Mother's Day weekend 2023

We’re not quite to the point where the release schedule is full, and strategically the 2nd weekend in May is a little bit of a ’never never’ land. However, since Sunday is Mother’s Day, it’s a good place to release an older skewing female movie, and before the pandemic, Sunday’s gross could be as much as a little less than half the weekend total. With a strong playing Marvel in the marketplace, we’ll still probably gross a little more than the same weekend last year, but because 2019’s release schedule was bursting at the seams, Detective Pikachu opened this weekend at $54 million, so we’ll be way behind 2019 again.

Quite a few of you weighed in on last week’s rant about the Academy’s new Oscar Rules, and what came back to me was really interesting. Some of you agreed, some disagreed, but what got my attention is that a couple of you who are deep deep into the FYC scheme told me (in regards to the Andrea Risenborough adjustments) ‘I have no idea what they were trying to do and I have no idea what the rules are’. Apparently there was a town hall this week where they explained the new ‘inclusiveness’ rules to clear some of the confusions to the Richard Dreyfus’s of the world; but having that meeting tells me that the committees, the Board of Governors, and the Academy Leadership are doing a terrible job. And although they keep trying to steer the conversation towards diversity and inclusiveness, how about a little transparency and communication from the start? And when you decide issues, maybe get it right the first time?

First, Communication. Why do they need to have town halls, can’t they do a better job of communicating the edicts that they throw over the fence at the membership in the initial release? In both the Andrea Risenborough and the Inclusiveness Royal Decrees, it would have been helpful if they included specific examples of how the new rules would have affected last year’s nominees. In the case of the Inclusiveness Executive Order, in the recap of the Town Hall this week they mentioned that none of the films nominated for Best Picture this last year would have had an issue with the new decrees. Okay, how about running down each of the nominees and telling us which box they checked? Show us, don’t tell us. Same with the weird ‘you’re not allowed to have an opinion as a member’ rules, why didn’t they include 5 case studies that they looked at to come up with the new rules? Show your work when you turn in the test. And since the new rules seem to be very confusing to those people who have to follow them, is it possible that by sketching out examples for the membership (and the Industrial Awards Complex) would they have realized there are holes in what they decided? That’s the key term I heard from a few of you, ‘holes’, and you felt there are gaps in some of the new rules that might lead to the opposite of what they were trying to achieve.

Second, Transparency. They sent out a survey a couple of weeks ago, mostly about the Oscars, and then sent an email this week cherry picking highlighting some of the results. But only some results. Why can’t members access all the results? Now, of course I’m a data guy, but I want to see if the Academy Leadership has their thumb on the scale (possibly) and how much they are spinning. There were a couple of interesting ideas that were in that survey, including what parts of the industry should be recognized with a yearly Oscar, and there was a followup question about actual awards you would like to see. They only told us about the yes/no results, and ducked the results that would suggest where we should add Oscar categories. I personally suggested both Stunts and Casting (and Casting should have had an Oscar a long time ago), but I would be curious to see what the rest of the membership was thinking. And if they published the results for that question, would it place the idea with other members who might agree, but didn’t think of it? They just treat us like we’re so fragile, I know a large percentage of the Academy is Actors, but we’re not all Actors.

But they have operated in secret for a long time, we never get to see tally’s from Oscar voting (and as you know the ‘ranked choice’ results from Best Picture voting would be very interesting to me); and when they come up with something like their new Awards rules (or implementing ranked choice for Best Picture), they don’t put the idea to the membership for ratification, they just do it and throw it over the wall at us. I’m not saying we need a hard vote on every issue, but if they put out a survey and at least gauged the temperature of the membership, would it be too much to ask? And it has to be brutally honest. Instead of responding to criticism that the Academy is too white by opening the floodgates for people who don’t have the qualifications you needed in the past (i.e. Head of a Department for at least 5 years for some of the Branches), poll the membership and tell the membership ’this is the issue, this is how we think we can get there, how do you feel about it’. Maybe the membership would feel differently than what happened, maybe we would have liked a 10 year plan instead of a 2 year plan, but we’ll never know.

You might say ‘but you elect representatives, isn’t that what the representatives should do?’, not the way we elect them and once they get in, there is zero transparency. Everyone runs on achievements and accomplishments, no one runs on issues, so how do I know what my branch’s representatives stand for when I vote? The secrecy doesn’t end there. When something like the recent awards rules get thrown at the membership, I want to know who was on the committee, who they work for (especially important) and how they voted. If I don’t agree with the way my branch’s representative is voting, I will move my vote somewhere else. Are some of these Governors/Committee members just acting as mouthpieces for their employers? We don’t know.

What I’m saying here is that the leadership responded to the #oscarssowhite issue by saying ‘we have to do better’, but most of the noise in that incident was coming from outside the Academy. Of course, since we’re basically funded by the Oscar show each year, the feedback from outside the Academy is important, and we should listen. But the leadership also needs to improve when it comes to listening to the membership, and taking pulse checks to make sure they get it right. Since we’ve had a couple of incidents lately where the issues were either poorly thought out, or poorly communicated to the membership, they ‘have to do better’.

Anyway, based on something I heard from Ginny Thomas on Harlan Crowe’s Jet going from DC to Baltimore for Dinner, here are some thoughts on this weekend’s box-office.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol III - A year ago, Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness started showing us that it was a little front loaded when it was flat from its first Friday to Saturday. That continued on its second Friday afternoon and around this time on the corresponding day it was down over 80%, and it ended up down 67% for the weekend. Guardians III had a terrific Saturday (and Sunday) last weekend and that playability is continuing today; it’s down significantly less than Doctor Strange was a year ago. And because this showed such good playability last weekend (but grossed less than Vol II), it screwed up the lazy entertainment press and made them pump the brakes a little on the ’Superhero Fatigue’ thing. Just like all the films of this size, the second weekend drop has to contend with the lack of that Thursday preview gross from last week, so this started down 16%. But right now this looks like a better than average -55% and a weekend in the mid 50’s. Maybe a little better if they get a decent Mother’s Day bounce on Sunday.

*The Super Mario Brothers Movie *- Looking solid today, and should benefit a little from Mother’s Day as well. Figure down 30% and a weekend in the low teens.

Book Club: The Next Chapter - This is pretty soft today in comparison to where The Book Club was at the same point on opening day. Movies like this film, Game Night, Escape Room, Dungeons and Dragons, etc usually benefit from consumers going in the same groups they participate in when they do the activity the movie is based on. And that one group that’s so tricky in our sector might be the issue here, tagalongs. But because this is aimed at older females, and we still haven’t got them back in the habit of moviegoing yet, we should probably take a hard look at the dynamic pricing Paramount used to get 80 for Brady open for future older skewing female films; because the tagalongs seemed just fine there. Looking at the way another older female skewing film performed since it opened, Are you there God? It’s me Margaret, one thing caught my attention; the gross went crazy every Tuesday when many theaters have ‘discount’ day. So maybe that’s something that will lure this demo back until we get them in the habit of going to the movies again, we might have to be more aggressive in pricing. This should have its best day Sunday, and should end up in high single digits.

Hypnotic - This Robert Rodriguez directed, Ben Affleck starring thriller isn’t doing any business, but the lack of gross doesn’t have anything to do with the top line talent. They didn’t spend much money marketing this film, and if you don’t tell anyone it’s in theaters, no one will show (insert streamer joke here). Went on 2200 screens and will probably end up around $1.3 million or so.