Father's Day weekend 2023
This weekend has traditionally been the garden spot on the early summer release schedule, because it’s the first weekend where pretty much all the K-12 and colleges are on holiday. It’s the weekend where you’ve always got a tentpole or two, and the roster at the multiplex is filled with films that have opened over the last couple of weeks, so it all adds up to a big number. It’s also usually Father’s Day weekend, and although Father’s Day isn’t quite the same ‘unless you nail this, there is emotional pain in your future’ as Mother’s Day, it gives a nice boost to the box-office. So this is a weekend where we traditionally see a $200 million cume for the weekend, and it looks like that’s where we’re headed this year. We should beat 2022’s cume pretty easily, and we should be in the same neighborhood as 2019’s cume. This weekend we have another marketplace accelerator with a Juneteenth holiday on Monday. Because the kids are already out of school, and HR departments from coast to coast pretty much threw up their hand’s and declared everything from ‘it’s a national holiday, we’re closed’ to ‘uh, I dunno, maybe take a personal day?’, I’m not sure what the effect will be on the box-office. There should be something, but I’m not sure how much it will be.
Today’s continuation of our 2023 saga ’the movie business is hard’ is unfolding in a couple of different ways. Obviously, the first issue is the Ezra Miller kurfuffle in The Flash. It’s not like he’s the first star of a tentpole that’s has some mental health issues; our business is littered with similar or worse over the years, and in the days before the camera phone and the interwebs, it was a something a junior studio publicist could handle (and usually the low person on the totem pole got the job as babysitter) and hide the behavior from the unsuspecting public. Taking care of a star like Ezra was a slow Tuesday before lunch in the golden era of Hollywood. But it’s the world we’re living in now, and even though Ezra gives a performance that has been praised pretty much across the board, the twitterverse has come out swinging and has done everything they can to make sure this film fails. From spoilers to plot points, they’ve tweeted their little hearts out with a lot of hate pointed towards Ezra’s non-binary orientation (since we’re in a non-binary conversation here, and because the tone of this smear campaign is so vile, can we say the plural of tweeters is twatters?). Although we’re still trying to figure out the representation issue*, you would think that everything should be a meritocracy and the work should go to the most talented actor. But even though Ezra crushed this job, his personal life has now become an issue; and who cares about his personal life? The middle of the country where the culture wars are taking hold, and just like we saw last year on Lightyear, the right has made this an issue. But as many headwinds as this film is facing it actually could have been worse. Because of all the drama around Ezra, they were unable to attract a corporate partner on this film, and on a film of this size that can equal $100 million in marketing reach. But imagine if their corporate partner was Anheuser Busch and the tie in product was Bud Light…..yep, could have been way worse.
Second, Disney Animation/Pixar. It seems like they’ve become the current equivalent of Woody Allen in the early 80’s; they make high quality films but the fan base keeps pining for their earlier funny films. Now some of their recent box office results have been disrupted by the shutdown during the pandemic. One of the reasons they kept turning out hit after hit was that they had a couple of films a year, and could trailer the next film when they released something. Over and over again, research has shown that seeing trailers in theaters is still the best way to plant a seed in a moviegoer’s head, so losing that rythm of releases and ’fishing where the fish are’ was disrupted. It’s possible that’s why the Marvel films are just really big recently instead of enormous, they need to get that ‘trailers in theater’ placement going again and build the fan base back up. But they also might have a branding issue here, and where Pixar and Disney animation was closely associated with laughter and escapism, the last couple of films might have repositioned the brand. As one of the greats in our business says; ‘funny is money’, and they might need to get back to their earlier funny films. They’ve tackled subjects before that were pretty complex, like Ratatouille, Up and* Wall-E*; but those films were preceded by The Incredibles. This film was set up by Onward, Soul, Luca, Encanto and Lightyear; all really good movies but haven’t been nearly as fun. So one film can set the table for the rest of the slate, and that’s what might be missing here.
