Second weekend of June 2023

I told you a couple of weeks ago (when Fast X opened a little soft) that we had another expensive film coming down the road which would be a little worse (more on that in a second), but because the Spidey and the Mermaid show is playing so strong, we’re still gonna have really good weekend. Last year on the same weekend, Jurassic World Dominion opened to $145 million so we’ll fall short on a year to year basis. But looking at 2019 there was another big budget film that went kersplat (Men in Black International, although the budget vs opening weekend isn’t as severe as it is this weekend), so we’ll pick up some ground on the YTD vs 2019 this weekend. But as we hoped, a deeper roster of films gets us through these weeks where a tentpole opens at just a good level instead of a tentpole level.

One more example this weekend where the movie business is hard. For a mega budget film like Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, you’ve got to get pretty pregnant with the film 3 years ago (or more), and the green light committee has to make some assumptions that can go either way, but sometimes you look back and say ‘what were they thinking?’. But when you say yes to a film of this size, it needs to open to about double what this film is going to open to. Of course the usual finger pointing can happen, and almost always that starts with Marketing and Distribution. However in this case, they are not the problem, this film was destined to go where it’s going from the phrase ‘go project’ and both Marketing and Distribution did exceptional work.

The last version of this IP, Bumblebee, moved on from the ‘A’ level Michael Bay/Mark Wahlberg topline of The Last Knight, towards a direction that wasn’t star powered. But they did it at a level-headed budget, and even though Bumblebee only opened to $21 million here in the US, it was a Christmas release and pulled a 6x multiple; and the WW gross was a winner too at $467 million. But this time, they greenlit a movie featuring actors that resonate with the consumer as ‘who?’ and ‘huh?’, but they went back to a production budget you spend when you have A list topline talent and expect a 9 figure opening. So essentially they made Bumblebee 2, which opened to $21 million, at double the budget.

Of course (and I’ve talked about this before) when you greenlight films, sometimes you take chances on actors (who haven’t become bankable) that have a couple of things booked before your film, and you hope their star power will mean something by the time your film comes out. Anthony Ramos was uber hot coming off Broadway in Hamilton, and had already shot In the Heights, which had strong buzz. Unfortunately, there’s issues here with who’s in the greenlight room, and Musicals are one of the most binary moviegoer genres out there. Most of the moviegoing population won’t go see one under any circumstances (and couldn’t care less about Broadway stars), but most of the people in a studio greenlight rooms are massive fans, so there’s a ‘bubble’ based disconnect. Dominique Fishback had just done stunning work in The Hate U Give, and had the big budget Netflix film Project Power and had Judas and the Black Messiah on her filmography. Project Power didn’t even generate a ripple (even by Netflix standards)* and just like In the Heights,* Judas and the Black Messiah* was a victim of WB’s 2021 day and date experiment so it didn’t really help her theatrical value. So as I’ve said before, there are no bad movies, only bad budgets. And if they’re going to build a movie based on the Bumblebee template (including a very talented Director with no star value), why would they spend more than they spent making Bumblebee?

Circling back to the idea of taking chances 3 or more years out, if they envisioned the days where this IP threw off 9 figure openings, they needed more than Anthony Ramos and Dominique Fishback to get there; and neither actor had anything on their slate that said they’re gonna be a driving force by the time this comes out. So this falls much closer to ‘what were they thinking?’. And don’t even get me started on the idea of setting this in the 90’s to freshen it up visually, those are elements you talk yourself into, but have little foundation when you step back and see they don’t add a single dollar to the marketability.

As for the Marketing and Distribution blame game, leave them out of this. This is opening on a date with no other films on it; Strays used to be here but it seemed to think August was a better idea (which is weird), and as good as Spidey is gonna be this weekend they’ll still get a weekend with no other new movies on the date, and that’s about as good as you can do in June. And Marketing just crushed this. They’ll more than double the opening weekend of Bumblebee with a movie that looks (to the Transformer fan) a lot like Bumblebee. And since Optimus Prime is still mumbling the same doom and gloom bullshit he’s been mumbling for the last 15 years, this is an exceptional job of Marketing, especially considering the elements they were given.

Anyway, based on the fuzzy recollection of the contents of documents that were lost in the server room flood at Mar-a-Lago, here are some thoughts on the weekend box-office.

Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse - The exceptional playability is showing here and the 2nd Friday drop looks a lot like the 2nd Friday drop of Wonder Woman. * Wonder Woman* only dropped 43% the second weekend, so we’ll say this has a similar drop and finishes the weekend in the low 60’s.

Bumblebee 2 Transformers: Rise of the Beasts - Considering Bumblebee opened to $21 million, this is doing great today. Although the preview grosses were in line with *Fast X’s *previews a couple of weeks ago, it’s about 15% behind it today. And when Fast X opened, almost no K-12 schools were on holiday and about 2/3 of them are out today, so if this was going to be similar at the end of the day it should be way ahead of it now. It’s interesting how both Rotten Tomatoes measures (Critics and Audience) of this film and Fast X are almost identical, so the playability should be similar. As of right now, this looks like mid 50’s. which is amazing considering what Bumblebee opened to, but not so great considering the production budget. However, it’s about the same opening gross Transformers The Last Knight would have opened to if the last regime at Paramount hadn’t punted the salad by opening on a Wednesday (with a 12% RT score). And as a very wise person once said ’that’s what these films do….’, so that’s clearly applicable here.

The Little Mermaid - All the outrage and noise over casting continues to have zero effect on the US box-office, and this looks very normal for a film of this genre in the 3rd weekend. Figure it’s down 45% for a weekend in the low 20’s.

The Boogeyman - It’s down about 20 points less than a horror movie should be this time of year. Since this is a PG13 horror film, kids getting out of school might have something to do with that, but there could be some playability happening here. Figure a weekend of about $7 million (down 45%) which is much better than normal.

Past Lives - Expanded to 26 runs this week and it’s still a really encouraging step forward for the specialty market. They added Kips Bay and Brooklyn to NY and added Burbank and DTLA to LA, and they’re all really good. Plus they added SF, Boston, Chicago, Austin, DC and Toronto; and with the exception of Toronto, they are all pretty good. This could end up with a very pre pandemic $35k psa, which (for a 26 run break) is very very encouraging.

• Since Netflix fired me off the film, if I sound a little bitter, that’s why.