Third weekend of January 2024

Okay, so here we go. The next couple of weeks, well….actually about 6 weeks are going to be pretty rough, it’s going to range from dismal to unspectacular. We’ve been rope-a-doping our way through the last couple of months, but we’re going to pay for the labor strikes at the box office for a couple of months. The box office is going to go just as quiet as your inbox went once the nominations closed and the FYC emails stopped coming in. It (the box office) starts getting better in March, and we have some substantial films beginning then, but it’s gonna take a while for the rhythm of films to get back. And that rhythm is key to a healthy theatrical sector.

However, this sector has a habit of figuring out a way to soar every time it’s counted out. As we’ve seen over and over, people still want to go to a theater and if we give them movies they like, they will attend. So as a lot of these films where shooting shut down (and some of those movies are pretty substantial) because of the strike, get finished and screened, studios will see opportunities in the release schedule to release them sooner than they expected. So we could see a lot of movement in the release schedule over the next couple of months as films earn the opportunity to go this summer with less than usual competition. We also have the Paris Olympics from the end of July to the beginning of August, and that will present another opportunity.

Way back when, movies steered clear of the Olympics because everyone because it was a big TV event and we thought it was competitive to moviegoing. However, the only place linear TV is an effective ad destination these days is on live sports. And with Summer being a wasteland of low sports ratings (I’m looking at you, MLB), having a place to buy some sports where people are watching presents an opportunity for movies. Because of that media opportunity, we could see films drop in to late Summer and Fall if they’re ready to go.

For this weekend, we’ll be behind last year by 20% or so. The big difference between this year and last is really two aspects; the holdovers are a little stronger driven by Avatar and M3gan, plus we only have a couple of new films this weekend that will combine to about half of what the new film opened to last year (Missing). In general though, because there’s not much coming into the marketplace, we’ll see better than usual holds for the films that have been around, especially for the weekend after a holiday weekend.

Anyway, with a similar level of accuracy as using Sundance audience playability as a barometer for predicting commercial success, here are some thoughts on the weekend box office.

Mean Girls - Looking pretty normal for a film of this size in its 2nd weekend. Figure it’s down about 50% for a weekend around $14 million.

The Beekeeper - Jason Statham films aren’t exactly known for their holding power, but this film looks a little better than normal today. Figure it’s down 45% for a weekend of about $9 million.

Wonka - Showing some resiliency today and it’s not down much. There are some theaters in Canada that are way up, so we could have school holidays or they’re having a snow day or it’s Lord Simcoe day, whatever, it’s good there. But right now it looks down 20% for a weekend in the high 6’s.

Anyone But You - Still looking good, but clearly having Mean Girls in the marketplace slowed the momentum down. Still should only be down enough to cross $60 million (!) this weekend and finish down about 30% for a weekend in the high 5’s.

I.S.S. - Bleecker Street went 2400 runs on this space thriller, and it’s got a nice hotspot in the LA market (10 of the top 20 theaters are in LA) but the middle of the country is much softer. Still should be good enough for $3 million over the weekend.

Origin - This film had a very quiet Academy qualifying run last year, and they went 125 runs today. The upscale AA market is pretty crowded these days and this film is playing very similarly to what we saw on Clarence last week and American Fiction for most of its run. The better theaters are a combination of the normal top shelf art houses and upscale AA theaters, but it’s struggling in the better theaters that don’t fit into either of those categories. Right now it looks like a weekend of about $1.5 million.

Queen Rock Montreal Concert 1981 - This IMAX one weekend only re-release is pulling some really nice numbers, they went a little less than 400 runs and should end up with an impressive psa of 5 or 6 k.