Anyway, based on the accuracy of the ‘research about anything I put in my body’ that a lot of people I knew cited when they refused to take the Covid vaccine because of that ‘research’, but are jabbing that Ozempic needle in their ass once a week with no questions asked, here are some thoughts about the weekend box-office.
The Flash - They had a pretty good preview day yesterday and today is okay, but the middle of the country is soft and the coasts (especially the west coast) is playing like a significantly bigger movie. We probably have to take a step back and look at what the IP value here is when we consider the weekend gross. Although WB did a nice job of putting the variations of Batman and other top shelf DC characters up front, this is still a movie with a Title character at the same level as Black Adam or Shazam. And when you consider those IP’s grossed in the 50’s and 60’s their first time out (I’ll ignore the 2nd Shazam for now), this is right in line with what they did. So considering the headwinds that WB had to deal with (aka ‘shit happens’, the close cousin of ’the movie business is hard’), like a lack of corporate partner and getting dragged into the culture wars, this is still pretty good and in line with what similar DC IP does. We’ll never know what this could have been without all the unnecessary noise, but it probably would have been better. Right now it’s a little behind where Transformers was last Friday, but this should have a better Sunday because of Father’s Day and the Monday Holiday. For now, this looks like mid 60’s for 3 and low 70’s for 4.
Elemental - Today’s numbers look like they’re going to take a step back from last year’s Lightyear, but of course this doesn’t have the IP roots that Lightyear had. The film did just fine with the critics (although it’s the low end of what we normally see on Pixar films) and the Marketing campaign was right in line with what we’ve seen over the years for this brand. But there’s another aspect here that there’s not much Disney could do about. Disney has a rich history of Pixar/Disney Animation films over the Father’s Day weekend, however the box office heft of the brand doesn’t carry the weight it used to, so they might have to date this brand’s films a little more defensively in the future. In the past, the power of this brand enabled Disney to date offensively, because they were going to do their business wherever they landed. But since this film is fairly female skewing, I wonder if this would have been better if they went next week; forgoing the negligible Father’s Day bump and allowing the roster of current films to age another week before they jumped into the marketplace. But here’s the trick of how hard it is to date films. First, Disney was here first, and has been since November 2019, plus they release films like this on a WW basis. So any change in release is like moving an Aircraft Carrier. When WB dropped The Flash on the date last December, I’m not sure that’s enough time to move, plus we always think the next movie is the movie that’s going to push the brand back to the top; and clearly by taking this film to Cannes, they wholeheartedly believed in it. But just like everything in this business, the prediction of the Rotten Tomatoes score is virtually impossible and if they had any inkling that they wouldn’t have the usual mid/high 90’s on RT, they might have approached this differently. Right now this looks like a 3 day in the mid 30’s and a 4 day in the low 40’s.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse - Considering all the new films in the marketplace, this is holding up pretty good. Figure a drop of about 45% and a 3 day around 30 and a 4 day in the mid 30’s.
Transformers: Rise of the Beasts - it’s way down today, and the weekdays foretold the drop. From Monday on, Spider-man jumped way out front and continued all week. As usual this time of year, they lost their IMAX’s and PLF’s so they’ll take a hit there too. Figure a 3 day in the low 20’s and a 4 day in the mid 20’s.
The Blackening - Went 1800 runs and took theaters that leaned into their AA core. It’s really good in the core AA theaters but it doesn’t look like it’s crossing over to non AA audiences right now. These films tend to pop later tonight so figure a weekend of $7 or $8 million.
Asteroid City - As with many Wes Anderson films, these exclusive runs (3 in NY, 3 in LA) is just a question of how many seats the theaters can give them. Hard to say how high this can go but right now I wouldn’t rule out a psa of $100k this weekend.
- Unfortunately, too often this issue gets hijacked into ‘how do I spin this so it creates more job opportunities for me’. For example, the insane whining from the Indian Dancing community about how the musical staging of Naatu Naatu from RRR at the Oscars was ’too diverse’.