Super Bowl weekend 2024

Channeling the cliche cop trying to keep order around a crime scene who says ‘okay, move along, nothing to see here’, that’s the box office right now. We knew this was coming, and it’s not going to get much better over the next couple of weeks. Because of the way this year sets up for Valentine’s Day, next week we have what’s known to the folks who decide on release dates as ‘just kill me now’ week, but I’ll go into that next Wednesday. Even though it’s pretty dead this week, last year wasn’t much better. We had the Titanic re-issue and Magic Mike 3 as new releases, so yes we’ll add to the deficit, but it won’t be much. Obviously Sunday takes a bite out of the box-office with the game, and it will be interesting to see if Taylor Swift has the same effect on the female moviegoers as the big game has on male skewing films.

So here’s a question, if a tentpole bombs and no press cares if it bombs, did it bomb? As expected the lazy and dumb press immediately labeled Argyle as a bomb last week (without any consideration towards the new revenue models) and until Apple sees how it does on the platform, the jury is still out, so they are (at best) premature in their assessment.

But here’s where they are just lazy. If you look at all the tentpoles that have been made by the streamers and have been released in theaters, that $17.5 million last weekend might be the highest opening weekend of all of them. Why? Because all the others didn’t report their grosses, and now you know why they didn’t. Of course, you would think any self respecting reporter would never let a studio suppressing grosses get in the way of them hearing about them and reporting on them (and geez would that ‘b’ word have been thrown around a lot if they did). But nope, they just let all of them slide, but because Argyle reported grosses they were ripe for the bullying. So when they scream ‘bomb’ in their headlines, that gross they are calling a ‘bomb’ is actually about 10x of what an expensive streamer film normally grosses on its first weekend; the press just wasn’t paying attention. So, as I said last week, this is a new model. And until we see how this film plays out over the various tiers after a true theatrical release, it’s not a bomb. Just look at last Summer’s Blue Beetle, the press did a similar number on it as they did on Argyle, but assisted by that theatrical release, it was apparently very good once it hit MAX, and way over indexed. So once WBD let it do its thing through the various tiers, it was just fine. So we have to let things play out, theatrical is just the first revenue stream.

Speaking of things that need to play out over time. Congrats to the Academy for adding Casting to the Oscars, it’s been long overdue (now we need to do something for the Stuntpeople as well). But (as usual) I’ll take a different angle on this.

There’s an aspect to Casting that doesn’t apply to all the other Oscars given out each year. For Casting, not only do you have to find the correct talent for a particular film, but you get extra credit if you find talent that stays around a while. Take a film like…. Twilight. Is there any chance in hell that film would have been nominated for any Oscar in the year after its release? Of course, it didn’t, however it did dominate the Teen Choice awards. But looking back, the Casting was sensational, taking a chance on two of the finest young actors working today (and Kristen Stewart has been an Oscar Nominee), as well as several of the supporting actors. Same with the first Hunger Games. Going way back, The Outsiders had Matt Dillion, C. Thomas Howell, Tom Cruise, Patrick Swayze, Rob Lowe, Ralph Macchio, Emilio Estevez, Diane Lane and….Sofia Coppola. But, it’s not normal Oscar bait so the Academy would have sniffed at it right after release, but give it some time and it would be hard to deny the Outstanding Achievement in Casting.

So if we really want to honor outstanding achievements in this category, we should change the time frame for the Oscar for Casting, and instead of giving it to films that were released last year, we give it to the films that were released 5 years ago? Or just change it to ‘at least’ _ years ago. This is such a unique, different and important aspect to the business, we should honor it with a unique angle on the award.

Anyway, with the expected accuracy of a Bel Air weather forecast, here are some thoughts on the weekend box-office.

Argyle - Looks pretty normal for a 2nd weekend, with the SB on Sunday taking a little bite out of it, figure it’s down 55% for a weekend of about $9 million.

Lisa Frankenstein - Just like Bleecker and I.S.S. a couple of weeks ago, plugging a unique offering into these barren weeks gives a film a shot that it normally wouldn’t have in a more crowded marketplace. Focus did a really nice job on this film, and the smart/funny angle on the campaign looks like it’s paying off in the more sophisticated markets. Of course the downside of that is it falls off pretty quickly as the markets get more blue collar, but on a film like this, they’re probably still a little better than they would have been with some competition. Right now this looks like $4 million or so for the weekend.

Dune - WB plugged this into the market to prime the pump for Dune Part 2’s release in a couple of weeks. The IMAX screens in the big markets are very good, this looks like it’s headed for $2 million this weekend.

Out of Darkness - Bleecker went 800 runs here, figure maybe $1.5 million for the weekend.

For the rest of the holdovers, similar to last weekend, everything should be in the -20% to -30% drop range. However, that energizer bunny of the box-office Anyone But You is having another great holdover weekend and could be down as little as 15% this weekend.