Second weekend of November 2024

The Marvels, The Holdovers, Journey to Bethlehem

 As expected, this weekend will be behind last year (The Marvels, The
Holdovers, Journey to Bethlehem), but there’s a decent part of the deficit
that doesn’t have anything to do with product.  Since Veteran’s Day was
Saturday last year, there were about 50% of kids out of school on Friday,
but this year it’s on Monday so the kids are out then.  So there was a
little bit of a marketplace accelerant last year for the 3 day gross, and
if you normalize last year so it looks like this year (without the Friday
holiday), we’ll still probably be the same or a little less this year, but
not by much.  Another calendar aberration comes into play next weekend,
Thanksgiving was one week earlier last year, so next weekend was the
weekend before Thanksgiving sweet spot (where the bigger movies usually
open), so with Hunger Games, Trolls Band Together, Thanksgiving and Next
Goal Wins opening, we’ll be way behind next week.  But of course we’ll
have Glicked tm exploding the weekend after, and the rest of the year
should be very very good.
A lot of people ask me during weeks like we’ve just been through, ‘you must
really geek out on the election stuff, it’s so close to what you do every
week’.  Yeah, no shit.  But because it’s so similar to what I do, I
actually just shut everything down on Election Day and don’t even look; and
then just like a lot of folks in the theatrical sector, I wake up the next
day and look at the results. Then I just get excited or depressed just like
everyone else does every Saturday with box-office results.
But what’s interesting to me is how amazingly similar theatrical and
politics are from several points of view.  From a marketing point of view,
the sales levers are so similar: Story, Stakes, Character and Villain (and
recently, a lot of Villian).  From a research point of view, in the same
way that you can’t take great tracking to the bank and deposit it as gross,
you can’t take an oath of office based on poll numbers.  From a
distribution point of view, pre-sales are a nice indicator, but sales can
go a bunch of different directions once you get to opening day.  Early
balloting can be a great indicator, but (just like theatrical) the bulk of
the data comes in on Election Day.  It’s really just a different type of
consumer behavior in both cases, and one doesn’t necessarily align with the
other, it often does, but it’s not rock solid.
In both sectors, success all comes down to one really tough question, ‘will
they show up?’.  Just like our complicated theatrical sector, we are asking
people to leave their houses to do something, and quite often they
just…..don’t.  They might say they’re going, but then they flake on us.
And there’s one really important piece of data we don’t have, and unless we
eventually all have chips in our brains*, we’ll never have it; why didn’t
they go when they said they would?  In both sectors we have exit polls all
over the place, but we just don’t have any good analytics that get at that
flake factor.  Many many smart people have tried, and the data that comes
back is muddy at best; and usually it sounds like ’well, something came
up’.  But the post mortem when something underperforms is mostly a lot of
guesswork, and a lot of what I’m seeing the last couple of days feels very
familiar, it’s all ’this is who showed’, but what about the ones who
didn’t?  We can only guess.
One of the other similarities I find interesting is how over time, both
sectors have developed processes for quality control; in theatrical we have
test screenings and in politics they have Primary’s.  Why am I speaking
about test screenings in the same breath as a Primary?  Because it doesn’t
matter how many research-y things you do to try to gauge the value of a
movie’s IP value (trailer tests, title tests, tack ons), a test screening
is the first time you put the IP out in the market to see if you can get
anyone to come to a theater (unless you forgo that by testing blind), and
for the most part you’re asking them to come for free (sometimes offering a
movie ticket incentive to keep the consumer in the theatrical consumer
funnel, or cash if you are a lazy vendor who doesn’t care about who they
get).  The amount of people you have to ask before you get a ‘yes I’ll go’
is crucial data (known as the recruit ratio).  But in the same way that a
test screening is a toe dip in the marketplace to tell you if people will
actually come to a theater, Primary’s are a similar toe dip to tell you
who’s gonna show at the polls.
But both sectors move at a lightning fast pace, and because of that pace,
sometimes you have to make a decision without being able to take advantage
of the tools that might tell you how your IP is going to do in a
competitive marketplace.  Every single studio has had a situation where
they had a good film, they had a lot of muscle behind the campaign and the
campaign was run by excellent marketing departments. But they either
misjudged the ability of their IP to get people to a theater, or misjudged
the IP they were competing with. And IP value can be linked to time and
place, so there might be factors you didn’t see when decisions were made.
But if your IP falls short, it doesn’t mean you did a bad job; but when you
look back you might wish you had one of those early gauges that told you if
people were gonna show up.  Basically this is what I’m looking at every
week when I write this, that’s why I tapped out on Tuesday.
Anyway, with the same expected accuracy normal associated with any poll
based data (including tracking), here are some thoughts on the weekend
box-office.
Venom: The Last Dance - Last weekend we saw how they got unlucky with
their opening weekend, and this Venon held much better than either of the
two Venom’s.  Today is more of the same, and it’s having a really nice day,
should end up in the low teens.
Heretic - A24 used to be known as the studio that could deliver high
single digit opening weekends with a skinny campaign (and no TV spend).
This film looks like it should get to $11 million or so, but still with no
National TV spend, so this might be the new A24 ’normal’.
The Best Christmas Pageant Ever - The folks at Kingdom stories (through
Lion’s Gate) have consistently delivered films that resonate with
audiences, regularly pulling A and A+ CinemaScores.  But those same films
get sniffed at by the critics, and usually sit in the 50 neighborhood of
Rotten Tomato world. But this film did very well with critics (currently at
88%), while still headed towards the usual excellent exits.  As with most
of the Kingdom Story films, it’s best in the heartland and the fly over
states, but it will be interesting to see where this film ends up once the
run is over.  Christmas films, especially crowd pleasing ones, really tend
to run.  Polar Express opened to $23 million and got to $160 million by the
New Year for example (and then became a perennial holiday release).  We’ll
have to see how this pops with the family audience tomorrow but it should
end up with at least $9 or $10 million.
Conclave - Looks we have the first water cooler film of the awards
season, and the grosses reflect that, probably down a scant 20% for a
weekend of $4 million.
Overlord: The Sacred Kingdom - This Crunchyroll Anime film only went
about 600 theaters, and looks headed to about $1.5 million.
A Real Pain - Expanded to 12 runs, adding runs in NY and LA, plus added
Toronto.  There’s good and fair in both expansions, but Toronto just looks
okay.  Looks like it’s headed to a good psa in the high teens.
*Unless someone like Elon Musk gets a position of power and…oh no…