National Cinema Day weekend 2023

We’ve got a few lower tier releases this week, and because of the deep roster at the box-office we continue to enjoy, the weekend total should be a little higher than the 10 year norm for the weekend before Labor Day. Same story as the last couple of weeks, we’ll be a good 50% ahead of last year (The Invitation, Three Thousand Years of Longing) and about 15% behind 2019 (Angel Has Fallen, Overcomer, Ready or Not), but most of the deficit when compared to 2019 is the gross difference from the new films this year vs 2019.

We do have a little wrinkle this weekend, Sunday is National Cinema Day. If your first reaction is ‘WTF is that?’, you’re not alone because the theater owners have done a piss poor job of publicizing this. The overall awareness for this ‘event’ is pretty bad, falling somewhere between 2021 Oscar Winners and 2024 GOP Presidential Candidates. The idea is that all films are $4 on Sunday this weekend; last year they did it on a Saturday and all tickets were $3. Business was pretty good last year, and it kinda looked like a lot of people who would have gone on Friday went on Saturday, but business on an overall was up a little, which isn’t bad considering they kept it so secret, someone like me didn’t know about it. However, last year there were no new films in the marketplace over the weekend they did this on; there was a re-issue of Spider-Man No Way Home and Top Gun Maverick got a bunch of theaters back, but no new releases. So we’ll have to see what this looks like after the weekend is over to see how it affected the grosses each day.

Alright, I’ve been waiting for our (always on top of things) Industry Press to write an article about something that seems so obvious, but it still hasn’t happened (as far as I know); so I guess I’ll just do what I usually do here and say the quiet stuff out loud.

What if BarbenHeimer had been released straight to a platform? Unless I’m totally wrong here (not unusual) about $2 billion disappears from the Industry economy and stays in the pockets of worldwide consumers. Yep, 2. Billion (with a B). Dollars. Gone. And that doesn’t include the trickle down economy of Pink clothing or Fedoras.

I can’t think of a better example of how Theatrical is important to the industry economy, because it illustrates how consumers will pay a premium for certain content if you make them pay it. If you give it to them essentially free, they won’t complain, but you have to ask and make it worth it to them if you want them to pay more. But if you don’t ask, those premium dollars just go away. It’s not like they’re gonna send extra money to a streamer each month because they thought the movies over delivered that month.

Since BarbenHeimer has been joined at the (plastic) hip since the trailers dropped, let’s imagine they both were on the same platform; and being consistent with combining names with these two films, let’s call that platform PeaMax. Or even better, PeaMax +. Looking at the way corporations brand these days (and considering consolidation isn’t that far away), that name is a real possibility. I’m saying I’m The Simpsons and can predict the future, but that name seems like it’s right around the corner. Anyway, let’s also imagine a world where Chris Nolan doesn’t have a briefcase with the Nuclear Launch Codes aimed at the studio and the enHeimer half of the equation could go straight to PeaMax +. So as the folks in the C suite are meeting to decide the distribution channel for BarbenHeimer, the head of PeaMax + babbles on about Wall Street, ’The Future’ and ‘if we don’t have these big tent poles we’re gonna let so and so become the gatekeeper for streaming and we’ll be BetaMax*’. And that conversation could even include something I’ve heard every now and then, ‘PeaMax + paid for the film and PeaMax + is keeping the film’.

So in our imaginary world, BarbenHeimer drops on PeaMax + this summer, what happens next? And let’s not forget this is July 2023, not November 2020. All the services have got what they’ve got subscription wise, and there’s not so much change or growth these days. Subs go up a point or two? Maybe the churn drops a little for a week? Of course the folks at PeaMax + will issue press releases talking about how great it was ‘for them’ and they’re very happy. Unfortunately the streaming game is a question of ‘feed the beast, and feed it often’ so unless they have more BarbenHeimers in the pipeline, a lot of the acquisitions take their free trial and churn, keeping their ‘core’ services, which are usually Disney + and Netflix.

