Father's Day weekend 2024
The normal June gloom we get this time of year here in LA looks like it’s going to go away early, and it looks like the box-office is going to be really sunny this weekend as well. I’ll dive into why it’s good below, but at this point it looks like we’ll beat Father’s Day weekend from last year (The Flash, Elemental, The Blackening). It might be only a little bit, but considering what we’ve been going through (and it’s not over yet), we’ll take the clouds parting, if only for one weekend.
And we might even stay ahead next weekend, which is weird. Over the course of my career, the 3rd weekend in June has been some of the most prime release date real estate on the calendar (and way back when, it was the traditional start of the Summer Box-office season, because that’s when the bulk of schools got out), but both last year and this year the lineup looks closer to a Sundance screening schedule than a Blockbuster release date. Before Covid, we had films like Toy Story 4, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Transformers: The Last Knight, Finding Dory, Central Intelligence, Inside Out on this weekend; the list goes on and on. Of course, this is a result of lower output and big titles finding better dates (or at least dates that worked better for them), but once we get back to normal output, next weekend should come back as prime real estate.
One of the things I keep hearing from many of you, as you pitch projects around town, is studios don’t want to hear pitches that aren’t attached to ‘known IP’. And that’s fine, I get the idea that it’s easier to sell a film if you can anchor the marketing to a familiar IP. But with the box-office struggling because of output, we need to keep building our base up and get back the habitual moviegoer. And the ‘known IP’ treasure chest is getting pretty sparse now.
Looking at what’s been going on lately, the audience keeps telling us they need a break from the depressing world we’re in and will pay to feel good. As one of the smartest industry vets I’ve ever known always says ‘funny is money’; and if you look at the top 3 films this weekend, Inside Out 2, Bad Boys Ride or Die and The Garfield Movie, it’s IP + funny.
If you go back to last Christmas, which is always a cage match when all the films drop at the same time, what broke out and had legs? Wonka and Anyone But You. Clearly Wonka was an IP that was sold on being fun and escapist, but the interesting one was Anyone But You. No IP there (yeah, I know, it’s Much Ado About Nothing, but that wasn’t part of the sell), but audiences need a break from the world and the idea of a laugh and the opportunity to do the ‘teen girl haka’ on the way out of the theater made it worth the price. The other breakout from Christmas was Boys in the Boat, which wasn’t a comedy, but the team you wanted to win….won, so you left with a smile on your face. I’m sure you’ve all heard pitches from filmmakers who think a revisionist version of the same story would be way better, and sound something like this: the boat sinks with 10 meters left in the race, Hitler wins, but the one guy who made the team but couldn’t swim, learns to swim and that’s the big victory. What? We might even see a similar example in a year or so if this Miles Teller remake of Officer and a Gentleman happens. They’ll go to shoot the last scene where Zach goes to Paula’s factory and carries her out, but since Miles is allergic to scenes being done as scripted, it will probably end up with Zach bringing Paula a cupcake and he finishes her shift for her while she sits in the breakroom eating the cupcake. Yay. Just give the audience what they want, and let them escape. The top 10 films of 2024 are all escapist, most of them are comedies or are super fun, and the biggest opening of all of them (until this weekend) was an escapist masterpiece.
So what’s the path forward? It’s all got to start with what the studios tell folks they’re looking for. With the IP mine getting sparse, we probably need to figure out the Comedy thing. I know, it’s really tough and it takes a lot more work than something with an IP base, but when theatrical abandoned it to chase the shiny light of IP, the streamers took up the slack and built an empire off of it (and they did it pretty cheaply). The consumer keeps leaving a trail of breadcrumbs outside the theaters that tell us they want to laugh and smile, and maybe the success of the IP + Comedy equation of Bad Boys, *Ghostbusters *or *Garfield *alongside the IP free Anyone But You can open the door for the next Anyone But You. But that’s not going to happen unless Comedy as a genre gets added to the ‘what are you looking for?’ response agencies get when they talk to a studio. But just like everything else in the Theatrical sector that’s hard to do, Comedy is among the hardest, and it takes a very specific type of executive to make that happen. But we should probably give it another shot and throw some resources into it.
Anyway, with the accuracy and efficacy of an exclusive negotiation window for Paramount, here are some thoughts on the weekend box office.
Inside Out 2 - There’s a running joke in the 1980 Woody Allen film, Stardust Memories (during the period where Woody Allen was beginning to fully embracing his serious side with films like Manhattan and Interiors), where fans kept coming up to him saying ‘I really liked your earlier funny films better’. After a couple of films where Pixar explored their more serious side, they are back with the funny again, and the consumer is behaving like a dam that just burst; this thing is a monster. Disney crushed this campaign, and I don’t remember seeing spots from a Disney film where I laughed out loud as much as I did with this film. Last night was a great start (almost $10 million more than Inside Out did on its Thursday previews) and it’s huge today. It’s way better than Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse was at this point last year, and it’s actually creeping up on Barbie. This weekend gets a boost from Father’s Day on Sunday, but since this is a female centric film the boost here will only be moderate. At this point, this looks like a 2024 best (by far) $130 million, at least, and it might soar past that. Welcome back Pixar, we really missed your earlier funny films.
Bad Boys Ride or Die - Funny is money, and based on the exits (and the grosses today) audiences find this film very funny. One of the things about theatrical, it can create its own wind, it’s such a social activity. When you ping friends on a Friday and say ‘what are you doing?’, you might not have thought of seeing a movie, but when everyone is doing it, you have FOMO. So when you have a monster like Inside Out 2, the tide can lift all boats and even though a monster is in the marketplace, we’re not seeing it eat into Bad Boys. This film should end up being the de-facto go-to choice on Father’s Day and it’s possible this could end up in the high 20’s for the weekend. When you back out the Thursday preview gross and look at this weekend to last on an Apple to Apples comparison, the drop would be in the low 40’s.