Second weekend of April 2024

This weekend is playing out about as expected, we’ll still be down quite a bit from last year’s similar weekend, but the reason we’re down is more encouraging. As I pointed out last week, the new films will contribute about the same gross as last year (*Pope’s Exorcist, Renfield, Suzume *added up to about $23 million) but Super Mario Brothers grossed $92.3 million last year on this weekend. So the fact that we’re only going to be down about 45% from last year, but Super Mario Brothers was 65% of last year’s gross, we actually have a slightly deeper quiver of titles this year. And it should be a very similar situation next week.

You’ve probably read all the hijinx from CinemaCon this week, and it seems like there are movies in the pipeline and we’ll start getting back to normal pretty soon. However, it doesn’t seem like we’ve got a BarbenHeimer weekend coming up this year, unless Disney goes all Kayser Soze and puts the two biggest films of the year, Inside Out 2 and Deadpool/Wolverine on the same date.

One of the positive stories this week is A24 continuing their journey from plucky indie to a force to be reckoned with. They burst onto the scene in 2013 with titles like Spring Breakers, Bling Ring and The Spectacular Now; all starting with a handful of runs in NY and LA and then growing them into a good cume total. They moved on to wider releases like The Witch, but they always avoided some of the standard big studio marketing ideas like TV spots. Last Christmas they continued their evolution and waded into the TV spot world on The Iron Claw, and this weekend they’re releasing Civil War on 3800 runs supported by a campaign that included a decent (but not substantial) amount of TV.

But here’s where something interesting is happening, no matter what studio you’re talking about, they’re really good at certain audiences, and not as good at others (although there’s usually one ‘hot’ studio that seems to be good at everything at any given time in theatrical history). Some studios are great at Horror, others are great at Family films or Comedies, etc. Since marketing is all about activating the right audience, they really ‘know what they know’ and the ‘do what they do’; but sometimes they just don’t have the knowledge to activate everyone they would like to. Of course, sometimes the film just doesn’t have the elements you need to get where you need to get, but that’s another issue, and there’s no guilt towards the studio. It’s not like the difference between Shohei Ohtani giving his phone freely to the FBI in a multi-million dollar gambling investigation vs. Tom Brady refusing to give his phone to the NFL because of underinflated footballs, that’s a different situation and you can assume guilt.

Anyway, in the case of Civil War, the grosses are really good and it’s (by far) going to be A24’s biggest opening ever. However, when you look at where it’s doing business, it’s where A24 knows how to activate the audience. It’s very coastal and big city, the top grosses are all in NY (especially Manhattan), LA and SF, but for a film that had a shot at resonance in the red states it doesn’t look like that audience bought in. Now that could be that they just don’t have the elements to get those fly over consumers, because they’re pretty smart folks there. But not having what you need vs not getting the job done falls into the same category as how to pronounce .gif. But for a studio that has a keen knack for identifying emerging talent (and has done so from day one), and seems to be able to squeeze substantial gross out of smaller marketing spends, this is a terrific result.

Anyway, with the same accuracy associated with me knowing how many Omen movies there were last Friday (6 not 3), here are some thoughts on the weekend box-office.

Civil War - Got off to a great start last night and continued that good start today, but as I said above it’s super coastal and blue state. You have to go deep deep deep into the grosses to find a theater that did well on Sound of Freedom. But they’ve got a lot of IMAX theaters, which tend to do better with presales and go a little flat during the day; and because of that it’s a little flat today. Since this is an adult male skewing movie (and pretty caucasian as well), Saturdays are usually pretty good, so unless they don’t get the usual adult male bump tomorrow, this should be good for $20 million over the weekend. Hopefully this is just the beginning for A24 and they’ll break this record soon.

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire - It’s down a little more than usual, but it makes sense because they don’t have the IMAX theaters that switched over to Civil War. Should be off 50% for a weekend in the mid teens.

Monkey Man/The First Omen - Even though Monkey Man had significantly better exits than Omen, they’re dropping about the same today from last week. Figure they are both down 55% for a weekend in the high 4’s for Monkey Man and high 3’s for Omen.

The Long Game - Went 1000 runs and there are some decent numbers in Texas, but it’s pretty soft everywhere else. Figure a weekend of $700k or so.

Arcadian - Went 1000 runs and there’s nothing going on here. Maybe $500k for the weekend.

*Sasquatch Sunset *- Went 9 runs in NY, LA, SF and Austin and it’s pretty good for the most part, maybe a little soft in the SF and Austn runs so far. But looks good enough for a psa in the high teens.