Fourth weekend of February 2024
Okay, we’ve got one more week of the box-office doldrums before our theatrical saviors of late, Warner Brothers, kicks us back into gear. We’re going to be about 2/3 of what the box-office was for this week last year, driven by the 2nd weekend of Doctor Strange, plus the openings of Cocaine Bear and Jesus Revolution. So the financial hole the strikes have dug us into will get a little deeper. Next week, we’ll at least pull even with the same week last year, and at the risk of sounding soooo 2022, it’s gonna be a slog for a while until we start seeing a normal flow of titles.
There are a couple of titles going this week that aren’t going to set the box-office on fire, but I want to remind you about the current economics of today’s theatrical sector. Theatrical is just one piece of the puzzle. I’m already seeing some trade articles about how neither film this weekend is going to be ‘good’, but good for who? I think these titles are only getting picked on because (besides the constant ‘glass half empty’ point of view) there are no wide appeal films right now, and these niche films are all we have. If there were some broad appeal films to release, they wouldn’t be focusing on these small films, but because of the strike the cupboard is pretty bare and we should be grateful to have these films.
Yeah, none of these titles is going to get out of single digits, but it’s not what you make in the theatrical sector, it’s what you spent to get there. Theatrical marketing is very similar to Red Wine and Audio Equipment; a decent amount of money gets you to a certain level, but an insane amount of money gets you a couple of percentage points higher. And just like Red Wine and Audio Equipment, if you pay all that extra money, you ask yourself ‘was that worth it?’
The path to a theatrical release has to get through a couple of check points. During the test screening process you begin to understand how much audiences like it, or more importantly, how hard was it to get people to come? Once you have that data, Marketing starts putting some materials together and (for the most part) those materials go through a testing process. Once you understand how hard it is to get consumers to the theater, you can start looking at how you can maximize the total revenue for a film (including all the downstream revenues such as PVOD, VOD, SVOD, etc) with the theatrical run. And here’s what the trades keep missing; sometimes by having campaigns that keep costs down, a movie that ends up in the mid single digits on opening weekend can be a winner at the end of the day.
All 3 films this weekend are apparently good movies (they all have good or very good critical scores), but let’s face it, they are all pretty niche-y. Because they are all niche-y, none of the 3 films this weekend had massive campaigns; but the tight and heavily targeted campaigns were that way because all the checkpoints they went through said they deserved that, and rolling them out this way was financially responsible. Are the trades telling us that Ethan Coen shouldn’t make a lesbian road comedy because it won’t open to $30 million? You can’t get niche-y films like this to open to $30 million without building the audience with films that open to $3 million, and then let it percolate through the various post theatrical tiers. And if you don’t have a Focus out there who takes chances on niche-y films like this, and then figures out a way to not make it a financial loser, you’re never going to be able to build an audience because the films won’t get made.
But here’s where the chances the folks like Focus take, pay off. In theory, niche-y films like these have an alternative distribution direction, the streamers. But as we’ve seen over time as we’ve collected data, the curve to build an audience for a genre on a straight to streamer is pretty flat, and may even be a little downward, because it’s just one set of consumers. And the algorithms that drive viewership on a platform actually keep niche films in a box. But if you can make even a small dent theatrically, all those extra tiers of distribution (and all the different methods of consumption that touch different sectors of the consumer, including the eventual path to a platform) can build an audience for the next film in a genre. And the next time might be a little less niche-y and might wander towards broad, which would be a win for the whole business.
Anyway, with the expected accuracy of a NRA expense account, here are some thoughts on the weekend box-office.
Bob Marley: One Love - Following up on my rant about Wednesday openings last week, the 2nd weekend is another way to understand if non-Friday openings are a good idea. With a film that has exits as strong as this film did last week, we should see a drop about 10 points less than a normal drop. Why? Because in theory you don’t have the first day rush on Friday for a Wednesday opening (because the first day attenders went on Wednesday) last week. So it’s dropping in week #2 from a lower number last week. But it’s not, it’s about the same as a Friday opening would look like. So instead of opening this film last Friday and having a $40 million 3 day to drop from, they are now dropping (about the same %) from the $28 million gross a Wednesday opening produced. So this looks like a fairly normal 50%-55% 2nd weekend drop for a gross in the low/mid teens.
Demon Slayer - Kimetsu No Yaiba: To The Hashira Training - Okay, nothing like having titles with colons and hyphens. This Sony/Cruchyroll release continues the Anime roll, but it seems to be a little step back from the last Demon Slayer release. Looks like $8 million or so for the weekend.
Ordinary Heroes - The folks at Kingdom Stories have given us several faith based films, but just like other production companies, the results are both really good and just okay; and just like non-faith based films, it all seems to tie back to IP value. They’ve gone from the highs of I Can Only Imagine (based on a hit song) and Jesus Revolution (which leveraged the mega-church movement) to the okay with American Underdog and I Still Believe, where the base IP didn’t seem to generate theatrical sales. This film doesn’t have much IP to it, but does have Oscar Winner Hillary Swank and the ascending Alan Ritchson. However, Hillary Swank’s last movie that opened to a decent number was in 2011, and as much as Alan Ritchson has a current ‘it’ factor, it’s all in TV and doesn’t have a dependable theatrical following yet. So there’s not much of a theatrical base to build on here, and the faith based consumer is pretty tricky. The hope with a film like this is that the branding from dependable place like Kingdom Stories would add some trust from the faith based consumer. But similar to what Angel experienced on The Shift last December, it’s not that easy and just because your flock came to see one film, they won’t necessarily show up for the next. However, as with the case of the other 2 films this weekend, they didn’t spend a ton to get here. Right now this looks like a weekend of about $7 million.
Madame Web - This film was super interesting last week and today. Clearly it got smacked around by both the critics and the exit polls, but the path it’s taken from opening day isn’t that much different than the path One Love took. Yeah, this film was a little worse, but when you have critics and exits that are on opposite sides of the spectrum, it shouldn’t have been as close as it was. That intrigues me. Figure this is off 65% or so for the weekend for a gross of about $6 million; but just like with One Love, had this film opened last Friday, it would have been better this weekend.
Drive-Away Dolls - As I said above, this LGBT skewing film is pretty niche-y and the grosses today show it. It’s just fine in the big coastal cities and in general the grosses say ‘upscale’. But there are only so many of those theaters in the country, so once you get past those, the grosses fall off pretty fast. But for what this is, it’s pretty good and looks like a weekend of about $3 million.
Tenet - Had a re-release today in IMAX screens, and in some of the theaters it’s a 70mm print, where the grosses are sensational. I haven’t heard if they have any theaters running a closed caption print, but if they do I’d guess anytime JD Washington speaks the caption would read ‘inaudible’. However, where it’s just normal sound and consumers will be muttering to themselves ‘what did he just say?’, it’s really really good. It looks like they went in about 50 theaters, and the psa is looking really good, probably in the mid teens.