First weekend of February 2024

As expected, we’ll continue to fall behind last year and dig ourselves a bigger hole this weekend in the total year’s gross. Next weekend is more of the same, but unfortunately the weekend after that over Valentine’s Day and President’s Day weekend, we’ll have to contend with the $100+ opening of Ant-Man last year. And we don’t have the arrows in our quiver to compete this year. The strike was pretty devastating for a lot of people, and now it’s the retail sector’s turn to feel the pain. The big difference between this year and last is going to be the new films, because the total gross from the holdover films should be pretty similar. Last year we had Knock at the Cabin, 80 for Brady and (similar to this weekend) a Fathom Event showing of The Chosen (more on that below), but the difference in gross between this year’s new films and last year’s should be the difference. But buckle up, we’ll get through it, Dune is just around the corner.

As I’ve talked about before here pretty extensively, moviegoing is a social proposition. A small portion of moviegoers on any given day go alone (it’s a bigger percentage for sci-fi films that don’t get good reviews, but that’s another issue), so when a marketing campaign activates a consumer, they need to get someone to go with them. Now clearly sometimes the moviegoing companion has also been activated (the ‘birds of a feather’ theory), so the tag along is a pretty easy sell. But when a consumer invites a companion who isn’t in the same activation funnel, the death of the purchase comes in the form of the two most terrifying words a movie marketer ever wants to hear; ‘what’s that?’. But there are countermeasures for that response, elements that drive the film are first in line; cast, IP, idea, all can bring the ‘what’s that?’ tag along to ‘okay let’s go’. But let’s say all those measures still come up short, there are two more aspects you have to add to the 12,482 things that keep a marketer up at night when they are trying to open a movie; the critics score and the overall level of attendance.

Obviously the critics score is something that’s come along recently and can be pretty arbitrary (because of those 2 1/2 star reviews that can be marked fresh or rotten), but if you have a good (or great) critics score, it’s easier to convert a ‘what’s that?’ to an ‘okay, I’ll go’. Once the film gets in the marketplace for a while, the critics score becomes less and less important; because if the film has playability (or lack of playability) takes over and ‘oh, I heard that was good’ can convert a tag along.

But the size of the marketplace is also a factor. Moviegoing feeds on itself and the bigger the total box-office is on a given weekend, the more consumers are out there saying ‘we’re going to the movies’ when another consumer asks them what they are doing that night. And even though those two consumers might not see the same movie, the idea of going to a movie is planted. So as the saying goes ’the tide lifts all boats’ because a robust box-office (especially one with a diverse lineup of films) possibly plants the ‘we’re going to the movies’ idea in more consumers’ heads. But then there’s a flip side of that, does a flat box-office make the ’tide lower all boats’? And right now we’re in a low tide, a really low tide. So with a film opening this weekend with not much else in the marketplace and an iffy critics score (more on that below), sometimes the box-office gods have aligned against you. The release schedule battle cry of ‘we have the whole weekend to ourselves’ might be attached to a ‘chicken or the egg’ aspect as well. Another reason this business is hard. Really hard.

Anyway, based on something I overheard at a coffee shop where two Penske employees were discussing a spin off of Deadline.com (because Deadline is now pretty much all obits) and calling the new site with only obits Dead:, here are some thoughts on the weekend box-office.

Argyle - Let’s say the important stuff first here. Yes, this is an expensive film and yes, it’s just okay (at best) box-office wise considering the cost. But it’s still going to perform way better once it gets to the platform (because of this release) than it would have if it had gone straight to the platform. So God bless Apple for doing this, Theatrical needs this like we all need air, and instead of doing our usual glass half empty schtick, we should look at this for what the upside is. If Apple can recoup the marketing costs for this film (or get close to it) with the film rental this generates*, because of the increased value once it gets to the platform, it’s a massive win for them and this release did its job. And because of what we’ve seen based on the data of films of this size going straight to the platform (vs big ticket films that have a legitimate theatrical release), we need to stop looking at the box office as a stand alone piece of data, it’s a positioning tool that pays off down the road. And the grosses actually don’t look half bad this afternoon, the idea of getting to $20 million seems possible right now. But the exit polls are apparently just okay (no audience score on RT at this writing), so if this goes flat tonight or tomorrow, it will fall short of $20 million. It’s playing pretty broadly, so the campaign from Apple and Universal seems to have been pretty effective, and if the film had delivered a little more (or the marketplace was a little bigger) we would probably be looking at higher numbers.

The Chosen Season 4, Episodes 1, 2 and 3 - Angel Studios seemed like they were onto something a year and a half ago when they premiered Season 3 of their TV series in theaters, grossing $14.5 million in conjunction with Fathom Events. However, they went back to the well with the Season 3 finale to a lower result, and this event looks like the novelty is wearing off. They did $1.4 last night and they’re running about 2/3 of last year’s event. Figure this is about $3 million in 3 days, bringing the 4 day to $4.4 million. Not what they did before, but still not bad for a TV show.

For the rest of the films, because we have a good sized new film in the market, as opposed to last week which had a much smaller film, everything is off a little more than last week. However, we don’t have 50 million people watching Football this Sunday (Sunday last week was pretty soft), because of a more normal Sunday we might end up with similar holds as last week. Figure everything is off 20% to 30% from last week. The only film that looks different this weekend is Mean Girls, if off way more than the other films.

*and because the rest of the month is so soft, the holdover weeks might actually get them there.