Glicked weekend 2024

And here we are, we finally got to Glicked tm weekend. And it looks like it’s going to deliver at a level that might put us in the running for biggest weekend before Thanksgiving ever, and as a bonus (with Moana 2 coming in next Wednesday) we’re in the game to set a new Thanksgiving weekend record as well. The combination of this weekend being at or near record setting levels, and last year (this was Thanksgiving weekend last year) being pretty sucky (Napoleon, Wish), we’ll either double or get close to doubling last year’s weekend total. The same should hold for Thanksgiving weekend, even though last year it was the weekend after Thanksgiving (which is normally very quiet), we had a couple of bigger than normal films for that weekend in Renaissance: A Film by Beyonce and Godzilla: Minus One. So we’re gonna start chipping away at the deficit from last year really quickly. I don’t see a weekend for the rest of the year where we’re going to be behind last year; we’ve got the same number of wide releases (10), but the films are considerably bigger this year and that’s a great step towards getting back to normal.

Today we’re going to talk about release dates, and how (like a lot of aspects of this business, or any business for that matter) it’s sometimes difficult to take a step back and look at what’s actually the best business decision, because the idea of who wins the short term battle doesn’t always mean you won the war.

Over and over again we’ve had situations where two films end up on the same release date that would probably be better off if they were on separate days. You can go way way back to crazy examples like The Empire Strikes Back and The Shining both opened on the same day*. There was The Love Guru vs Get Smart in 2008 or Fast & Furious 6 vs Hangover 3 in 2013, the list goes on and on. But Glicked tm almost didn’t happen because both Wicked and Moana 2 were both originally supposed to open next Wednesday. How did that happen?

Wicked was originally dated for Christmas this year, but in March 2023 it moved to the day before Thanksgiving. Disney (as many studios do) had a ‘placeholder’ on the same date as Disney Untitled Animation, which would follow the rich history Disney has had on that date (Frozen, Tangled, Coco, Moana, etc). Considering when Universal placed Wicked there, Disney animation was going through a rough patch and the last 3 films on that date were Encanto, Strange World and Wish; there was nothing to be afraid of competition wise. But in February this year Disney saw what they had in the Disney + bound Moana 2, decided to upgrade it to a theatrical release and dated it for next Wednesday. Here’s where it gets dicey, and you can call this by any non-PC name you want (schoolyard shoving match, dick measuring contest, Mexican standoff, etc); they both said ’the other film should move because we were here first’. And you can see how they both had a point, Wicked moved there because sometimes those ‘placeholders’ just go away, and until there’s a real movie there, why not go there? Disney had a point because ’they always deliver a movie there’, so we ended up with 5 months of ’no, they’re the asshole’.

And here’s where the idea of winning a battle and winning a war come into play. You have two movies on the same date, and if you looked at a Venn Diagram for the two audience makeups, it would pretty much just be one circle, with an edge towards Disney’s Animation audience as opposed to Wicked’s someone finite Musical Theater audience. While both studios were sitting in opposite corners of the day before Thanksgiving room with their arms folded, there was this big shiny beacon of light next door coming from the weekend before Thanksgiving, where little ol’ Gladiator II was sitting there all by it’s lonesome self, and either Wicked or Moana 2 could move there and not really have much of an effect on it, and would have a much better competitive landscape without the other film on the same date. And as you’ve seen with *BarbenHeimer *and now Glicked tm, maybe the whole is bigger than the sum of the parts if one moved there?

But there’s a key fact that was being overlooked while both studios stewed and said ‘f them’, Paramount was there because they were smart enough to know the weekend before Thanksgiving is the best release date of November (especially when the calendar sets up the way it did this year), and it’s a far better release date than the day before Thanksgiving; and neither studio wanted it.

Let’s take a look at the data, here are the five biggest openings on the weekend before Thanksgiving:

• Hunger Games - Catching Fire $158 million
• Twilight Saga - New Moon $143 million
• Twilight Saga - Breaking Dawn Part II $141 million
• Twilight Saga Breaking Dawn Part I $138 million
• Frozen 2 $130 million

Pretty impressive, right? Here are the top 5 (3 day grosses) for opening the day before Thanksgiving:

• Frozen $67 million
• Moana $57 million
• Ralph Breaks the Internet $57 million
• Coco $51 million
• Tangled $49 million.

