Fourth weekend of September 2024
The consistent flow of films continues this weekend, and the total gross for the weekend should be right at (or a little better) than the 5 year average (taking out 2020 and 2021). We had a decent gross from the new films this weekend last year (Paw Patrol II, Saw X, The Creator, Dumb Money), and the new films won’t quite contribute what the new films did last year, but the sum of it all should be very similar. We’ll take a giant step forward next week when *Joker *comes in, but the week after that will be the *Taylor Swift *weekend, so we’ll fall behind again. The good news is that we were almost 20% behind 2023 back before we went on this run we’re on now, and it’s a little below 12% now, so we really carved a lot off the deficit during the summer.
Anyway, with the expected accuracy of an Eric Adams expense account, here are some thoughts on the weekend box-office.
The Wild Robot - A little over 2 years ago, DreamWorks Animation got back into the original Family IP game with The Bad Guys. And although it didn’t really set the Box-Office world on fire during opening weekend ($23.9 million), it got terrific reviews and exits, and it held up really nicely week after week and ended up with a cume at just short of $100 million Domestic. DWA has followed that up this weekend with this critical darling (currently at 98% on RT) and there’s a significant difference to the way it’s performing so far. Where The Bad Guys played very family, this is much broader and looks like they are attracting a significant general audience.
Why is that important? Because in the Animation game, branding is everything. Just by putting a logo on a film from a brand that has produced consistent quality (and has earned the trust of consumers), audiences understand what it is immediately and that understanding translates into box-office. This even comes into play in non-animated films and audiences are shockingly knowledgeable. Back before the purchase of Fox by Disney, audiences knew the difference between a Disney Marvel and a Fox Marvel, and that showed up at the box-office. So when you have a dependable brand, you are not saying it’s a family movie (or a Super-Hero movie) the dependable brand is saying ‘it’s a good movie’. And that equals tag-alongs.
The DreamWorks Animation Brand used to really mean something back when Katzenberg was steering the ship, you could speak of it in the same breath as some Disney or Pixar animation titles. But times change and audiences forget, and the DWA brand doesn’t really mean much today. But the results here are all pointing up, and although the gross this weekend won’t come close to what the Platinum Brands in this genre generate, this might be the big step that re-establishes DWA, and the next one could be the one where the dam breaks.
It will be interesting to see where this goes, especially at night with the General Audience, last night’s opening day gross was a lot better than we would normally see from a family film. As of now, this looks like a weekend in the mid 30’s.
Megalopolis - Francis Ford Coppola’s long gestating film is finally seeing a 1800 screen theatrical release, and as you would probably guess, the theaters where it’s doing business are all generally populated by upscale cinephiles. The grosses in those theaters are actually pretty good, especially where it’s got some IMAX showtimes. However, the grosses are super flat today, we’re not seeing much walk up business. Because it’s doing that, I’m not sure what tomorrow and the rest of the run looks like once it runs through those cinephiles. Just as a hipshot I’ll say this looks like $5 million.
Devara: Part 1 - It’s interesting that these big ticket Bollywood films are now going day and date in the US, because the grosses here are good enough to warrant it. Looks like a pretty normal Bollywood $4 million for the weekend, but there’s a nice consistency to these films.
The Substance - This seems to be the ‘water cooler’ movie of September, and it’s taking a path similar to what we saw last year with Saltburn. That buzz is showing up today and it’s down very little. They lost a few runs but they still have at only being down 25% from the pure 3 day of last week. That would put them at around $1.7 or so for this weekend.
Saturday Night - Went exclusive 5 runs with 2 in NY (Lincoln Sq, Alamo Brooklyn) and 3 in LA (Grove, Century City and Burbank), and it’s really good across the board. Shockingly (not) the best two grosses are Burbank (near NBC) and Lincoln Sq (near NBC), but they are all pretty good. Figure a pretty sexy PSA in the $45k to $50k range.