Fourth weekend of June 2024

More good news at the box-office this weekend, it looks like we’ll beat last year’s total (Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Ruby Gillman Teenage Kraken) by a little bit. As usual, the box-office is its healthiest when there’s a nice variety of choices, and that’s what’s driving the weekend again. We should keep the ball rolling for the next couple of weeks as well, until that pesky quarter of a Billion Dollars that Barbenheimer did on their first weekend comes crashing in, but that’s the way it’s gonna be until November so let’s just take it one weekend at a time.

Thanks so much to all of you who reached out after my press release on Tuesday; it took a village to get there, and that took quite a few of you to get that done; and I really appreciate the help. As I said a couple of weeks ago, I’m completely committed to making both of these systems better, I can’t wait to roll out what I’ve got planned.

Today we’re going to talk a little more about IP. There have been a few examples dealing with IP value that have been interesting lately, and what’s struck me (as we see the box-office results) is how all the new channels of distribution might have changed IP values. A couple of weeks ago Inside Out 2 opened to 70% more than Inside Out did back in 2015, and there was a lot of speculation why that happened, because for quite a while we’ve been seeing sequels go the other way. But lately, we’ve seen a couple other examples of how sequels have a significantly different box-office result than the predecessor. For example, back in 2018, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse opened to $35 million, and then last year Spider-Man: Across the Spider-verse opened to a stunning $121 million; why would that happen?

It used to be that sequels decayed from version to version, with the exception of a couple outliers that were spectacularly good, such as Dawn of the Planet of the Apes; which ended up being significantly better with both critics and audiences; however the results from one to the other were incremental, not earth shattering.

I used to hear all the time from studios (when talking about a sequel to a film where the first version was iffy at the box-office), ‘but it was massive on home video’; and that logic rarely manifested itself at the box-office, and the sequels for successful films all just kept going down by 20% or so each time. But now we keep having these situations where the sequel (or in some cases, the Prequel) is not only holding it’s own with its predecessor, it’s going up (and sometimes way up).

So what’s changed? Well, you’ve probably read (a lot) of how Disney ruined their Family Film Theatrical sector by putting everything on Disney +; but did they, or did they actually elevate it? Yeah, they went through a tough run, but it probably all comes back to the same base idea; ‘it’s the movies’. But does streaming, especially for one of the streaming monsters like Disney + and Netflix, have a much deeper reach than any home video (DVD, VHS) ever did? Since Inside Out was one of the best films Pixar/Disney made, and exposing that film to a much wider audience (through Disney +), did that exposure elevate the value of the IP and cause the increase in opening weekend?

The same thing could be said about the Animated Spider-Verse films. The first film was made using an animation technique that takes some getting used to, and that showed up in the opening weekend. It played like a high value IP Anime movie; it was really good in Upscale, Asian and (because of the lead character) AA markets. But even a high value IP Anime movie only gets you to $35 million; but it was such a good movie (it won the Animated Oscar that year, as well as a slew of other awards), it held up nicely in theaters and ended up with a domestic cume of $190 million. But it also did very well once it hit Netflix (and it hit Netflix in 2020, which couldn’t be more perfect timing to grow the IP of a great movie), and that might be where the groundwork for the runaway opening of the sequel started.

What does this mean for all of you? Fueled by the low bar of engagement and their wide reach, we’ll have to start looking hard at whatever streaming data we can get, because it looks like we’re in a different world now and all that exposure is changing the economic value of IP’s. Of course, the world in general is a chaotic place, and giving the consumer a safe place to relax and leave the world outside, supports the theory that high quality/high entertainment value IP’s combined with familiarity might get a lift from streaming viewership. But before someone tries to drag Jack Reacher back to the theaters, the same parameters still apply. The base IP must be Theatrical, the base IP should be in the upper tiers of quality and satisfaction and (of course) it’s got to be fun. Some of you might say ‘but what about Furiosa?’, and that’s an interesting example. But I would argue that’s a great IP to be wary of, because Fury Road clearly checked a lot of those boxes I just mentioned. But that’s another example of how this sector is hard, it’s possible that IP was just so specific in skew that (even though the film was excellent) you weren’t going to grow the reach no matter how much exposure it got.

But if I’m right and the Disney + exposure caused that stunning opening on Inside Out 2……..Moana 2 (Moana was by far the biggest title on Disney +), yikes, what’s the ceiling there?

Anyway, with the similar accuracy of any Peter Bart take on the industry right now*, here are some thoughts on the weekend box-office.

Inside Out 2 - Still looking great, figure it’s down 40% or so for a weekend of about $60 million.

A Quiet Place: Day One - This is holding its own against the first two movies right now, and in another marketplace, I’m not sure we’d be saying that. It’s a prequel (which generally don’t do what sequels do), it’s got a new no-name cast and they seem to be going after cat lovers as a core audience. But both the first two editions of this IP were pretty good movies, and that might be good enough in today’s market. Really nice numbers today, and it’s especially good here in LA, but should be headed for a weekend in the mid/high 40’s with a good shot at the same 50 the A Quiet Place opened to.

Horizon: An American Sage Chapter I - It’s amazing that Kevin Costner put his own money up to get this passion project done, and clearly it’s resonating where you think it would (in the reddest of the red states), but I wish this was timed a little differently. Had he made this a couple of years from now, we might see a much better result. Warners could have hired people to stand behind every consumer in the country, and when they got exposed to an ad they would tap them on the shoulder and say ‘it’s not Yellowstone it’s a theatrical movie’; but the consumer would still think ‘oh, look, Yellowstone, when’s that premiering?’ So as much as Warners (and Costner clearly worked the Publicity trail pretty hard) did everything they could, this film just had a competition issue that’s impossible to get past. All things considered, it’s not bad at the $11 million or $12 million it’s headed to.

Kalki 2898 AD - This big budget, all star cast Bollywood Sci-Fi film (apparently the first in a series that plans to mimic the MCU) is pulling some sensational numbers. And by sensational, I mean sensational. In the top grossing theaters, it’s tripling the gross of Inside Out 2 or Quiet Place, it’s a monster. It’s not quite as good as something like RRR was, but it’s close. Figure a 3 day around 7 or 8 million, but they opened yesterday and reported $5.5 million, so the 4 day should be in the low teens.

Jatt & Juliet 3 - It’s Bollywood day today, and this is the second sequel to a smash hit series. Where it’s really good, it’s sensational (mostly in Canada), but they only went 120 runs and they should get to $1 million or so for the weekend.

Kinds of Kindness - They expanded to 500 runs today, and it’s still doing really good business in the better upscale theaters, however those new theaters eviscerated the theaters that opened last week. Looks like a 3 day of $1.4 million or so.

Blue Lock The Movie: Episode Naji- - These Crunchyroll releases fall into a couple of different buckets, but just like everything else in our business it’s all about the IP. And this IP doesn’t have much to it, this looks a lot like one of their other lower tier films, That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime: The Movie - Scarlet Bond (yeah, you remember that one), so figure it should end up around the same $1.6 million this weekend.

• speaking in Deadline this week about Beverly Hills Cop 4 “It will open July 3 for Netflix’s 270 million sofa-bound subscribers worldwide without a theatrical release. By contrast, Bad Boys: Ride or Die* from Amazon is briefly thriving at the box office.*” Interesting…umm, you do know that when Bad Boys Ride or Die drops on Netflix, the numbers will obliterate the BHC numbers, plus it will have all that other theatrical and PPV revenue. And Bad Boys Ride or Die isn’t from Amazon.