Presidents Day weekend 2024

Okay, so we just have to get through this weekend and next, and then we can start pulling out of the tailspin we’re in. Even though we have a couple of new titles this weekend (that maybe took too much air out of the ballon on Wednesday, more on that below) we’re going to be waaaaay down from the same weekend last year, where Ant-Man and the Wasp Quantumania opened to well over $100 million, so the total box-office will be a fraction of what it was last year. We do have a couple of kids out of school today (25%) so some of the films catering to that demo are up today, but overall it’s just going to be another so so weekend.

I’m going to dive into the ‘just kill me now’ scenario I talked about Wednesday (and this will bore the shit out of a lot of you), and take a hard look into the openings of One Love and Madame Web, but let me make something perfectly clear; this is analysis, not judgement. Because so many of the decisions we make in this business are driven by historical data, the historical data here was useless. The last time we had a Wednesday Valentine’s Day was in 2019, and Black Panther chose to open on Friday instead of Valentine’s Day Wednesday; before that it was 2007 (due to leap years), and although three films opened on Valentine’s Day, that might as well be the 19th century, so the data there doesn’t help. So I’m not saying anyone was right or wrong here, because we can’t A/B test this by going back in time and opening the two movies today, but there are a couple of aspects here where the math speaks pretty clearly.

Both One Love and Madame Wed had a really nice day Wednesday, and that’s great. But the rest of the run for almost all movies is dictated by what it does on Friday, since there’s a very specific pattern that most movies decay from based on what it does opening Friday. So the basis of my theory is that you need to make that Friday as big as possible, because it cascades into the rest of the run (and affects the total gross).

Based on what I’m looking at now, the Friday Saturday Sunday gross for One Love looks like it’s in the low 20’s, add Monday’s gross in and it’s mid 20’s for the 4 day weekend, and adding in what they’ve done already it would be the low 40’s for 6 days. But what if the film opened today instead of on Valentine’s Day? Obviously there’s a lift from opening on Valentine’s Day, but since neither of these movies we’re talking about are dead-on bullseye’s to the Valentine’s Day demo, let’s say the lift you got from being on Valentine’s Day equals the gross you would have done if you had normal previews last night and opened today. So using that logic, One Love does $14 million for today (including the previews that would have happened last night), but now it’s decaying for the rest of the run from that $14 million, instead of the actual Friday gross that looks like it’s going to be about half of that. Using an average formula (for Adult skewing Friday openings) to calculate the 3 day off that $14 million Friday, it would put the 3 day at about $40 million and the 4 day in the high 40’s. So already it’s ahead of where it’s going to be with the Wednesday opening by opening on Friday. And now the rest of the run is decaying off those bigger weekend grosses. I can’t explain why this happens, but as I’ve said before, moviegoing tends to feed off moviegoing, so there seems to be a cascading effect on the box-office; but it all ties back to the first Friday, not the Wednesday, the Friday. In addition, when you go on a weekday, how does that affect the tagalongs? On Valentine’s Day, the tagalong factor is….one person, almost without exception. But had you opened the film on Friday, could the groups have been bigger and this could have done even better?

For Madame Web, it’s a similar situation once you apply the same math. Right now the 3 day looks around $13 million, about $15 million if you add Monday in and the low 20’s if you add in the last two days. Taking the $6 million from Wednesday and moving it to today (and using a similar formula as One Love), it would be about $17 million in 3 and just over $20 in 4. So it’s essentially the same situation at the end of Monday as the Wednesday opening (maybe a little less), but it would still decay the rest of the run off a bigger weekend gross so if it was a little behind it would catch up very quickly. But I’d argue that the Marvel crowd doesn’t align that well with Valentine’s Day, and the tag along factor (because it’s easier to get tag alongs to…tag along on a Friday than a Wednesday, even putting the Valentine’s thing aside), so had this opened today, it’s possible it would have done more than $6 million on Friday (including the Thursday previews). And I’m not even considering the playability factor with this film, which had two days to percolate before it got to today.

So where could I be wrong here? Obviously assuming the Wednesday Valentine’s gross and a normal opening Friday gross are the same could be iffy. But just doing some backwards math, I’m saying if One Love opened on Friday it would have done about $40 million in 3 days (using the same $14 million Wednesday gross as the Friday gross). As a general rule, the Thursday previews are about 10% of the weekend, which would mean the previews would have been in the $4 million range. One Love grossed $3.8 yesterday, so there is some data here that supports my nutty theories.

The good news is we don’t have to worry about this again until 2029, and the next 3 years, Valentine’s Day is on the weekend. But anyone considering a non-Friday opening needs to take a hard look at the math before they pass on a normal Friday opening.

For the rest of the films: because there are kids out of school the two family titles (Migration and Wonka) are going great today and are up from last Friday. The rest of the films are down a normal amount because of the new films in the marketplace. But as usual, the tried and true rock solid holds (Anyone But You and Beekeeper) are doing a little better.