Third weekend of March 2023
The box office will continue to improve off last year, and even though the entertainment press will probably dwell on a ‘glass half empty’ narrative (because that’s what they do) and focus on Shazam (more on that below), we’ll still see a 20% surplus off the same weekend last year. And the next couple of weeks are going to annihilate the similar weeks in 2022, and we’ll have a couple of weeks that will beat the corresponding weeks in 2019.
Considering how the new films keep over performing every weekend, especially when you look at what the pre-sales point towards, it’s clear we’re in a ‘hot’ box office. As I’ve said here over and over again, the trick about the theatrical sector is that on any given day, at least half of the purchases are made by consumers who do not indicate any interest in purchasing, they just say ‘yes’ when someone invites them. So when we keep seeing weekends where not only does the weekend outperform the early Indicators like pre-sales and the Thursday previews, but each week the Saturday numbers out perform the Saturday morning estimates; it’s probably that the campaigns for these films are having a deeper reach and we’re generating a larger amount of tag along and walk up movie goers*. So a lot of signs that we’re getting back to where we were pre pandemic.
Of course, a few of you have reached out to me this week about the Oscar results. And even though Top Gun Maverick didn’t win Best Picture, at least the film won that outgrossed 8 of the last 10 Best Picture winners (Green Book and Argo grossed more domestically). Of course the matinees for the initial 10 theater break on Everything Everywhere outgrossed the entire theatrical run on Coda. But now the real test begins.
As the theatrical business has evolved over the last 95 years (since the first Oscar), there’s a reason there was so much money thrown at Oscar campaigns, there was a big bump at the box office after it won the award. But now with windows shortening and new revenue streams changing how and when revenue is realized, the ROI on all that spending is getting pretty iffy. If you can believe the scant amount of data that leaks out from the streamers (as well as the 3rd party data), no one watched Nomadland, Coda or Power of the Dog on their respective platforms before they won their awards and no one watched them after they won the awards. I know, the numbers probably went up after the awards, but that’s like saying that more people played Pickelball this year than last, it’s still a tiny number. So, channeling my inner Carrie Bradshaw at the beginning of a Sex and the City Episode, ‘is winning an Oscar the same thing as Self Publishing your book?’
Since Everything Everywhere’s current platform is on Showtime, which has a decent amount of subscribers, it will be interesting to see if there’s any ROI based on the VOD revenue coming from consumers who don’t have Showtime. Even though I’m a big fan of All Quiet on the Western Front (after being blown away by it at a screening in a Theater), just like Top Gun Maverick it’s not the same on TV (and I wonder how much better it would have done on Sunday had it had a legitimate theatrical release) plus the history of Oscar winners on streamers is not good. So unless the VOD revenue on *Everything Everywhere *shows us a ROI path, what is the point of these insanely expensive Oscar campaigns? I know, duh, it’s the Vanity of it all. But should we start talking about levels of what you want to spend to feed that Vanity?
Everyone I talk to in town seems to think that A24 had one of the most effective and efficient campaigns we’ve seen in a while. In addition, A24 has been approaching their Theatrical campaigns differently (they don’t spend money on TV), so the money they spent on the Oscar campaign could have been ‘house money’, and it’s entirely possible the film rental from the Theatrical run payed for both the Theatrical marketing campaign and the Oscar campaign. But then there’s Netflix, who has a head count in their awards department slightly higher than the body count in a Michael Bay movie; but because of their Theatrical release strategy, they generate yearly film rental equal to the price of a decent seat at a Springsteen concert. And even though the effectiveness of that army shows up in the haul of nominations they get every year, it’s a lot of money that probably isn’t being covered by other revenue sources. As we all know (especially for those of us who have suffered through corporate cutbacks), there’s nothing Wall Street doesn’t love and respond to more than reduced headcount and overhead, and since Netflix doesn’t have an electronics or grocery business to prop it up, there might be a point where Wall Street wonders if their awards strategy is warranted.
But Netflix is an extreme example, and there’s a bigger question here about ROI in general for chasing awards. If there’s no more ‘Oscar bump’ in revenue after the awards, is there increased value as a library title going forward? Could studios position their Oscar contenders so it’s exclusively on VOD (or even better PVOD) for a period after the awards? As I’ve said here quite a bit, the trick these days is to generate as much revenue per eyeball as you can, and by progressing from the highest revenue per eyeball to the lowest is probably the way forward. So maybe managing the revenue per eyeball based on the awards calendar is an interesting idea, and pulling films from platforms so they’re on VOD exclusively after the awards might be something to talk about. Obviously, a lot of this insane spending on awards goes under ’talent relations’, but unless something changes soon, I’m not sure things can keep up at the level they’re at.
Anyway, based on something I heard last weekend at an Oscar party, while being trapped in a corner by someone who just started playing Pickelball; here are some thoughts on the weekend box-office.
Shazam! Fury of the Gods - Yes, as you may have heard already this isn’t what we’ve been seeing from the SuperHero genre lately, but there’s a pretty good reason for it doing what it’s doing (to me, anyway). Everyone who gets this email and toils in the Marketing sector has had one of these films. No matter what you do there’s a funk to the movie that you can’t overcome. In this case, the film makers decided to move the story forward by aging the characters, and instead of pre-teens, they are now teenagers. When kids are 11 or 12, it’s the last stop of ‘cute’ before they become awkward, loud and annoying. So, when you move the age skew to teenagers, you lose the kids and the teens are into more aspirational (and usually darker) ideas, so it’s kind of a feathered fish and it’s tough to establish a core audience. The problem with making a film like this is that you probably don’t notice it until you try to sell it, so I’m not sure there’s anyone to point a finger at here, it just happens this way sometimes. WB’s marketing department has been consistently successful lately, and the materials for this film have been up to their recent standards; and as the only major film on the date there’s no issue with where it opened. We’ll have to see if this improves over the weekend (just like we’ve been seeing lately), but for now it looks like low/mid 30’s.
*Scream VI *- Looks a lot like the drop for the 2nd weekend of Scream, so figure the same -60% drop and a weekend in the high teens.
Creed III - Looks down about 40% for a weekend in the mid teens.
Champions - Showing some serious playability today, might be down as little as 30% this weekend for a gross in the mid 3’s.
*Moving On *- Went 800 runs and looks like about a $1k psa for a gross of about $800k.
Inside - Went 400 runs and looks like a weekend of about $250k.
- Walk up moviegoers are consumers who go to ’the movies’ instead of a specific movie. One of the great evolutions in the sector is the Megaplex, where a new film will have 2, 3 or more screens running; so if you just show up the the theater chances are there’s something starting soon. If we are getting them back, as well as the habitual moviegoer (the consumer who looks up what’s at the local theater as they plan out their weekend on a regular basis), we’re back to pre shutdown levels.