Fourth weekend of July 2023
As usual our lazy friends at the trade press couldn’t help but go ‘glass half empty’ this week, and while pointing out how sensational last weekend was, they went straight to ‘and….what’s next? Hmmmm?’ The box office gods extended their middle finger at them and we’re seeing similar crazy numbers as we saw last week. Nothing like following up a record breaking weekend with another record breaking weekend, and if the numbers we’re looking at this afternoon hold up, this weekend will be the best end of July weekend ever and will easily go past $200 million; and no last weekend in July has gone past $200 million. In relation to the same weekend last year…fuggetaboutit, this weekend could be 150% better than last year, and we’ll be around 50% better than 2019. On a YTD basis, this weekend should put us a full $1 billion ahead of 2022 and should continue to eat into the lead of 2019. Last year the crazy strong holdover of Top Gun Maverick drove the business for months, and looking at this weekend we might have two Top Gun Mavericks.
Not gonna ramble on today, my fingers are still sore from the extensive drivel I tossed over the fence at you last week. But all the success right now boils down to the simple ideas we’ve talked about here before. The films that are driving the crazy good box-office are all really good movies and audiences have found them incredibly satisfying, but they are also movies that pushed the edges of the envelope and didn’t fall into the ‘I’ve already seen that’ trap that can result in a film struggling theatrically. And we’ve got a nice variety of psychographic skews this weekend as well, so there’s a lot of choice.
There’s a constant debate in theatrical when it comes to choosing release dates, and quite often the thinking leads to paranoia about one film cannibalizing another. Clearly there are examples where that holds up, like when we had two comedies driven by stand up comic’s fan bases opening against each other last Memorial Day. But for the most part, I lean towards ’the tide lifts all boats’ theory. Why? It’s that same social interaction that drives the movie business, but it happens at a different angle. I keep harping on tag-alongs, but if you’ve been activated by a marketing plan and you want to go to the movies, you need someone to go with; and if you can’t get someone to go with you might not go at all. So tag-alongs are pretty much everything in this sector. But when you’re figuring out your weekend and you’re communicating with your friends, if theatrical isn’t your ‘go to’ entertainment idea, when you keep hearing ‘we’re going to the movies’ it plants a purchase idea in your head and draws you into the theatrical funnel. That’s how ’the tide lifts all boats’ idea comes into play. And if all your friends are going to see Oppenheimer or Barbie, but none of those appeal to you when you look up showtimes, it might activate you towards Theater Camp or Sound of Freedom. The opposite of this is when there’s nothing going on theatrically, and even the habitual moviegoers fall out of the funnel and the tide drops. But this is a social ‘let’s go together’ business.
When you’re dating a movie there are two ways you have to look at the ‘cannibalization’ issue, being in front of a monster or behind it. If you’re in front of the monster, any talk of being ‘gutted’ in the second weekend is a weak argument. At that point it’s all on the movie, and as a great example Mission: Impossible did just fine in weekend #2 (once you account for the missing PLF’s) against not one but two monsters. But being behind a monster(s) is a different deal, and that can get really tough. That social aspect of moviegoing comes into play in a big way, because if you’ve got a satisfying film in the market, even the best marketer has a tough time activating a consumer when (the more believable) word of mouth from friends is dominating the conversation. So you’ve got to have the goods, and you have to have a movie that’s been built to compete. Unfortunately, there’s that one pesky wild card to all of this that has a profound effect on the ability to compete, and it’s really unpredictable. The critics and Rotten Tomatoes. This week we’ve got two wide films, one has a score in the 90’s and is looking like it’s going to benefit from ’the tides lifting all boats’, and the other one has a score at 40%; and looking at the way the numbers are coming in today, it looks like they successfully activate their core, but are struggling with the tag-alongs and the walk ups. Because lightning in a bottle is by definition unpredictable, getting unlucky on a weekend like this is just one more reason why the movie business is hard.
Anyway, with the expected accuracy of me saying I’m not going to write much but then I babble on again, here are some thoughts on the weekend box-office.
Barbie - The weekdays here have shown no signs of slowing down, and today’s numbers tell us this looks like it’s going to be around for a while. What’s interesting here is that the theaters with a good amount of population to draw from are down very little today, but overall percentage drop is higher because the very small towns (and when you take 4400 theaters, there are a lot of very small towns) just run through the moviegoing population. This is why something like Top Gun Maverick does something special, those small towns held up because they kept drawing from people who hadn’t gone to the movies in 20 years. But neither side of BarbenHeimer has the ‘Merica angle to get that done. Right now this looks like a weekend in the low 90’s but I wouldn’t rule out getting to $100 million this weekend.
Oppenheimer - Since the opening bell last week, this has grossed almost about half of *Barbie each day, and today is still following that path. However, since this is a pretty sophisticated offering, the big cities are down very little and the small towns have a bigger drop. Of course, moviegoers are still falling for the ruse that gets them to pay extra for the unnecessary IMAX presentation (I’m not sure they’re all Packer fans, but those people are suckers for anything, but that’s certainly a possibility), so the IMAX theaters are leading the pack. Figure this is still half of Barbie and the weekend comes in around 45 with a shot at 50.
Haunted Mansion - They got off to a good start last night for a film in this genre, and the pre sales we saw this morning at the opening bell looked like they activated a good base here, but when you get unlucky and are up against two juggernauts, but have a 40% rotten tomato score, those tag alongs and walk ups just disappear. So the growth today has been very flat. What’s particularly sad about a situation like this is that the exits are pretty good, and their audience score on RT is higher than Talk to Me’s score. The AA and Hispanic theaters are leading the way today, so this could play a little later tonight than a Disney live action film normally does. And it’s possible the good exits could counteract a little of that critical indifference and this could get picked up by the high tide this weekend. For now, I’ll say a weekend of about 30.
Sound of Freedom - Still rolling along, however it’s looking a little more like a mortal movie. Right now it looks like it’s down 30% or so for a weekend in the low teens.
Talk to Me - A24 has a unique way of getting films open, and they do it without any TV buy. They’ve had some groundbreaking successes in the past with The Witch and Hereditary, and of course they went old school roll out on Everything Everywhere, building it to a substantial gross last year. This weekend they have this Sundance Darling with a RT score at 92%, so it’s a film that’s built to compete in a hot market like this weekend. It’s running ahead of a recent Horror title like Boogeyman, but this has 1000 less runs. Of course with Horror the real real happens tonight, but right now this looks like it’s heading for high single digits with a good shot at $10 million for the weekend.
Theater Camp - Expanded to 300 runs this weekend, and it just doesn’t seem to be tipping outside of the core markets they started with. They keep adding runs but end up with about the same gross. Looks like a weekend of about $500k.
- buying worthless ‘stock’ that gives millionaires more money, paying NFL prices to sit on a bench with no back in a stadium that Texas high school teams would laugh at; but they do it with a smile because they’ve been told it’s cool. Suckers.