Third weekend of September 2023
As expected this weekend will be better than the same weekend last year (The Woman King, See How They Run, Pearl, Moonage Daydream) and a decent amount behind 2019 (Hustlers, The Goldfinch). Probably more of the same next week, and then we have a pretty good run of films from the last weekend of September through the end of October. A great example of how thin things might get (because of the strike) is the first weekend in November, which is prime release date real estate, and no one has moved there since Dune Part Two moved out. Anyone who might move there probably has the same issues as *Dune *had, you don’t want to try to open something without your talent working it. Maybe something might change if the strike gets resolved soon, but that weekend might be the first real ’strike affected’ release date.
I wrote something for today, but it was just okay and it needed rewrites and ADR to work, so just like everything else in this town right now (outside of Drew Barrymore and Bill Maher), I’ve got nothing for you today.
Anyway, with the expected accuracy and efficacy of a NFL Physical exam on a 39 year old quarterback that comes back ‘all good here!’, here are some thoughts on the weekend box office.
A Haunting in Venice - There are two takeaways here; Armie Hammer ruined everything and Rupert Murdoch is brilliant. 6 years ago, Fox rebooted Murder on the Orient Express with a sexy cast and old school fun, and came away with a nearly $30 million weekend. The next Agatha Christie/Hercule Poirot film was Death on the Nile, and any momentum died with the distractions of Armie Hammer’s personal messiness, even though the critics had a fairly similar reaction to it as Orient Express. Now we’ve got the best reviewed film of the three, but it’s been unable to recapture that Orient Express momentum and looks just like Death on the Nile in the grosses today. What’s interesting is that outside of Ford vs. Ferrari, Disney has really struggled to make any of the Fox 20th titles work. Since the sale of Fox to Disney seemed to come out of nowhere and happened very quickly, did Rupert Murdoch look at the development pipeline and say ‘get me out of this’? If so, as brilliant as he is, Rupert Murdoch might just have a crystal ball to see the future. Anyway, this looks a lot like the $12.9 million that Death on the Nile grossed, but that was on Super Bowl weekend, so this should have a better Sunday and finish the weekend around $14 million.
*The Nun 2 II *- Looking pretty normal for a Horror film in week II 2, so if it stays the course it should be down 60% for a weekend of about $13 million.
The Retirement Plan - Another Nic Cage ‘programmer’ went 1200 runs and is doing just what these films generally do. Figure a weekend of $300k or so.
Dumb Money - Went exclusive in 8 theaters in NY, LA, SF, Chicago, Boston and DC. The LA and NY runs look a lot like Craig Gillespie’s I, Tonya (however we have the usual infrastructure differences between 2017 and now. The Arclight Hollywood crushes what The Grove does, and Regal ruined the Union Sq with their branding issues), however those were the only 4 runs they took. They took those 4 other markets and the runs outside of NY and LA are much lower here, but that’s pretty normal. This looks like a promising psa in the low 20’s.