Easter weekend 2023

It’s a sunny sunny day in the Theatrical sector, we’re going to have a monster 3 days this weekend; and we’ll be up a stunning 50% or so from the same weekend last year (Sonic 2, Ambulance and the wide on Everything Everywhere), and we’ll even be up from the same weekend in 2019 (Shazam and Pet Sematary) by about 10%. But even though we’re up a little more than $500 million from last year on a cumulative basis, there are some other promising bits of news this week. Amazon/MGM’s Air was plucked from its obscure platform destination by the team there (led by the late the MGM distribution chief) and it’s looking like a nice opening this weekend. Remember the new math in today’s marketplace, you just need the film rental from Theatrical to cover your Marketing costs, and then everything after that is gravy. Plus, as the data is showing over and over again, the value to the platform is considerably higher (some studies say as much as 3x) for a film that’s been through the Theatrical cycle over being plopped straight on to a platform. There were some pretty expensive marketing actions here, including a 60 second spot in the Super Bowl, so this is going to have to leg out for this tier to break even, but this is a very encouraging sign.

But Amazon isn’t the only streamer that’s seeing the light of non platform revenue streams. As you’ve heard, Apple has entrusted two high profile/high budget films with ‘old school’ studios for a Theatrical release. Napoleon is going out through Sony and Killers of the Flower Moon is going out through Paramount. And that brings up a really interesting idea.

As the streaming wars heated up a couple of years ago, the battle cry was ‘don’t be Betamax’, and no one wanted to let another Company/Studio be the gatekeeper for SVOD distribution. And as an example of how things have changed is showing up in the Hulu situation, where it seems to be a jump ball between Disney and Comcast, but no one seems to be jumping. But as truckloads and truckloads of money was dumped into the arms race for platform dominance, one Studio sat it all out, Sony. And a couple of months ago, they said something that caught my attention; because there was such a frenzy for product they could ’sell their content to the highest bidder’. Considering how there were so many places with completely built out infrastructure, why risk failure by jumping into a really crowded pool, and just flip the idea around and take advantage of those companies’ need for product. So here we have the same idea with Apple.

I’ve said it a couple of times here lately, ’the theatrical business is hard’, and one of the reasons it’s hard is that they don’t grow A level Marketing and Distribution personnel on trees, especially on the Marketing side. How many times have we seen a studio try to shake things up by hiring an Ace marketing head from another sector? And without exception, they fail, and usually fail miserably. So for Apple to secure a Theatrical release through studios that have a complete staff in place is a really smart move, and cost efficient. Sure, they could have beefed up what they already have, and to be clear we’re not talking about one person, it’s an army that makes a theatrical release successful. And there’s an upside for both Paramount and Sony as well, since they have a completely built out Marketing and Distribution department, more titles means they are more efficient.

So with Apple playing the field and Amazon leveraging their MGM assets, where does that leave Netflix? Just like everyone was telling Sony that they needed to get involved in the SVOD wars, there’s probably a few people telling Netflix to jump into the theatrical sector. As you’ve seen, they don’t seem to have a taste for that right now; and if anyone has the pull with them to make it happen, it’s probably Wall Street, and Wall Street seems to be just fine with the direction they are going. But it’s probably also people like some of you reading this that might have an effect. If they want to continue to make movies with Theatrical budgets (but go straight to the platform), there are several of you who have told me that you like that, and you find the lack of opening weekend pressure that comes with a theatrical release somewhat freeing. So there are several aspects to the marketplace, and it could be the ability (or inability) to attract projects and filmmakers that would prefer the lower profile platform release, that will dictate which direction they will go. But as we look at what’s going on today, compared to what was going on two years ago, it changes so stay tuned.

Anyway, based on a dream I had after drinking too much Kava, here are some thoughts on the weekend box-office.

The Super Mario Brothers Movie - This is a monster today, and it’s been interesting to see how the tide is lifting all boats, as usual. As I’ve said quite often here, moviegoing is a social event, and when there’s a big movie in the marketplace, it plants the idea of going to the movies into the minds of consumers; but it doesn’t always manifest itself in that big movie. So not only is this movie massive today, the whole sector is pretty healthy today. The only downside of this gross is the missed opportunity to set a record for the weekend by opening this on Wednesday. Because of the way we calculate grosses, if they had opened this today they would have started the ‘previews’ yesterday at 2 or 3 pm and dumped that gross into today. Looking at the way this is doing business today, the $167 million Easter weekend record held by *Batman vs Superman *would have been in play, but for now this looks like it’s headed to #3 behind the $147 million of Furious 7. And it will be interesting to see how this drops next weekend, since the drop seems to be the same no matter what day you started. Since opening a film on Wednesday takes the first day surge out of the weekend gross, it’s dropping from a lower gross. So next weekend we’ll take a look to see if that $31 million they made on Wednesday disappears because of lower subsequent weeks. But these are just details, and I’m always looking for a way to ‘more’; this is terrific and this looks like about $130 million for the 3 days and a sensational $190 million for the 5 days.

Air - Normally we see a Wednesday opening during Easter Week go down about 20% on Thursday, but this came up a couple of points so the playability here is showing. It’s good today, but as I said above, this film will really need to stretch its legs next weekend and beyond. Right now it looks like about $12 million for the 3 days and $18 for the 5 days.

Paint - Went 800 runs and there’s very little going on here at all. At this point it doesn’t look like the psa will break $300, so that would mean a 3 day of $250k or so.

How to Blow Up a Pipeline - Went 12 runs in NY, LA, SF and Austin and just looks okay, at best. Figure a psa of $7 or $8k for the weekend.

Showing Up - Went 4 runs in NY and LA, it’s pretty good in NY but soft in LA. Looks like a psa of about $20k.