What is especially compelling is if you look at the insanely high quality (combined with Disney’s marketing prowess) of those day before Thanksgiving openings, they all live in the mid 8 figure range, but the films opening the weekend before go well into 9 figures. Why are those high quality films stuck in the mid 8 figures? Because more often than not they had a film opening the Friday before doing 9 figures and held it down by carving audience away from them. In addition, by going the weekend before Thanksgiving, you get next Monday and Tuesday, where a lot (well over half) of kids are out of school, and they’re great box-office days.

Just look at the difference between the two Frozen’s. Frozen 1 is the highest grossing film ever opening (wide) the day before Thanksgiving, but it only opened to half of what Frozen 2 to opened to. Did the IP become that much more valuable in the time between the two films? Maybe not. Because with Frozen 1, and just like all those other day before Thanksgiving releases, it had a monster in Hunger Games Catching Fire opening the Friday before (and was also the highest grossing opening for its weekend). And Frozen 1 actually was #2 it’s opening weekend to Hunger Games. So Frozen 1 had a 9 figure behemoth steaming towards it and Frozen 2 opened on the better date with no substantial competition. So it makes sense that one opened to double the other.

You would think that this type of data would cause one of the studios to realize they were better off moving up to today, but they just sat there sayin’ nothing, and seemed to have the perception that moving equaled retreat, but it was actually an upgrade. This carried on for 5 months until Universal did one of the most significant financial actions I’ve seen them do, they moved up to today. And where this gets all tangled up in emotion and winning the battle right in front of your face; Disney probably thought they won because Universal ‘blinked’, but Wicked now gets to open against another movie that it doesn’t have much audience in common with, and Moana 2 still has Wicked against it. But even though (in theory) Wicked lost the standoff, the actual loser was the film that stayed.

There is a big upside to all of this; in the current scenario everyone wins. Wicked is huge, Gladiator II is huge, Moana 2 was an upgraded streamer, so anything more than making back the P & A is just a bigger pu pu platter, and I be shocked if Moana 2 doesn’t surf right by that P & A number by the end of the weekend.

But the big winner is the sector. Because Moana is such a bigger IP than Wicked, and because Disney plays to a much broader audience than a Broadway musical IP (more on that below), Moana 2 is gonna be just fine next Wednesday, but I’m not sure that would be the case if the two films reversed positions. Had Moana 2 opened today and pulled a Frozen 2 opening, Wicked probably would have not been able to tip the way it’s tipped this weekend. Top shelf Disney/Pixar animation (and IP) vs a Broadway Musical isn’t a fair fight, but in this scenario both are going to be winners.

Bottom line here, always look at a situation from every angle, and sometimes what feels like a shameful retreat might end up being a much better plan in the long run.

Anyway, with the same expected accuracy of a Paramount screening invitation promising seats in their state of the art Main Theater, here are some thoughts on the weekend box-office.

Wicked - Universal did most everything right here and they’ve got a monster hit to show for their work. They ended up with an amazing cast that brought star fanship into the package (as opposed to something like In The Heights which could have used some star IP), they made a good movie, they had a great campaign and they ended up with a great date. However, they did get saddled with some insane box-office forecasts for this weekend (which are pretty much out of their control) which may or may not come true; I just hate when people throw out numbers like $150 million and it only comes in at $110, so it’s weird having a $110 million ‘disappointment’. Why do folks throw those numbers out there? Bubbles.

If there’s one thing we’re getting more and more of these days, it’s being in our own bubbles. If you talk to some of the January 6th rioters (and yes, I know a couple, I like to have a diverse group of friends**), they believed the election was stolen because they ‘didn’t know anyone who voted for Biden, so it must be rigged’. That’s bubbles. If you poll pretty much any meeting room at a studio or in this sector, about 90% of the room is a big fan of musicals (and the other 10% are afraid to admit that they are not), but in the actual real world it’s a very small percentage. In fact, when you ask consumers what genres they ‘would never see under any circumstances’, it’s usually a tie between Musicals and Westerns. So this film, as big as it is, is unashamed to be a musical and that might be an issue with tagalongs over the weekend. As much as the exits are excellent here, it’s still a musical and fans might struggle to get tagalongs here and there. But in the bubble of Hollywood, any thought other than ‘everyone loves musicals’ (because of the bubbles) dies in the room and gets a house dropped on it.

