Second weekend of September 2023

This should be a traditional box office weekend for the weekend after Labor Day, decent box office driven by a well marketed Horror film. Following the same pattern we’ve seen lately, we’ll crush last year’s total ( Barbarian and a decent $4.5 million Bollywood film) and maybe get close to doubling it, and similarly we’ll be well behind 2019 where It Chapter 2 grosses a terrific $91.1 million. The rest of the month should look pretty similar to last year, a bunch of singles and the overall totals each weekend should line up pretty good to last year. However, thanks to Ms Swift and her cult massive fanship, we’ll have a terrific October.

Not much to say today, and it’s been another rough week losing another titan of the industry in Jake Bloom. But speaking of titans, I do find it interesting that when you throw in the Disney/Spectrum scuffle with all the rest of the disruptions going on, it’s clear that we needed this crossroads to address everything that’s been changing in the industry. What’s interesting is that you’ve got Disney going both ways. On the Guild side, the Guilds are saying ‘we don’t like the way the past contracts work for us going forward because of current technology’ and Disney is saying ‘nah, we good’. On the Cable side, it’s the opposite; Spectrum wants to protect what the old contracts gave them that keep profitable bundles together, and Disney is looking for bandwidth to make some money outside of the bundles. So when you see a company as vast and entrenched as Disney is in all phases of the business, but needs to be on different sides of the evolve/stay put issues, you know it’s going to take a while to untangle it.

Anyway, based on something I learned from reading the script for Weekend at Bernie’s 2024: Nancy Pelosi’s Campaign Victory Party, here are some thoughts on the weekend box-office.

The Nun II - WB has released some pretty successful scary movies on this weekend, from the ground breaking It to the most terrifying of them all, Contagion. 5 years ago on this weekend the WB/NL marketing department hit a home run with The Nun, grossing $54 million. Unfortunately, according to the critics and the audience scores, the story was not quite as interesting as Regan’s vomit from the original Exorcist. So this weekend we have The Nun 2 II, and the marketing department had to dig out of the hole the first movie dug. So far they’re doing a great job and they got a great start with the previews last night, so clearly there is still a fan base for this IP. But the critics are only marginally better this time and we’ll have to see what the audience score looks like (curiously there is no audience score in RT as of this writing). As of right now, it looks like 30 for the weekend, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they run through the core audience and it sags a little as the weekend goes on.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 - Another sequel that had to contend with its underwhelming predecessor, although unlike The Nun II, the critics scores (which are a little better this time) are very similar to the 2nd film. This film also is slightly different than BFGW 2, because that film opened on Good Friday so it had a weekend that’s more of a Saturday, Saturday, Sunday 3 day instead of the normal Friday, Saturday, Sunday this film is going to have. So just because of the weekend this is on, it’s going to do less. Right now it’s looking like about $9 million, which is at the high end of what we’ve been seeing out of these older female skewing films.

Jawaan - Another Bollywood film that’s doing solid business; and just like films made here, this is being driven by a massive star, Shah Rukh Khan. It’s on about 800 screens, and it looks like it’s on its way to a weekend of about $5 million.