Third weekend of August 2024

I hate to sound like a broken record (but for those of you who have been reading this for the bulk of the 19 years I’ve been writing it, being a broken record is kinda my brand*), but a variety of films going at different demos creates a healthy box-office, and we have a very healthy box-office this weekend. We should blow away the same weekend from last year (Blue Beetle, Strays) by 40% or more, and we’ll be well ahead of the same weekend from 2019 (Good Boys, Angry Birds 2, 47 Meters Down Uncaged, Blinded by the Light). And we should be able to claw some of our early year deficit back next week as well and continue for most of September. So after a pretty slow start to Summer, mostly because Disney was retooling and we didn’t have a Marvel on the first week of May and a Disney tentpole on Memorial Day, it’s been a pretty good Summer considering all the headwinds and disruptions we’ve faced. But over the last couple of weeks, we’ve brought a lot of seldom or non-moviegoers back to the theaters, and that should help this sector going forward.

Speaking of Disney, there are two really positive takeaways from this weekend regarding Disney, and our business in general. The most important one is that for the 2nd time in a row, it seems like they are opening something from their 20th Century Label to a good number (3rd if you consider Deadpool a 20th film because the IP came over with Fox). And it’s been a long tough road to get there. As I’ve said before, we see examples over and over again these days of IP’s moving from one studio to another, and the new studio does better or worse than the original studio during opening weekend. Some studios understand how to activate audiences, i.e. Deadpool Wolverine crushing the results of Deadpool when it was at Fox. But this has been a long slog through some really iffy films to get here, and there’s a learning curve for films that come screaming over the fence towards Marketing that aren’t so good. You look at the slate that came over with the purchase in 2019, and you can almost hear Rupert Murdoch looking at it saying ‘get me out of this business, let’s concentrate on our core business where we produce TV that sells catheters and doomsday meal kits’.

Anyway, with a similar accuracy as the Intuit Dome entry system, here are some thoughts on the weekend box-office.

Alien: Romulus - I talked about two interesting things about this movie, the 2nd aspect is that this film was greenlit for Hulu; and after they saw what they had, it’s now a very successful theatrical release. This is one of the great things about having the streaming sector in our toolbox, you can make a movie like this where the economics justify a budget based on a streaming release, but if it over delivers quality wise (and has theatricality), there’s extra money to be made. The flip side of this is the elegant retreat to a streaming only release when a film turns out not so good, because it’s still better than a bad weekend at the box-office.

But there was an important aspect to this particular Alien edition, it went back to it’s roots and it’s closer to the Horror movie the original Alien was, instead of the Sci-Fi corporate drama of the last couple of films (especially the David Fincher Alien3, which is known as the best of the series by far at the New Beverly and in France). Why is that important? Because you get a twofer here when you activate audiences, you get the Sci-Fi fans and the Horror fans so the audience grows in size. And since I’m always harping about Tagalongs, it’s way more fun to see a horror movie with a bunch of friends, so the groups tend to be bigger. What’s interesting about this audience is that it’s still older males, which is the Sci-fi wheelhouse and Horror tends to skew to younger females. That tells me that maybe the last couple of Corporate Evil Alien movies have maybe been constructed wrong, and by not leaning into the tone of the original Alien, they lost some of the fans that wanted the Xenomorphs to be more like Michael Myers than Michael Eisner.

There’s also another aspect that will be interesting to follow, if you’ve seen any of the materials for this film, IMAX was the name above the title and was waaaay out front in the campaign. It will be interesting to see the % of PLF tickets sold this weekend, and since they made such a big deal about seeing it in IMAX, will the consumer downgrade to another theater, or just pass?

They had a really good Thursday Opening yesterday and it looks a lot like another horror sequel like Scream VI this afternoon, however it will be interesting to see how the older Male audience here vs the younger Female audience for Scream behaves the rest of the weekend. If this stays older Male, it will flame out around 7:30pm tonight, but should have the normal older audience bounce tomorrow. If it behaves more like a horror film, it should play deep into tonight and be down a little tomorrow. Figure either way it’s in the low/mid 40’s.

Deadpool & Wolverine - Down a pretty standard 45% this weekend, for a gross in the high 20’s.

It Ends with Us - As you may have heard, this had great word of mouth, but it looks like it’s down a decent amount today from last Friday. There might be two reasons for that; first, a lot of kids are back in school today, we’re down to less than half on break today. But 2nd, when moviegoers are telling their friends about this movie and telling them to go see it, the friend asks ’so what’s it about?’, ’it’s about Domestic Abuse’……. ‘Oh, okay’……. So as good as the word of mouth is, there are barriers; and the fact that those barriers were still there last week when this opened as spectacular as it did (since it’s a domestic abuse movie), it’s an achievement right up there with Kobe Bryant winning an Oscar in the middle of the #metoo movement. Figure it’s down about 55% for a weekend around $20 million.

Coraline 15th Anniversary - Fathom took this out on 1500 theaters and for what it is, it’s really good. They did $3 million last night and it looks like it’s headed to a similar gross today. So figure a 3 day gross of about $8 million and a 4 day of about $11 million.

My Penguin Friend - Went 1000 theaters and doesn’t look like much is going on. Looks like $500k or so.

Skincare - Went 700 theaters and other than the Sunset 5 and the Grove, which are Okay at best, there’s nothing here either. Looks like $300k or so.

• but you guys tend to forget stuff, so I have to say it over and over again.