Third weekend of March 2024

Although the new entries this week aren’t going to make much of a splash, combined with the titles that have opened the last couple of weeks, we should be about even with last year’s (Shazam! Fury of the Gods) weekend box-office . Although we’ll have a nice sequel next week (Ghostbusters: The Frozen Empire) it’s probably not going to be able to match the series high gross from last year’s John Wick: Chapter 4 at $74 million, so we’ll start digging our year to year hole again next week. This is pretty much going to be the story for a while, but hopefully we’ll have a few surprises that keep us close to last year. But if I had to guess right now, I’d say we’ll be down about 20% from last year.

On a brighter note, it looks like SXSW is back as the ’Sundance for Movie goers who are comfortable identifying as normal’. Before the shutdown, SXSW was a terrific launching pad for broad appeal films like A Quiet Place and Ready Player One. But ever since we started getting together in groups again, the reach you would get from a Premier there was pretty light. Last year films like Dungeons & Dragons and Bottoms were good, and played gangbusters there, but the reach of the event was still short of what we would see pre-shutdown. There was talk last year that the main difference was the international press, they hadn’t come back yet (apparently the same issue applied to Sundance until this year*) so that’s why we weren’t seeing the same butterfly effect from the premiere. But from the data I see during my day job, it’s back.

And here’s why it’s important. If you’ve got a film that fits into what SXSW is, in the big scheme of things, it’s a pretty good value. If you’re going to spend mid 6 figures anyway on a premier, why not do it in a place where it’s packed with opinion makers and influencers naturally? You do a big premiere for the publicity you get from the activity on the Carpet, but at something like a SXSW, you get the bonus of what goes on in the theater after the carpet (because it’s packed with influencers and opinion makers). And when you compare SXSW to something with similar reach like Cannes (at least domestically), it’s a bargain.

But as we recover from the shutdown (and now the strikes) it’s nice to know we’ve got a few marketing tools getting back to normal.

Anyway, with a similar accuracy and efficacy of someone yelling ‘careful!’ exactly .5 seconds after you whack your head, trip on something or slip on something; here are some thoughts on the weekend box-office.

Dune Part Two, Kung Fu Panda 4 - This could go either way, and figure they’ll both be in the range of $30 million for the weekend. Normally you would think that KFP would pull away tomorrow, but Dune has been so spectacular on Saturdays so far, it should be able to keep up.

• Just like last week, Dune is holding much better in the large format theaters than the normal digital presentations.
• Kung Fu Panda is okay, and it’s way up from last week in places where kids are out of school, but the places where kids are not out of school it’s not quite as good as I thought it would be.

Arthur the King - Everyone loves dogs, and back in 2019 we had two dog centric movies a couple of months from each other; A Dog’s Journey and A Dog’s Way Home. Today’s numbers are looking more like A Dog’s Way Home which finished the weekend just short of $12 million. However, that film opened on a Holiday weekend so figure this ends up around $10 million for the weekend.

Love Lies Bleeding - A24 expanded this LBGT skewing drama to 1300 runs and it doesn’t look bad at all. Obviously the grosses fall off pretty quickly once you get out of the big cities, but it still should be good enough for $3 million or so for the weekend.

One Life - Went 900 runs and even in the more sophisticated runs, it’s just okay. Figure $1.5 to $2.0 million for the weekend.

The American Society of Magical Negroes - Went 1100 runs and if this was going to break out, it would need to pull some decent numbers in the upscale AA theaters, but it’s just okay there. But sometimes a film like this is just a feathered fish and there’s not much you can do. Looks like $1.5 to $2 million for the weekend.

• However, since Sundance is built around small arty films rather than wide release films, the effect wasn’t as noticeable.