably going to be around for a while. Right now it looks like a really strong $10 or $11 million for the weekend, plus they had some shows before last night that will take the cume higher once they’re added in.

• Because of the insane amount of content we have to watch in order to vote, the easy out for me is not watching these films that don’t report grosses, so I haven’t seen it.