First weekend of December 2023
This is usually a pretty dead week at the box-office (as well as next week), it’s rare we have anything of note being released here and the total box-office is usually dictated by how strong the holds from Thanksgiving are. We’ll be way ahead of last year, possibly almost doubling last year’s similar weekend (Violent Night was the only new opening), but we’ll still be a little behind 2019 (only one expansion, Dark Waters, but Frozen 2 and Knives Out were both really good and drove the overall number). Next week only has one Anime film opening wide, so next week will be dictated by the holdovers from this weekend and Thanksgiving.
This is the week where I remind all of you about the unique period we’re heading into, and the Christmas Season behaves much differently than the rest of the year. The big idea during Christmas is ‘play the long game’. Because the next couple of weeks are insanely busy for most Adults, it’s really hard to get consumers to the movies. Think of your own schedules during that time period; between shopping, travel, parties, etc, your ’to do’ list is so daunting, going to see a movie has a tough time getting to the top of the list. But once Christmas Day arrives, consumers have a massive amount of free time, that’s why we call the 8 days between Christmas Day and New Years Day the ‘Golden 8’. Every day is a Saturday.
The rest of the year we usually play the ’short’ game and everything is focused on that opening day/weekend; and the grosses decay from that point on. But because of those Golden 8 days, this time of year you just need to open your film (pre-Christmas) to a level that gets you to the Golden 8 with enough momentum so you can catch fire on Christmas Day. Just look at last year, Avatar had tracking forecasts up in the $180 million range, but it opened at $131 million (and ended up at $684 million, which, based on the multiple off the opening weekend, aligns closer to that forecast during a non pre-Christmas play period). That’s a classic example of how all the forecasting services struggle to figure out intent this time of year, because when the consumer they’re polling says they’re going, they aren’t lying; they’re just saying ‘we might go opening weekend, but we’ll probably go when we have time’ (as long as the playability doesn’t change their minds). So the pre-Christmas period is even more of a high wire act than the rest of the year.
Another aspect to this time of year is the ‘cluster bomb’ effect of the release schedule, because you have so many movies dropping right next to each other. Over the 11 days from Dec 15th to Christmas Day, the total of all the films’ production and marketing costs is usually at or well over a Billion Dollars. That just doesn’t happen any other time of the year, so it can be really tough to get a hold of your target audience. Every year there are films that wildly succeed, and then there’s always a couple of titles that get crushed. But it all boils down to Christmas Day, that’s where you see if you’re a winner or you got crushed. Films like Greatest Showman or Jumanji Welcome to the Jungle (or even Passengers) said ‘I’m here!’ on Christmas Day after openings that were below expectations.
Anyway, based on something I heard during a discussion about which terrible idea is going to go away faster, the Tesla Pickup Truck or shooting a movie in a 1:33 to 1 aspect ratio and thinking it…looks good?, here are some thoughts about the weekend box-office.
RENAISSANCE: A FILM BY BEYONCE - My goodness, why are all these musicians acting like your Grandpa on Facebook; please stop yelling. They had a great night last night, and it’s performing very similarly to the way Taylor Swift did in October, lots of pre-sales and it’s pretty flat all day, but at a much lower level. There are some interesting differences between this film and TS’s, this is more of a concert doc with personal and backstage footage, and TS was a filmed show. The question is, ‘what does the moviegoer want?’. Since both of these tours had higher demand than they had ticket availability, is the whole backstage/up close and personal part just unnecessary? I’m not saying that because this is doing a fraction of TS’s film, that the doc angle is the cause, but could it have done a little better if it was just the show? When they made the film version of Hamilton, did we need to see Lin-Manuel Miranda putting on his makeup and talking with his family? The whole idea is to allow consumers who would have loved to have seen the show live to see it, but for various reasons couldn’t; just give them what they want. Anyway, this film could go a bunch of different directions over the weekend, but will probably end up in the mid 20’s.
Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes - Continuing what we saw last weekend when it held nicely, it’s in line with the Thanksgiving films that hold up this weekend. Figure it’s down a little less than 50% (which is very good for this weekend) and a gross of about $15 million.
Godzilla Minus One - If you read the reviews, this is apparently the Citizen Kane of Godzilla movies. But it’s still a Japanese language Godzilla film and it can only go so far. They went 2300 runs and for what this is, it’s pretty good. Figure a weekend of about 9 million.
Animal - Another Bollywood title that’s doing some really nice business. What’s impressive here are the grosses in Toronto, they’re really really good. Unless something weird happens and this is super front loaded, this looks like $7 million or so on only 700 screens.
The Shift - The folks at Angel Studios, who brought us the runaway hit The Sound of Freedom this summer are back with another crowd funded film, this time it’s a sci-fi/faith based film. What’s interesting here is that it’s playing more like a sci-fi film than a faith based film. The coasts are way better than we saw on Sound of Freedom (which was very red state), but the overall grosses are about 1/3 of what we saw the first Friday of Sound of Freedom. This looks like about $6 million or so for the weekend.
Silent Night - Earlier this year, Lion’s Gate had a nice surprise with Sisu, opening to $3.3 million on 1000 screens. And although this feels like the companion film, there’s a big difference between the two that highlights the theatrical market today. Sisu went on a date where they had a lot of the Large Format Theaters, and those theaters (as usual) way outperformed the standard theaters. Because this film is on a date where the Large Format theaters were already spoken for, this isn’t grossing as much; and the big difference is that Premium tier of theaters. Right now this looks headed to about $2.5 million for the weekend.
Eileen - Went 5 of the classic NY/LA exclusive theaters (no Burbank) plus Austin. The numbers so far are pretty good for this time of year, although LA is a little softer than NY or Austin. Figure a psa in the mid/high teens.