But would there be any sort of cultural resonance? Are people talking about both films 6 weeks later? Probably not, 6 weeks later Suits would be kicking their ass. Unfortunately they’re probably both another example where they look like they’re heading into the warehouse at the end of *Raiders of the Lost Ark, *just like all other movies that go straight to a platform. But the thing that’s missing is that $2 billion (and counting) in theatrical revenue. And here’s where the philosophy of the streamers and the real life results on BarbenHeimer don’t match up in 2023. Until they had data to understand what drove viewership, their philosophy was ‘bigger’ and they wanted to create a place where you could see theatrical movies at home. And that felt doable in 2020. Unfortunately the data says that the movies that actually play theatrically do better once they get to the platform than the movies that go straight to the platform. Once again, you can’t think like it’s 2020 anymore.

Let’s dive a little deeper on the Theatrical income. Let’s say that the exhibitors keep half of the $2 billion and it’s now $1 billion. Then let’s take off $250 million for Marketing, it still leaves $750 million. What streamer wouldn’t love to crow about that during their quarterly revenue calls? I know these films are outliers, but if you’re in this business, don’t you go through everything you go through for the chance to hit a home run? Yeah, most of the time it’s groundouts, pop flys and singles; but you play this crazy game for the chance to watch the ball go out of the park. And that’s another downside of where the streaming business is now. Because of their data black box, no one really knows what the score is, and what they do tell us feels managed so no one really cares. What’s hitting it out of the park for them? Suits, The Boys, Ted Lasso. It’s just a different ballgame.

It will be interesting to see how (or if) the films made by the streamers alter their strategies to capture the revenue that’s there for the asking. We’ve got two interesting cases from a streamer this fall, Napoleon and Killers of the Flower Moon; but if you listen to the drumbeat from inside the studios, no matter what these films do theatrically they’ve got a hard drop date on the platform. Considering what the data is saying, that just seems like the tail wagging the dog and they’re still living (and thinking) like it’s 2020. Of course the release strategy on Killer Moon feels more like 1963, so maybe there’s some brilliant retro idea going on here that I’m missing. Unfortunately we now know that streaming is a 2nd tier distribution channel for movies, why would you shove something to the 2nd tier until you’ve exhausted the top tier?

Anyway, with the accuracy of my bathroom scale and tape measure that says I’m 200 lbs and 6’4”, here are some thoughts on the weekend box office.

Barbie - Considering we lost a bunch more kids this week, 2/3 are back in school now and more than half of Colleges are now back in school (let the normal binge drinking associated with the first week of school begin), this is holding really nicely today. Looking at what the films in the marketplace did last year for National Cinema Day, this might be the big winner. Because we really don’t know what Sunday is gonna look like, figure this is anywhere from mid teens to high teens.

Gran Turismo - Based on a True Story - Sony pushed this a couple of weeks so they could do some previews, it’s one of those movies that consumers really like but critics don’t get; the RT score is 61% for critics and 98% for audiences. It’s decent right now, running a couple hundred grand behind Barbie; this might pull ahead a little tonight but Barbie should be way better tomorrow, and then we’ll see what Sunday does. Another big range here, figure it’s anywhere from 11ish to the low teens. Since they did a couple of previews, there’s probably some distribution math possible if they plunk that revenue in tonight’s gross; that would push those numbers up a little and there’s a chance that could push them to #1.

Oppenheimer - Looking rock solid today, and if this gets a nice bounce on Sunday, we could see this fairly close to even with the 10 they did last weekend.

Retribution - Different title, same Liam Neeson result. Looks in that same $2.5 to $3 million range we’ve been seeing from LN for the last 36 films he’s released since Tom Hanks got Covid.

The Hill - This faith based sports drama went 1500 runs, and it’s playing best in the middle of the country. Like all the films this weekend we’ll see what happens Sunday but for now looks like $2 - $2.5 million for the weekend.

Golda - Went 900 runs and there’s not much going on here, there are some decent grosses in NY and LA, but it falls off pretty fast when you get out of the best big city theaters. Figure about $1.2 million for the weekend.

Bottoms - MGM looks like they’re going to end up with a very sexy PSA on Bottoms. Went 10 runs in NY, LA, SF and Austin and with one exception (the AMC Kabuki in SF) the grosses are terrific. This looks like it’s headed to a psa of $60k or so.

• No relation to PeaMax.