Third weekend of July 2024

Although we’re exactly a year after BarbenHeimer, the biz is fighting as hard as it can; and even though we’re going to be behind the same weekend last year, we’re still in a hot market and films keep punching a little above their weight. To show you how last year was an outlier’s outlier, the entire gross for this year is still going to be short of what Barbie did on it’s own last year on this weekend. So if you take out Barbie from last year’s gross, even with Oppenheimer in the marketplace, we’re about the same gross (maybe a little behind) as this weekend last year. So if you take the monsters that tend to live on this weekend out of the picture, Lion King in 2019 for example, it’s closer to a normal July weekend gross wise. Of course, we’ll be right back in the game with the Disney/Marvel cavalry showing up next weekend, with another outlier that should set a new edge for R rated opening weekends.

Anyway, with the expected accuracy of the code in a Crowdstrike security update, here are some thoughts on the weekend box-office.

Twisters - A lot going on with this film today, and it’s very very good, but why it’s happening is a little more interesting. This film has a lot of elements I’ve been talking about lately, but we seem to be in a ‘hot’ market right now, and we might be seeing the theatrical version of what happened a couple of years ago in the travel industry when that sector experienced ‘revenge travel’. Similar to the idea of travel, the consumer wants to leave the house every once in a while; and we might be seeing the flip side of ’stay at home and stream stream stream’, because folks have had their fill of TV (and maybe this is a side effect of the streamers pulling back on new product).

But you also need a reason to go, and Universal/WB did a really good job here of making this seem like a really fun time at the movies. The marketing leveraged the IP nicely, making it seem familiar without making it seem like you’ve already seen it, and gave a really nice hint that they might be able to stop a tornado; so you wanted to see if that was going to happen. They could have wagged their fingers at the audience about climate change (which is usually the norm), but they didn’t and kept it fun and light. Why does all this make a difference? Tag alongs, Tag alongs, Tag alongs. Making this an ‘issue’ movie makes the tent smaller, making it fun makes the tent bigger. They hired a director who grew up where the characters in this movie live, so it’s probably not a coincidence that this film is doing just as good in the (completely neglected) fly over states, as well as the coasts (where we seem to make most of our films for). The reason this is blowing by all expectations was because the groups got bigger, and once again our sector is a business unit that creates its own wind.

But there’s another big win that’s so tricky to pull off in this sector. Since casting decisions happen years before release, studios are always being pitched to hire ’the next big thing’ by the agency foot soldiers, and more often than not those decisions don’t work out. Not because the actors they hire have a talent issue, it’s more of a question of their young star power tipping by the time your movie comes out. We just saw this on Furiosa, and 2 years ago Anya Taylor Joy was the next big thing; but her star power hadn’t developed by the time Furiosa was released. But in the Glen Powell case, it seemed to happen right on time. Although Top Gun Maverick was a great arrival notice, the runaway success of Anyone But You seemed to be the tipping point, and Hit Man made enough of a mark as a streamer (before it eventually vanished like all streaming movies do) to boost his profile. So for *Twisters, *the arrival of Glen Powell as a real star feels fresh; and when you’re trying to freshen up a 30 year old IP, that’s about as good as you can do when you make the decision 2 years ago. However, for every Glen Powell, there are 5 Taylor Kitsch’s, and banking on a young star to tip in 2 years is a really tough aspect to a really tough business.

But as I pointed out a couple of weeks ago, it’s encouraging to see young actors coming up that ‘get it’, and as many of you noticed, Glen Powell was everywhere lately. The work ethic on the publicity trail is such an important aspect in this sector, and there was a time when it was difficult to get talent to support a project. In our current climate of social media and its reach, doing really grass roots things like Theater drop-in’s matter, but there was a time where top actors wouldn’t even consider it.

So, there’s a lot of good things going on with this film, and the grosses are proof of the entertainment value of movies, plus the work ethic of the talent attached to them. I don’t see a path where this is less than the mid 70’s and it has a really good shot at 80. It’s a Cat 5 hit.

Despicable Me 4 - Still really good, down a standard 50% for a weekend in the low 20’s

Inside Out 2 - Down another 40% for a weekend in the low teens.

Longlegs - The exits were so iffy last week, I expected this to be down more today. But it looks like a pretty standard (for Horror) down 55% and a weekend of about 10.

Oddity - Went 700 runs and there’s not much going on here. Looks like $400k over the weekend.