Second weekend of October 2024

As the old saying goes ‘as one door closes, another door opens’ (which basically sums up my whole career), and in the theatrical sector, when one auditorium door closes another opens. Since Joker is no longer a factor in week 2, it’s allowed a couple of other films to stretch their legs and we’re seeing some films take advantage of that. However, last year on this week TAYLOR SWIFT* opened, and the total box-office this weekend won’t even equal the gross that single film generated. Next week will be more of the same and the difference between this year and last will probably equal the revenue TAYLOR SWIFT did in weekend #2. But even though the last weekend in October 2023 had Five Nights at Freddy’s, we should have enough this year to get us close or even with 2023’s weekend. But once we get into November, it should be all surplus.

I got a lot of responses to last week’s email, some on Friday but most of them came through on Saturday and Sunday and had nothing to do with box-office. Last week I said *‘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.’ *And then Alabama, Tennessee, Missouri, Michigan and USC (all top 11 teams) showed up to their games waving their press clippings at the other team….and got their heads kicked in. So quite a few of you wondered if I knew something going into the weekend, and maybe I should do a sports betting email as well as this note. No, not now anyway.

Anyway, with the expected accuracy of indisputable video evidence for a replay on 4th and goal on the 1 foot line, here are some thoughts on the weekend box-office.

Terrifier: 3 - There’s a lot going on here that’s super interesting, and there are some aspects to this film that we’ve seen before, but we should really take a look at how consumers are going to films like this and are not driven there by traditional media. What’s interesting is how this film is going to be #1 and had (from what I can see) no traditional media. No TV, no Radio, no outdoor, very little digital. But what it did have is the Cineverse eco-system of consumers, and when you look at the results of this weekend (and then look back at other films that have done the same thing), there’s a model here that seems like a way forward for this sector.

At this film’s core is the Cineverse walled garden, including their Bloody Disgusting fan site, but fan clubs are really nothing new. Disney treats the Disney channel as a big fan club, and has leveraged those young eyeballs to generate box-office for a while now. Tyler Perry’s core essentially came from a fan club, consumers who became fans of his live shows at mega-churches in the South East before Diary of a Mad Black Housewife shot a frame of film. But as media becomes more and more micro-targeted, and theatrical is so fan driven, is it possible that these ’secret handshake’ media channels can get a movie open almost on their own? It’s pretty much what Angel has been doing for a while now, but before we start figuring out how to make a studio fan site carry the entire weight of opening a movie there are two issues to consider.

First, the latest examples of fan sites getting movies opening are very specific in emotional tone and audience skew. Terrifier is edgy (to say the least) horror, and the Angel films all go to the same emotional bucket; and if you tried to cut and paste this idea to a bigger studio, the slates are too diverse to be effective. So you would need to support a site for each genre and skew, which takes years to develop and make credible. It would be very expensive, and because this has worked in two genres it doesn’t mean it will work in all genres.

But web channels are one thing, and platforms are something else. Both of these companies used their content platforms to drive awareness and intent. That made me think of something: I subscribe to all the major platforms and I’ve never been served an ad for one of that studio’s films pre theatrical release. I’m guessing this has something to do with corporate fiefdoms and this idea has been floated in the past (and gone down in flames). However, it would be interesting if one of these studios that spent a fortune in the platform arms race starts shifting some of their platform inventory over to their theatrical releases (pre-release), and the most intriguing aspect of that would be ‘would showing a trailer for a theatrical release before content be okay, even for subscribers paying for ad fee content?’. Considering that YouTube runs ads before trailers, are trailers ads? Especially when you look at the results we’re seeing (more and more) where those walled gardens are being repurposed to drive theatrical rather than streaming content. And since all the films you would be running a trailer for end up on that platform, and theatrical helps the viewership on the platform, it all makes sense. It’s just playing long.

The 2nd aspect that needs to be considered is tag-alongs, and the downside of relying on a micro-targeted group to get their friends (who aren’t in the club) to go is very real. The two best examples of micro targeted films breaking out both have aspects that made the film familiar and attractive to tag alongs. Last year Angel broke out with Sound of Freedom because the child trafficking issue had been something conservative media had been dining out on for a while, and once the two issues connected, the tag-alongs were part of a much bigger fan club. With Terrifier, part 2 had a very leggy run and also did well in the post theatrical markets, so you had some casual fan ship outside the hard core fan club.

Bottom line here is that there’s possibly a couple of paths to explore, because it’s’ not what you spend, it’s what you keep and if you spend less you keep more. And of course, it still doesn’t get at paths to theatrical success for a movie that doesn’t play.

As far as this weekend goes, it’s really good so far. They had a great opening night last night and they’re running about 75% of Longlegs right now, if that holds it should end up around $16 million for the weekend. However, that was in July and we’re in October now, plus this film has much better playability than Longlegs, so it could pick up later tonight. It’s a pretty staggering achievement considering what they spent.

The Wild Robot - The quality is showing again this weekend, and they’ll get a nice bonus this Monday with the east coast holiday. Down only about 25% for a weekend of about $14 million.

Joker: Je Suis un Idiot Folie a Deux - There’s one thing that’s been making me nuts all week about this film. The insane double standard the dumb entertainment press has when looking at Theatrical vs. Streaming. If Theatrical had the same reporting ’transparency’ the streamers have, WB could have reported this as the ‘#1 film in theaters and over performed our wildest expectations’ and the dumbshit entertainment press would have just parroted it. But instead they piled on like crazy, when the streamers have a lot of similar budgeted films end up with similar quality, drop dead on the platform and they never say a thing. The second weekend is down as much as you would think and this will end up the weekend in the high single digits, or a similar viewership drop during the second weekend of a $200 million platform release. But that gets a pass.

Piece by Piece - As many of you know, I’m a big fan of taking creative swings, and making a biopic with Lego’s about Pharrell William is about as big a swing as you can take. This looks like a weekend of about $4 million on only about 1800 screens, but films like this are insanely hard to market, so that number is a pretty impressive achievement for Focus.

Saturday Night - Finally went wide on 2300 screens and it’s doing what it’s been doing the last couple of weeks. It’s pretty good in the upscale and art theaters and it’s softer the farther you get away from there. But the playability is good so we’ll see where this goes. Looks like a weekend around $4 million.

My Hero Academia: You’re Next - It’s interesting that this IP has been pretty consistent in the way they gross, but this one is about half what the last two did. It could be we’re getting so many of these Anime movies and there’s fatigue, or it’s possible that this might have too much common audience with Terrifier. Looks like a little over $3 million for the weekend.

The Apprentice - If you look up ‘Feathered Fish’ on wiki, you’ll probably have this film listed as an example. The left isn’t interested because they want a ‘hit piece’ (it’s not), and the right isn’t interested in any Trump biopic that doesn’t involve an immaculate conception and a manger (although I hear Dinesh D’zousa is developing it with Zachary Levi attached). On top of all those headwinds they didn’t spend any money, so yeah, there’s nothing going on here. They only went on 1700 screens and it looks like a weekend of about $2 million or so.

*We Live in Time *- A24 went exclusive NY and LA in what’s now the classic 5 (Lincoln Sq, Angelika, Century City, The Grove, Burbank) and the numbers are pretty good. NY is a little better than LA, but they’re all pretty good. Looks like a really nice PSA in the mid 20’s.

• as much as the all caps seems like a joke, the AI in my mail program does that on it’s own, so I gave up and just went with it.