Third weekend of April 2024
This weekend is playing out pretty much the way I expected it (but not what everyone expected, more on that below), and we have the same issue we’ve had all April. The total for all the films this weekend will be about the same as last year if you don’t count Super Mario Brothers, and we don’t have a Super Mario Brothers this year. Last year’s weekend had Evil Dead Rise, Guy Richie’s The Covenant (apparently this is now the official Guy Richie slot on the release schedule) and the expansion of Beau is Afraid. And the total gross for those three films is about the same as the new films this week. Next week we’ll have higher grossing new films than we did in 2023, but it won’t be enough to make up for Super Mario again.
As I’ve said, this pattern will continue off and on till the 4th quarter, but the year should end strong, we’ve just got to get there.
We haven’t talked about tracking in a while, and it’s having a rough day today. On tracking, one film looked like 20+ and one film looked like 2-, but they’re both gonna do around 10. And before anyone starts saying ’tracking is broken’, it’s not. It’s just built for movies that come out most of the year, and the movies this weekend are different. Tracking was built in the early 80’s and other than where they are finding their sample (which has changed), it’s pretty much the same methodology; polling. Polling has been around since the dawn of time (early cave paintings are similar to unaided awareness*) for a reason because it’s a decent measurement of intent. But it’s also subject to aspects connected to human behavior, so there is human bias. The general school of thought is that the biggest problem with polling is people just want to give the right answer, regardless of what they are going to do. Obviously the last couple of elections have shown that.
But tracking exists because Joe Farrell was a pioneer in our sector and it’s become a language we all grew up on, we all know it, and (since it’s probably the least tightly held set of data on planet earth), everyone gets it. But back when it started it was the only set of data we could use, and now it’s just one set of data; and what has changed since the early 80’s is the way we can mine different sets of data to measure intent. We can now get data from online sources where it’s more action based and relates more to what consumers are doing rather than what they say they’re gonna do. Shameless plug here for what I do in my day job, which had both of these movies right this weekend.
One of the blindsides of poll based tracking is that they measure heavy moviegoers, because that’s going to give you the best read most of the year. But when there’s a movie that doesn’t resonate with heavy moviegoers, but resonates with consumers who never or rarely go to the movies, tracking isn’t going to be predictive because it’s not talking to the right consumer. In addition, it doesn’t matter what source you’re looking at, you still have to account for those pesky tag-alongs, that make up about half the consumers on any given weekend. So tracking isn’t broken, it’s just one measurement and you need other looks at what a film is going to do, like the stuff from my day job.
Anyway, based on something I heard at a seminar titled ‘how to not break character on SNL’, here are some thoughts on the weekend box-office.
As you may have heard, it’s a tight race for #1 this weekend and any of the next three films could win.
Abigail - It’s good today, but just good, and apparently the exits so far are just good. Occasionally these horror films from seasoned pros like Universal can pick up later tonight and surprise us. However, I’m not seeing any indicators of that at this point and it looks like about $10 million - $11 million for the weekend.
Civil War - It’s down at a fairly normal rate for a 2nd Friday, but they had a slightly bigger than average preview gross (11.7%) last week that they’ll have to deal with today. Figure it’s down 55% for a weekend of $10 million - $11 million.
*The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare *- People apparently (judging from the audience score on RT) really love this movie, but there’s some of those people who have seen the movie and still can’t remember the title. So whatever this does, Lion’s Gate did a sensational job marketing this film with a title that’s a massive marketing barrier. It’s really good in the big cities, but it’s also showing some strength in the better red state theaters. Because this is an older male skewing movie, it screams ‘big saturday bounce’, so it should end up in the $9 million - $10 million range and if it surges enough tomorrow it could jump the other two to win the weekend.
Spy x Family Code: White - Geez, speaking of weird titles, this Anime film seems like the ultimate ‘secret handshake’ movie. If you don’t know, you don’t know and you won’t go. But it looks like enough people know and it’s good, but nothing in the high end of what we’ve seen in the Anime genre. Looks like around $5 million for the weekend.
Sasquatch Sunset - Expanded to 900 runs and there’s not much going on here, maybe $500k for the weekend.
- or maybe it’s vice-versa.