First weekend of October 2024
Despite some of the drama going on this weekend at the box-office, we’re still going to be way ahead of the same weekend last year (Exorcist: Believer). We’ll take a step back for the next couple of weeks, mostly because of TAYLOR SWIFT last year, but once we get to the end of the month we should be competitive or better each weekend than last year.
There’s something that Sports and Entertainment have in common, success can be an enemy. On the sports side, you will often see teams start a season with a hot streak (you’ll see this a lot in College Football), and then they start walking into games with an attitude of ‘we’re soooo good, just look at what we did the last couple of games’. But you still have to play the game, and there’s an old cliche that says ‘yesterday’s scores don’t win today’s ball games’. So that ‘hot’ team gets their heads kicked in by a team that is actually playing the game that day, instead of thinking their history will win it for them. But sports is really hard, and unless you play every game to win, you’ll get your head kicked in.
As all of you know, Entertainment is hard too (and oddly enough can be just as physical, but that’s a different conversation), and I’m not sure there’s a harder sector than Theatrical. So unless you use all the tools and resources at your disposal, you’re probably not playing to win. And unfortunately success in this sector can lead to an attitude of ‘I know more than anyone, so I don’t need any of those pesky resources or tools’; and putting that bubble around you often leads to getting your head kicked in.
We’ve been seeing this a lot lately, I’m sure a lot of smart people tried to get Kevin Costner to put Horizon in front of some fresh eyes before he locked it, and there were probably the same amount of knowledgeable industry experts that said to him ‘Cannes…..really?….why?’. But success feeds into the very human reaction of ‘yeah, I was told I was wrong before and I was right, so that must be the case every time’. Same with Francis Ford Coppola and Megalopolis, but there’s a key difference with that movie. He did put it in front of some fresh eyes when he showed it to studios for pickup, but instead of listening to what they thought and went back to work, he went straight to……Cannes. What’s super interesting about Coppola is that one of his greatest achievements benefited from putting another of his films in front of fresh eyes.
Back in the late 70’s, before Joe Farrell revolutionized the screening process with curated audiences and test screenings, film makers would have ‘Major Studio Sneak Previews’; they would take out a full page ad (usually out of town) and screen the movie, followed by cards from the audience. Coppola screened Apocalypse Now at the Northpoint in San Francisco, and the reaction was on the low side of Megalopolis. The film at that point didn’t have narration, and after that screening it took well over a year to create the narration and rework the movie. So here’s a Director that benefitted from getting fresh eyes on a movie and that process improved the film significantly, but now feels as if he doesn’t need it (or trust it) anymore. Of course, there may have been situations between then and now that corrupted his trust in the fresh eyes process, and there was a lot of abuse in the test screening process over the years (especially in the early days of the process), so there might be a good reason for his distrust. The added factor with Horizon and Megalopolis is that it was their own money that bought them the control, but you would think they would want to protect that investment with some other points of view. In the case of Coppola, he’s been spinning this lately that he spent his money on Megalopolis to ‘make art’, so if that’s his agenda why not just put it out in the world for free? If you want to be your own patron of the arts, cool, do that. Don’t pretend it’s a business enterprise just like other movies.
It’s more than likely that the intersection of success and mistrust have combined to form two words; Final Cut. And the concept of Final Cut is a pretty sexy goal for many creators, it gives them tons and tons of rope to roam wherever they want. But all the rope can be used to hang yourself too, what’s interesting to me about a director having Final Cut is it gives them the right to make the final creative decisions, but (as with many forms of power) it can create an unhealthy bubble. In a perfect environment, you would think that a Director with Final Cut would use that power to filter out the usable information from the bullshit, but there seems to be too many instances lately where they use the power to not listen to anyone.
Greatness in our business comes from taking risks, and I don’t want to say here that everyone should play it safe, even when they have total control. But in the case of Apocalypse Now, the greatness came from collaboration with some fresh eyes, and that collaboration helped bring out the greatness. As one of the great philosophers of our time David St. Hubbins said ‘there’s a fine line between stupid and clever’; there’s also a fine line between revolutionary and reckless. You can be bold and revolutionary as long as you’re still playing to win, and if you’re not playing to win, you might get your head kicked in.
Anyway, with the same expected accuracy as an 11 minute standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival, here are some thoughts on the weekend box-office.
Joker: Folie a Deux - There’s a lot to unpack here, but first things first here; WB crushed this release in so many ways. When a film that lives on the edge like this comes screaming over the wall at Marketing and Distribution, there are clearly challenges they have to overcome. Obviously the title here is an issue, and to have a massive IP where film makers decided to title the sequel in a way that sounds like something you would read in an Onion headline (or something I would write in this email but with Strikethrough) is a problem. The key demo for The Joker was angry males who got voted ‘most likely to shoot up a Duncan Donuts at 3am’ in High School, and you want them to think something like Folie a Deux speaks to them? WTF? And just to make it harder to sell, let’s do a musical, because that’s what the core wants. So essentially WB was selling the Neon version of Joker, and they’re still gonna get it to a really good number.
The marketing here did a phenomenal job of hiding the elements that were problematic, but there’s one aspect to this film that I find truly amazing. This film Premiered about a month ago in Venice, and up until earlier this week all you heard was that it got some ‘mixed’ reactions but it was pretty good. You heard about the 11 minute standing ovation, a Rotten Tomatoes score that was pretty good (and at worst was mixed/positive) and the campaign made it look like a legitimate Joker sequel. But earlier this week the Rotten Tomatoes score started to plummet, and the bottom seemed to drop out. Now there’s exit polls that aren’t good at all, and it’s going to be interesting to see how this plays out over the weekend. But what I find to be absolutely head scratching is how they Premiered this movie on a World stage a month ago, and kept all the information quiet until this week; that’s what deserves an 11 minute standing ovation.
The grosses today are still pretty good, it’s actually growing pretty normally during the day, as opposed to what we saw last week on Megalopolis. I expected Megalopolis to crater on Saturday but it still performed pretty normally on Saturday and Sunday, so I don’t expect this to do anything different. For now it looks like mid/high 40’s with a decent shot a 50. But if the movie had delivered what the campaign promised, this gross would be considerably higher.
The Wild Robot - The quality here is showing in week 2, looks like the pure 3 day vs this weekend will only drop about 40%. Looks like a weekend in the high teens.
White Bird - Went 1000 runs targeted towards faith based consumers, and the best theaters are where we usually see this type of film perform best. It’s got some excellent exits so we could see a boost here due to playability, but for now it looks like a weekend around $1.8 million.
*Sam and Cody: The Legends of the Paranormal *- These popular youtubers have wandered into Theatrical courtesy of Cinemark. They went about 250 theaters (all Cinemark) and the grosses are pretty good. I’m not sure how deep this will go this weekend, but if it plays out normally, it should end up around $1.5 million or so for the weekend.
Monster Summer - Went 1200 runs and there’s very little going on here, maybe $500k for the weekend.
Saturday Night - Expanded to 21 theaters and took 9 additional markets. There are some bright spots in the expansion markets like Austin and Chicago, and some bright spots where they expanded in NY and LA such as the Empire Times Sq and DTLA; but for the most part the expansion looks a little soft. They should end up with a decent psa in the low mid teens.