Memorial Day weekend 2024
We’ve got a couple of nice new titles this weekend, but as we told you it’s going to fall way behind last year because of The Little Mermaid. We’ll probably be about 30% behind last year, but we’ll have another giant step back next week. There’s really no major release’s next week, and last year had Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse at $120 million…..soooooo….yeah…..way down next weekend. Just keep repeating our industry mantra, survive until 2025.
I’ve got a lot going on today, and I’ll expand on that next week, so I don’t have much to say today. But most of you have already left town for the weekend and probably won’t read this anyway.
However, I continued to get responses to my Previews/Fan shows issue. Let’s be clear here, I don’t think there’s a chance in hell we’ll get away from doing them, so it’s a nice theory but I can’t see it happening.
Anyway, with the same predictive accuracy as a Cannes standing ovation, here are some thoughts on the weekend box-office.
The Garfield Movie - They had a really encouraging day yesterday with their previews, and today’s numbers are really interesting. It’s showing us (so far) that it’s going to be much better in the Southwest and the West, the traditional family theaters in the flyover states are pretty good, and where school is out today it’s really good. But looking at the theaters where it’s doing business, it’s telling me this has some strong appeal for North American Hispanics (as opposed to Caribbean Hispanics), and it’s not bad with the family crowd overall. It really started picking up when the 1pm shows came in from Texas and as it’s rolled west it keeps improving. Since there’s not that many kids out of school yet, obviously the crucial factor here is how it bounces tomorrow. But there’s something going on now that I haven’t seen in quite a while, it looks like this film is getting a lot of walk up business. We’ve become so accustomed to pre-sales lately, it’s really weird to see the growth from hour to hour at certain theaters, it’s like I took a step back 10 years in time. Because of that, I’m not sure what the rest of the day (and night) holds. But for now it looks high 20s for the 3 day, and mid 30’s for the 4 day. But this is growing in a weird way, so anything could happen.
Furiosa - I’m a big Mad Max fan. I still remember going to the Crest theater in Westwood for the initial release of Mad Max in 1980 and being blown away by the film. I also remember thinking to myself ‘wtf are they saying?’ because the Aussie accents were so heavy. What was funny is I went back a week or so later with some friends, and they had changed out the original dialogue track for a dubbed version with American actors reading the lines, and it was a super weird viewing experience. But enough about me, Furiosa had a really good preview last night, and it started off the day really strong, but it’s been a little flat all day. Inevitably this will get compared (business wise) to Fury Road, but there’s a key difference here that leans into what I’ve been saying the last couple of weeks. Every film like this is an equation (such as IP + Star Power), and with the case of Fury Road it was Mad Max + Tom Hardy + Charlize Theron, in this case it’s Mad Max + Chris Hemsworth + Anya Taylor-Joy. I’d argue that even though he’s been in a bunch of massive Marvel movies, Chris Hemsworth doesn’t get you much more box office than Tom Hardy did in 2015. If you believe the critics, this might be the role that puts Chris Hemsworth in a higher box-office caste, but we’ll have to see. But the difference between Charlize Theron and Anya Taylor-Joy is pretty profound. As much as I’ve really admired the work of Anya, she hasn’t shown me she can deliver an audience (yet). Plus there’s a box-office performance issue with prequels, they generally don’t deliver like sequels do, and this is a prequel. So even though the entertainment press will beat this up because it’s not the same grosses as Fury Road, it’s not Fury Road, it’s something with different box-office levers. WB really left it all on the field with this movie, the campaign was really good, but you can only do what you can do with the elements you’re given. Right now this looks like high 20’s in 3 and mid 30’s in 4.
IF - Having a decent holdover day today, looks like a weekend off 45% for a 3 day in the very high teens and a 4 day in the low/mid 20’s.
Sight - The folks at Angel who brought us Sound of Freedom last summer are back today with another inspirational true story, but this film looks like it’s getting less of the general movie goers. The grosses have been super flat all day, so this looks like it’s mostly pre-sales. It’s running about 2/3 of The Shift right now, so figure a 3 day of around $3 million.
Hit Man - This is going the normal Netflix theatrical track here in the states (followed by the platform next Friday), but it looks like it’s a normal theatrical release in Canada. There’s nothing really going on with it up there, but I don’t know the extent of what they spent or if it’s online next week there as well. So even though the grosses aren’t very good, I can’t really put it into any sort of context.