First weekend of March 2024

And we’re back. Thanks to some Sandworms putting a tourniquet on the box office, we’ll be pretty even with the same weekend last year. And that’s saying something because last year Creed III (thanks to the late MGM distribution chief’s prescient dating skills) led the box office with a series high $58 million, but we also had a Demon Slayer movie at $10 million. But as I’ve told you before, a thriving box office is the result of a deep lineup of films in the marketplace, and this weekend is a story of one movie, so it’s a testament to Dune and WB/Legendary that we’ll even get to the same number as last year. Last year’s lineup of holdovers was Ant-Man, Cocaine Bear, Jesus Revolution and Avatar, so there was a lot of business still going on outside of the new films that we don’t have this year. The rest of March should be pretty close to last year, but once we get to April, we’ll fall behind again because we won’t have anything close to Super Mario Brothers.

With apologies that today’s email is pretty dull and with the expected accuracy of the Wayfarer’s Chapel Wedding calendar, here are some thoughts on the weekend box-office.

Dune Part Two - Every once in a while a movie has to move release dates because of marketplace issues; we saw that over and over again with* Top Gun Maverick* and it’s 5 (!) release dates. But as a good part of our industry scratches its head when it moves and says ‘is that really necessary?’, when it eventually arrives at its destination the clouds part and the angels sing (and with Top Gun Maverick the angels sang a long long time), and the folks who didn’t get it……get it. And that’s one of the fascinating things about this business, which is notorious for its short attention spans. There are those who like to play the short game and those who like to play the long game (I’m definitely in that camp), so when you have decisions made that require some patience and consideration for the long game, you sometimes can be fighting a majority who think the short game is better.

Dune Part Two was supposed to kick off the 2023 Holiday season with a prime first week of November release, but with the strike droning on and a cast that was stocked with ascending (as well as established) movie stars, you had to think long and wait until you could give the film a proper publicity tour. And what a tour it was, movie stars doing movie star stuff, dresses going viral; all the things you want to support an expensive film like this. But you wouldn’t have had any of that last November. Of course, we can’t go back in time and A/B test this, so we’ll never know how much lift the movie star based publicity generated.

As for the grosses today, they’re sensational. Although the preview gross was pretty similar to something like Oppenheimer last night (minus the extra ‘fan’ shows), it’s a couple of points behind of Oppenheimer this afternoon. That makes sense because Oppenheimer was released in the heart of July and this is the beginning of March, when the consumer has more ‘real life’ stuff going on. As we look forward, this might have some advantages and disadvantages in comparison to Oppenheimer over the weekend. As far as the advantages, it’s 20 mins shorter; so in a world where this is going to be on 5 or 6 screens in every multiplex, that gets you an extra show here and there. Dune Part Two also doesn’t have Barbie opening against it, so it’s going to have a lot more retail shelf space and there’s very little chance the exhibitors will run out of seats. Of course with a movie like this, you could always have a situation like was observed on Avatar: The Way of Water where consumers chose to wait until they could get a seat in an IMAX/Dolby theater. But that was over Christmas when there’s a behavioral issue because of the ‘social schedule clutter’ on opening weekend (the weekend before Christmas) vs having all the time in the world after Christmas. Dune Part Two will also be a little softer this Sunday because it’s March instead of July. All in all this looks terrific and I don’t see a scenario where it doesn’t have a 7 in front of the 3 day (and if it really gets an adult bounce tomorrow, could get an 8).

Problemista - A24 took this out on a standard NY/LA exclusive track and the NY theaters are doing a little better than the LA theaters, but they’re all pretty good. Figure a psa in the low 20’s.

All the other films are off a pretty good amount, it’s a one movie weekend.