There is one aspect to how Universal handled this movie that I despise and just can’t understand. As you may have read in the trades already, they had a great Thursday opening day yesterday, but they also had about $8 million of ‘fan shows’ earlier this week? WTF did they do that for, because they needed awareness or word of mouth? Why would you want those super avid’s going on a Monday or Wednesday when tagalongs are tougher to get, wouldn’t you rather them go on the weekend and putting together a big group that includes consumers who would go as part of a group? With a film like this where tagalons can be a tough mission, making it an event (a girls night out type of thing) might convince someone to go who wouldn’t under normal circumstances. They might answer with ‘but they’ll go again over the weekend with friends’. Really? You’re counting on that? Wouldn’t a better idea be getting them the first time when it’s convenient for their friends to go and then those friends take someone when they go the 2nd time? These ‘fan shows’ are great when you need them, when you need word of mouth and have an awareness issue, but this film didn’t need them and they might have left some money on the table by doing it (not that they’ll ever notice it). Tagalongs are the key to our future, today’s tagalongs are tomorrow’s habitual moviegoers, let’s do everything we can to cultivate them properly. I wonder if that $8 million in fan shows would have been $10 or $12 million this weekend if they forced those avids into the weekend.

All that being said, this is terrific today, and as you would guess it’s way better in the upscale markets than the fly overs, and it’s not surprising that it’s very good where they love showtunes, but you can’t get to this gross without being pretty good everywhere. Because of the binary musical fanship issue, this might hit a ceiling at some point, but for now I’ll say it looks like a spectacular weekend around $110 million.

Gladiator II - Another great opening day yesterday, and it looks really good today as well. Since Gladiators are pretty much the model for Superhero’s, it shouldn’t surprise you that this is playing very similar to a SuperHero movie. The coasts are very good, especially in LA, it’s also playing pretty good where they love showtunes and it’s playing pretty deep into the middle of the country. Since it skews older adult we should see a decent bounce tomorrow too, but for now it looks like a really nice weekend in the low 60’s.

Red One - With a couple of monsters coming into the marketplace you would think this film would be waaaay down today, but it’s down less than it should be because there’s something else going on. The monster this film had to contend with was….buffering…..last….buffering…week…buffering.. with the Ty…buffering…son / Paul fight. When we looked at the grosses this time last week, even though we weren’t sure what the effect of the fight was gonna be, it looked a little soft. But on Saturday, two things happened; we had this film modeled up 35% or 40% from the pure Friday and it went up almost 100% on Saturday, so clearly the fight had an effect. The 2nd thing that happened on Saturday was a bunch of really nervous NFL executives being hastily called to 345 Park Ave, muttering to themselves ‘were we suckers for taking their word that they can do this, we trusted the studio that made Grey Man…we should have just expanded the Amazon deal’. Even though this is down about 10 points less than it should be, the real benchmark should be tomorrow when it will be more apples to apples. For now, figure it’s down 55% for a weekend in the mid/low teens.

Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin - You would think this is just a job posting for a Trump cabinet member, but it’s a well reviewed film from the folks at Angel, who brought us last summer’s Sound of Freedom. It’s doing pretty good, especially when you consider almost all the gross is being generated by their internal eco system of subscribers and ‘go fund me’ like backers. Seeing how these internal systems from studios like Angel, Kingdom Stories and Cineverse keep pumping out decent grosses without spending much marketing money, there seems to be some breadcrumbs to follow. This looks like a really nice weekend of $5 million or so on only 1900 screens.

Best Christmas Pageant Ever - This might be another rebound from the fight last week, but it’s only down a tiny bit today. If today holds it’s only down 20% from last weekend for a gross in the low 4’s.

*It’s true, but what’s so mind blowing is that both of them (yes, even Empire after the insane success of Star Wars) went limited, because clearly they needed to build word of mouth to be successful. Empire opened in 123 theaters and The Shining opened in 10 theaters over Memorial Day weekend, both went wide mid June. Looking at how Universal went limited earlier this week with Wicked, seems like nothing much has changed…

** It’s weird how it doesn’t start that way, but we all have our own life path and sometimes it ends up that way.