First weekend of November 2024

As expected this is a super quiet weekend. Over the years Halloween has evolved from a day that gets dinged a little by Halloween activities to a day that’s pretty good when it falls on a weekday (especially for something scary), but it’s death for movies when it falls on a weekend. Since it was yesterday, the day was pretty good; however we still (stupidly) open films on Thursday, so unless you have a film where the Opening Day (Thursday) gross is just a detail, you look for other dates. Last year didn’t really have anything; usually it’s a Marvel or Disney film but they passed on it because when November sets up with Veterans Day on a Friday or Saturday (it was Saturday last year) you want those kids out of school on Friday, so they went there instead. But we’ll still end up a little behind last year (Priscilla, Radical, What Happens Later), maybe by 10% or a little more; but 10% at the level we’re talking about is only $5 million, so it’s not a lot of money to be made up. We’ll still be behind next week too, but then Glicked kicks in and it’s on for the rest of the year.

I’ve spoken a lot about IP here, and there’s an IP issue that maybe we should talk about; it’s nothing new we just have to figure out how to leverage it better; Studio branding as IP, and how we can make it make sense to the consumer? Over the history of Theatrical, branding has played a huge role in getting consumers to the theaters, and when you attach a brand (that has stayed in a particular lane) to a film, the audience understands what they are buying and it’s additive to the IP equation every movie needs. Obviously the clear example is Disney; over the course of its 101 years, it never veered from the lane they started in. To take that one step farther, when they did make films that were outside of the lane they were in, they created other brands (Hollywood and Touchstone) to protect the core IP of their brand. In the heyday of those brands, especially Touchstone, they had their own IP value and normal moviegoing consumers knew what they meant.

The reason I bring this up is that I’ve been hearing some new brand IP as I speak with my civilian friends about movies. The two names that keep coming up are A24 and Neon; and the fact that unaided IP recall is coming from civilian consumers in Wisconsin, Texas, Missouri, Tennessee, etc; not people in LA or NY, is interesting to me. When I was talking about Longlegs a couple of months ago the ‘oh, it’s Neon’ response would come up, same with films like Iron Claw and A24. It’s as if these two studios have built themselves a lane that consumers not only understand, but they see it as an additive part of the equation that gets them to the theater. Of course, both of these studios have won Best Picture Oscars recently, so the fact that a consumer thinks of these two brand IP’s as a good thing, Best Picture Oscars might have something to do with the glow. Kind of the opposite of someone saying ‘it’s a Netflix movie’, but that’s a brand conversation for another time. But for the most part, both of these studios have stayed in a lane, and that’s something we should consider going forward as we think of other studios and their labels.

Look at what is going on with a couple of the family brands currently at Universal. The homegrown brand, Illumination, is a top tier brand now but it didn’t used to be. After the success of Despicable Me, Hop and then The Lorax, they started leveraging the *Minions *as the Illumination ambassadors around the time of Despicable Me 2, and started all the marketing materials with them. On the other hand, Dreamworks Animation was a major IP back when it was a standalone company, and there was a time when you could speak of the IP in the same breath you could speak about Pixar. But it’s been dormant for quite a while, and as the last couple of non sequel DWA films have showed us the brand doesn’t connect films automatically with Family audiences. Had something like The Wild Robot had brand IP (like Disney, Pixar or Illumination) it probably would have opened to a much higher gross than it did with the DWA brand.

So what does this mean going forward? Well, if we want to do something about it, it all comes down to two issues; the (underappreciated) folks in Business Affairs and the culture of Studio fiefdoms. Almost every studio has brands in their quivers; Sony has Screen Gems, Tri-Star, Sony Classics, Amazon has MGM, UA and Orion and it’s pretty much the same all over town. Since one of the beautiful aspects of the way our sector has evolved over the last 10 years is the game of ‘chutes and ladders’, where a film can be made as a streamer but gets promoted to theatrical (or vice versa), what if we take that idea to brands within studios?

Let’s take a film like Saturday Night, which was released in 3 tiers under the Columbia brand. Would it have done better in that release scenario under the Sony Classics Brand? And even if it had the same results as it had under the Columbia brand, would the cachet of an awards contender, a 2300 theater wide break and a $10 million domestic cume elevated the Sony Classics brand, so it’s still true to its roots but broader in reach? So when the next film like Saturday Night comes along, there’s a brand that adds IP to the equation.

Let’s look at the dormant brands from the Mouseschwitz Katzenberg era at Disney, Hollywood and Touchstone. What if they ended up under the (struggling with original IP) 20th label? When you think of iconic logos, the Fox fanfare and searchlight logo has got to be at the top, but what if you only reserved that logo (and brand privilege) for the top tier of quality after you know what the movie is, and the other films go to either Hollywood or Touchstone. Maybe Hollywood becomes the genre label like Screen Gems, but since you have those brands, why not pick a lane for them and that way the consumer can attach easier to the films made under that brand? You’re already always looking for IP based projects, why not make the brand the IP and as long as you stay in the lane you’ve chosen, everything is kind of a sequel in that lane.

But as I said above, if you want to play a chutes and ladders game with films wandering from one brand to another (and strengthen the brands going forward), it’s a question of Business Affairs and the studio fiefdoms. Could you contractually get that done? It might be worth a discussion, but it’s certainly a high level/big picture/ long range idea that might be worth the time. But since pretty much all the legacy studios have brands that have amazing histories and high brand recognition; the Columbia Lady with the Torch, the MGM Lion, the Paramount Mountain, the WB Shield, the Disney Castle, the Universal…universe…shouldn’t that be a carrot on a stick filmmakers have to earn? And if it doesn’t measure up, maybe have another label to slide it down to and protect the top tier IP.

Anyway, based on something I heard at a NY Yankees fundamentals of Baseball seminar, here are some thoughts on the weekend box-office.

Venom: The Last Dance - Even though this got beat up last week, there’s no Dodger/Yankees World Series game tonight, so it’s not down as much as Venom: Let There Be Carnage was on the 2nd Friday. Carnage was down 65% the 2nd weekend and this looks better than that, figure a weekend in the low 20s.

Here - This got beat up by the critics, but the flyover states are still Tom Hanks country, and they are showing up today. As we saw with A Man Called Otto, there’s an audience to be served there. The problem here is the coasts aren’t much, so this looks like a weekend around $6 million.

Conclave - Looks like this is having some nice legs, only looks down 40% or so for a weekend of about $4 million.

We Live in TIme - Also looks like it’s holding in nicely, down 35% for a weekend of about $3 million.

Absolution - The Liam Neeson conveyor belt just keeps churning out films, this one went 1200 runs and is headed for about $800k.

Hitpig - Went 2000 runs and looks like $700k or so.

A Real Pain - Searchlight went 4 runs exclusive in NY and LA (Lincoln Sq, Angelika, Grove, Century City). New York is excellent, but LA is just good. Looks like a psa in the 50k range.