Second weekend of November 2023

Even though we have a semi holiday today (Veteran’s Day) and about half of K-12 is out of school, it’s going to be a solid but unspectacular weekend at the box-office; we’ve got the usual Disney/Marvel film to drive the overall total but because there are unique elements to this year’s film (more on that below), we’ll end up way below the same weekend last year (Black Panther 2) and a little behind 2019 (Midway, Doctor Sleep, Playing With Fire, Last Christmas). However, the next two weeks should obliterate 2022’s similar weekends, so there’s bluer skies ahead.

Obviously there’s a giddy mood around town today, now that we’ve got the strike behind us we can get back to work. It will be interesting to see how the town reacts once we all get to look under the hood of the deal (we’re already seeing some of those articles). One of the interesting press releases once the deal was (tentatively) agreed to, was the Studio side saying how great it was for SAG/AFTRA. Hmmmmmm, did anyone else think that was weird? When one side is selling how good the other side did in a negotiation, I get a little paranoid.

But there’s one aspect that will be super interesting to understand. For both sides, what was the ROI on both strikes? Obviously there was a lot of money sacrificed on both sides of the fence, but I’d be especially curious about what the losses of the studios over the shutdown period were, compared to what they would have paid had they said yes to these financial terms way back when (and avoided the strike)? And clearly you have to include the fact that linear TV is going to miss having fresh content during the lucrative holiday period (when the rate cards are at the highest point of the year). Of course the actors/writers sacrificed a lot of money too, but the actors/writers don’t have stock value and shareholder issues. So if the losses to the studios overall were $1, but the cost to them under the new contracts was $.80 during the same period, shouldn’t we understand that since we’re going to be right back here in 3 years? Obviously if the cost under the new contracts is $1.20 over the same period, that’s certainly something to consider as well. ROI is especially tricky when you factor in the streamers, since even the most seasoned industry bean counter would calculate ROI at the streamers as…ummmm…I dunno…the future?

Money wasn’t the only issue and I’m not sure just saying yes to the money would have put the strike on hold while they solved other issues, including how to calculate a residual (or a bonus as it’s being termed now) for content running on streamers, as well the the boogeyman of the moment, AI. But now that we have a more current framework for both of those issues, maybe looking backwards at the ROI from the strike and understanding what it was, we can move forward next time without another strike.

Anyway, with the expected accuracy of tracking forecasts based on tracking (instead of the pre-sales numbers that appear to be the main data source), here are some thoughts on the weekend box-office.

The Marvels - As you may have heard by now, this is going to be at the low end of what we see Disney/Marvel films do, and we’ll have to hear the lazy entertainment press babble on about ’super hero fatigue’. And it’s possible that could be part of the issue here, but there are a couple of other factors that should be considered, and are probably points that get at the heart of the opening better.

First, Marvel has consistently added characters from the rest of the theatrical MCU into their films to bring those other fan bases into the theaters. Clearly the best example is Avengers: Endgame, and by dumping the whole A list of characters into the same movie, they have the highest opening of all time. The main character here, Captain Marvel, was the appetizer for that feast. It was tee’d up by Avengers: Infinity War and was released a month before Avengers: Endgame. So, although this is the same character that opened well into 9 figures back in 2019, she’s out on her own now and you’re not going to get the same result. In addition, she didn’t bring her A list friends from the theatrical MCU, she brought characters from Disney +. So not only was she out on her own, the ‘value added’ from other MCU characters didn’t have any theatrical value. So this probably never had a chance at that 9 figure Marvel opening.

A couple of other factors here that should be considered; we’ve been seeing a couple of films during the strike period that have wobbled a little when they were released because the actors couldn’t hit the publicity trail (and a couple of big ticket films bailed for greener non-strike pastures). Since one of this films components was TV stars, it’s possible by getting them to work and work on the publicity trail they could have activated their TV fan bases and converted them into theatrical fan bases.

All these factors considered, there’s one issue that can make or break Marvel films, the critics. And this film ended up with predominantly 2 and 2 1/2 star reviews; if it was going to get to a more normal ‘one character’ Marvel gross, it needed 3 star reviews. Why did it need better reviews? As I say over and over again here; tag-alongs, tag-alongs, tag-alongs. The Marvel fan base is faithful and reliable, they’ll show, it’s just a question of who shows up with them. As of now, this looks like it’s in the mid 50’s. And even though the critics didn’t love it, the audience score on Rotten Tomatoes is just fine, so it’s possible the playability and word of mouth could change the minds of some of those tag-alongs and it could end up higher.

TAYLOR SWIFT: THE ERA’S TOUR - Psych! Last week wasn’t the farewell week, so all those fans that rushed to get a glimpse before it left got suckered. It’s back ‘by popular demand’ and it’s showing the downside of that surge of fans that thought last weekend…was the last weekend. Even with a lot of kids out today, it’s down 55% right now and probably will end up with a weekend in the mid/high single digits.

The Holdovers - Expanded to a little less than 800 runs and it looks like they’re building something right now. The screen average looks a little better than Priscilla’s expansion screen average last week, but this has about half the runs. Figure it’s in the low/mid 2’s for the weekend.

Journey to Bethlehem - This faith based film from Sony went 2000 runs and there’s not much going on here. Even some of the best Faith Based theaters in the fly over states are fair at best. Right now this looks like it’s somewhere in the 1.5 to 2 range, but these films can be all first day pre-sales and go super flat for the rest of the weekend.

Dream Scenario - Went the ‘classic 6’ theaters in NY and LA (Grove, Century City, Burbank, Lincoln Sq, Angelika and the Alamo Brooklyn). The Brooklyn run is the best run right now, but as good as that theater is (DTLA is also turning into a platform powerhouse as well), those Drafthouse theaters don’t have many seats, so as I’ve pointed out before, our platform infrastructure is still short of what we need. The grosses are really good across the board and this looks like an impressive psa around $50k.