First weekend of May 2023
It’s always better at the box office once Disney/Marvel jumps in, and we’ll have another great box office weekend driven by them. However, when you play in the top shelf sandbox they play in, you are your own competition. So, we’ll be down from both 2022 and 2019’s first weekend in May because of….Disney/Marvel. In both cases, there was a Disney/Marvel grossing about $80 million more than Guardians 3 is going to do this weekend (Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness in 2022 and Avengers: Endgame’s 2nd weekend in 2019), so in the YTD total, we’ll give a little back this weekend. But in both cases, the difference should be that $80 million shortfall between the Marvel/Disneys, the rest of the multiplex roster is in line with what we’ve been seeing all year.
As I’ve said here several times, I don’t think it’s good for the long term health of the Oscars the way the Industrial Awards Complex has been calling the shots lately in the Academy, and it was really amusing to watch them scramble a couple of months ago when they had to explain to their Patrons how a couple of Actors tweeted and kicked their ass when Andrea Riseborough got nominated for Best Actress for To Leslie. Well that scrambling paid off for them this week when the Academy’s rules committee proudly announced ‘we fixed it’, and made sure that the loophole that embarrassed them wouldn’t happen again. Uh huh.
If there was any doubt who was calling the shots, all the BFF’s of the IAC in the industry press wrote articles this week focused on one idea; ‘how could a film that only grossed $27k at the box office get nominated for a major Oscar?, so we fixed that’. Interesting, so you’re going with that angle, right?* Using their logic, should we also be asking the same question about films like Nomadland, Power of the Dog, CODA and All Quiet on the Western Front? Because the money they made in their theatrical run isn’t that much higher than the $27k *To Leslie *made in theaters, however none of them reported grosses. The rule changes were never about money that came through the box-office window, it was about money that came through the accounts of the IAC; and by punishing a film that reported grosses while giving films that didn’t report a pass, aren’t they essentially saying their new policy is ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’?
In the last couple of weeks before he passed, the late MGM distribution chief and I had several conversations about this and we shared the same frustrations. I’m not sure if he was actually on the rules committee or was just advising someone, but we both agreed that changing the rules so eligible films should ‘follow the normal and accepted business practices of Theatrical releases’, and that would include the requirement to report your grosses. Since the original rules (such as one week in a theater in LA, etc) were written when requirements like that were the standard Theatrical business practices of the time, it seemed like an idea that would stay with the original intent of the Oscars rules written back in the 20’s. So It’s odd to me that you could level the playing field by just making it a requirement for all eligible films to report grosses, but the IAC had their agenda and saw an opportunity to put their thumb on the scale so it was much harder to succeed without them.
As the late George Carlin said ‘if you want to get something done in this country, have someone make money on it. Homelessness would be solved immediately if they could make money off it’. Of course, looking at how we’ve allocated billions of dollars here in Los Angeles to alleviate Homelessness and it seemingly disappeared without helping the problem, he was wrong and people can totally make money off the problem without solving it (cough, Rick Caruso, cough). And just like when there’s a shooting, the gun lobby steers the conversation towards how they can sell more guns; every problem gets spun so it’s an opportunity for someone to ‘get their numbers up’ (and won’t even think twice about the consequences). And that’s what happened here, instead of doing something that would be good for the industry, the IAC protected their honey pot, cause they have to keep their numbers up.
Anyway, with the expected accuracy and efficacy of a consultant suggesting that Golden Corral should offer Ozempic shots at the entrance to help ‘get their numbers up’, here are some thoughts on the weekend box-office.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol III - Another great opening for Disney/Marvel, but if you want to play this week’s version of ’the lazy entertainment press bingo game’ (because this is going to gross less than Guardians of the Galaxy Vol II), try to guess how many pieces will be written this weekend and next week using the either the term ’super-hero fatigue’, ‘woke politics’ or ‘Ron Desantis’. The answer is probably all of them. But there’s probably a better reason for why this is opening to the level it’s headed to, and it doesn’t have anything to do with any of those hairbrained theories.
9 years ago, Guardians of the Galaxy opened to $94 million and was a leggy audience favorite, pulling an impressive 3.5 multiple. 3 years later, based on the goodwill the first film generated and fueled by the similarly toned Deadpool the year before, Vol II opened to $147 million. But Vol II didn’t quite crackle with audiences the way the first film did. Most recently the Guardians made a significant appearance in Thor: Love and Thunder which also didn’t crackle with audiences the way the first Guardians film did. So the fact that the film is returning to the level where the first film opened to (without the inertia and anticipation that a leggy predecessor will generate) doesn’t have anything to do with genre fatigue, it just makes sense and Vol II was probably the outlier. There’s also a factor here that’s kind of unique these days in the MCU. Marvel is really good at ‘value added’ characters popping up in their movies. They add other superhero characters to add fan bases and keep the content a little fresher and less sequel-y. Unlike most of the MCU films that added characters from other storylines, this was pretty much just the Guardians, at least in the marketing materials. So it’s another reason this came back down to the level the first film did gross wise.
Just like last night’s preview gross, it’s shockingly (and almost to the dollar) exactly the same as *Ant-Man and the Wasp Quantumania *on its opening day. However, there are a few wrinkles that may or may not present themselves over the weekend. Although Ant-Man 3 had an iffy Rotten Tomatoes score, it defied gravity and went up more than it should have on Saturday, plus it was on President’s Day weekend so Sunday’s drop was less than we’ll see this weekend. For now, I’ll say it’s about $100 million and the way it plays tomorrow and Sunday could vary that up or down. But the gross makes perfect sense to me and this is by no means a disappointment.
The Super Mario Brothers Movie - They lost all their large format theaters, so they’ll drop more than they have been lately. Figure it’s still gonna hold fairly well with a drop of about 45% and a weekend in the low 20’s.
Love Again - This film could have been okay a couple of years ago, and we might see films like this doing well a couple of years from now, but the star system has been so muddied up by so many name actors doing TV lately, it’s a no go in this marketplace. It’s a tough enough theatrical sell these days with actors who have a theatrical background (and have been doing TV lately), so it’s almost impossible to get people to the theater based on pure TV actors, even if they are two of the best looking people on the planet. This looks a lot like George Foreman did last week, so figure a similar $2.5 million for the weekend.
- When the nominations came out and they scrambled to position their embarrassment, they tried to play the ‘race card’ and said that because of Actors tweets, they ’stole’ the nomination from Danielle Deadwyler in Till.