Fourth weekend of April 2024

This weekend is playing out just a little better than I expected, and the new films should generate a little more than double the gross of what the new films did this weekend last year (Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret, Sisu, Big George Foreman), however we’re (once again) missing that $40 million that Super Mario Brothers contributed last year, so we’ll still be about 20% behind last year. Unfortunately it’s going to get worse next week, because Guardians of the Galaxy Vol III opened to $118 million and as good a job as Universal is doing on the reboot of The Fall Guy, the IP just isn’t there to compete with the Marvel machine. So when are we going to have a weekend where we beat the same weekend from 2023? It’s gonna be a while, and probably not until Father’s Day when Inside Out 2 opens. When the strikes happened we knew there was going to be some downstream pain, and here it is, but we’ll get through it and by the 4th quarter we should start turning things around.

Circling back on a topic that I brought up a couple of weeks ago, one of the aspects to Theatrical that makes it attractive to consumers looking for entertainment outside the home is Fanship. Clearly we’ve seen the profound effect comic book IP has had in the sector since Spider-Man classed up the genre back in 2002, by asking the question ‘what if we don’t treat this genre with contempt?’ And the fans showed up in droves….and brought their friends. But as great as IP is in getting fans of an IP to go to a theater, and as an industry we’ve depended way too much on IP familiarity lately; but since the dawn of the silent eras, a major component of theatrical has been Movie Stars.

But the Movie Star component has been tricky lately. Two of the key aspects that make Movie Stars Movie Stars is availability and consistency. Think of Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise and both of those factors loom large. Even in an everything everywhere social media world, you have to ration out the availability of a Movie Star; they need to be slightly mysterious and you have to go to a theater to see their work. Because of the shifts in the industry over the last 5 years, a lot of the established Movie Stars took the bag and did a decent amount of work for the streamers, so that Fanship shifted to an ‘at home’ consumer. Of course, let’s face it, time has marched on and many of the established Movie Stars have aged, so we need the new crop of younger actors to be the next gen.

However, there’s another issue with Movie Stars that have Fanship, but don’t have the type of Fanship that drives a consumer to a theater; and that’s a component of our industry’s preference for IP driven films lately. It’s always been interesting to me how a lot of very big recognizable names who got most of their recognition from working in big IP movies, can’t seem to generate box office based on their name outside that IP character. They are good actors and for the most part play the Movie Star card well, but the names that come to mind, like the Marvel/DC Chris’s (Hemsworth, Pratt, Pine, Evans) who just can’t seem to break through as a box-office engine outside of the IP character (s) they’re famous for. And that makes sense because the consumer driver for those films is the IP and the actors are somewhat secondary. It will be interesting to see if someone like Robert Downey Jr’s next non IP film shows the success of Oppenheimer, since he really hasn’t worked that much outside of the Marvel Universe in a long time.

This probably comes down to choices of projects outside of the IP driven character they are famous for. I think of the best days of Nicholas Cage, where he built a whole career on switching between tentpoles and serious/indie films. After Face/Off he did City of Angels, after Gone in 60 Seconds he did Family Man. And of course, that’s easier said than done, and I’m not suggesting any actor tell their team ‘I’m only gonna do good movies’; of course it doesn’t work that way. But part of the actor’s ’team’ is the actor themselves and they need to have the vision to see good material…..and of course like anything else in this business…get a little lucky. But consistency of the movies quality wise, big or small, makes movie stars.

And that’s where this weekend, as much as we’re still recovering from the strikes and the numbers are a little depressing, is once again showing us there’s a future here. The next gen needs to be smart, hard working and aware, and I pointed that out a couple of weeks ago talking about Glen Powell, TImothee Chalamet and Sydney Sweeney. This weekend, Zendaya is showing that consistency in her choices with a movie this weekend that shows she can open a film without the IP character(s) she’s known for in the IP based tentpoles she’s done. We already know she’s smart because she realized Zendaya is a waaaay better Movie Star name than Zendaya Coleman, and of course the luck part kicked in when Greatest Showman kept going and going. But the fact that MGM moved this movie out of September (to this weekend) because she’s a Movie Star and without her hitting the Movie Star publicity trail (and she was very good at it, again) this movie wouldn’t have been near what it was if she was prohibited from publicity because of the strike.

Many of you have complained to me about how the business keeps leaning on sequels and superhero movies and it’s so ‘unoriginal’. Well if you want original, we need to develop Movie Stars because they’ll be the IP that drives their fans to the theater. Of course, one of the problems is that studios can own IP, they can’t own Movie Stars, so the money flow comes back to that. But that’s a topic for a different Friday.

Anyway, with the same accuracy of a USC Commencement schedule, here are some thoughts on the weekend box-office.

*Challengers *- MGM smartly moved this Zendaya driven drama out of September because of the strike (as did WB with Dune), and the move is paying off. They had a really good night last night and the numbers started out really strong today, but my only concern is that they’ve been a little flat all day. It’s playing pretty coastal and upscale and it’s especially good in Manhattan. Those theaters tend to be a little more pre-sales heavy, so the flatness makes sense and might come back tonight. But considering that MGM just recently got a Jason Stratham film, which usually grosses in the high single digits into the high teens, and now they’ve taken a film with an emerging star to a similar number, they’re clearly an emerging force and are on to something. Now some of you might say (and I’m pretty sure you will) ‘why are you getting all worked up about a movie in the mid teens?’. Ok, but there are a lot of ’established’ Movie Stars who took the bag from the streamers during Covid that would kill for this gross, so this is a very good result. And if we’re going to have a healthy theatrical sector, films like this (where the star is the IP) that get to the mid-teens are key, because lately they’ve been stuck in high single digits. Unless it does something unusual over the weekend, figure it’s around $15 million.

Unsung Hero - These faith based films, similar to the films made by Kingdom Stories (Jesus Revolution, Ordinary Angels), seem to have a weird consistency. The critics shrug and call them TV movies, but the audiences love them; they often have a RT score in the 40’s and 50’s but get A and A+ CinemaScores. This film looks like it’s following the same path, and just like a lot of these faith based movies there’s hotspots around the country where there’s pockets of fanship or religious affiliation. Since this film is based on the true story of the Faith Based Music Group For King & Country, we’re seeing really good grosses in the heartland, consistent with what this genre does. Sometimes these faith based films run out of gas fast, but if it plays fairly normally, figure it ends up in the $5 million to $6 million range.

Alien - 20th reissued this 1979 classic (where in 1979 I worked at the Egyptian Hollywood and we ran the film 24 hours a day for the first weekend, and I barely survived the 4am show crowd….) in about 1800 theaters and it’s not half bad. It’s not moving much from hour to hour so this is all probably pre-sales, but this has a shot at getting close to $2 million for the weekend.

Boy Kills World - Went 2000 runs and outside of the hard core fanboy theaters in LA, it’s nothing much. Maybe a little more than $1 million for the weekend.