Thanksgiving 2024

As we transition from Glicked tm to Wickoanatiator *tm today, the box office this weekend is actually over performing, and we’ve got a really good chance to see a record this weekend. As I’ll pointed out in the past, the box-office is best when we have a wide variety of offerings; and even though we don’t quite have that this year (there are a couple of films going at the same demo but have just enough variation to find their own footing), what we do have is a lot of films people like. And as I point out here quite often, every time we have a dip in the box-office and the press pulls something insane out of their ass to fill some column inches regarding why it’s dipping, it always goes back to the same thing; ‘it’s the movies, stupid’. Just like last week, we’re going to crush the same weekend last year (possibly doubling it), and even though it was the weekend after Thanksgiving, there were 5 new titles opening (which is unusual). Renaissance: A Film by Beyonce, Godzilla Minus One, The Shift, Animal and Silent Night cumed up to about $47 million (the norm for that weekend is probably closer to $4.7 million in new gross), but if it was a more normal week after Thanksgiving, this weekend’s gross would have tripled the previous year. So it’s all good, and we should have really big surpluses for the rest of the year compared to last year.

This weekend rolls out with some odd rhythms, today is pretty good but even though few people work tomorrow, it doesn’t really behave like a Friday night and runs out of gas around 8pm. Tomorrow is better for Adult films, kids films start off hot then fade fast. Friday will be the biggest day of the weekend with Saturday coming down by 10% or so. For the grosses below, I’ll take a stab at the FSS 3 day numbers and 5 day numbers including today and tomorrow, but sometimes there can be playability issues that come into play by the time you get to the weekend.

I spoke last week (I’m hoping you’ve finished reading last week’s email, but it was so long you might still be working on it) about how the shifts in release schedule this week were going to result in everyone winning, and that looks like it’s gonna be an understatement. Because Wicked got a chance to escape the gravity of Moana for 5 days, it’s now generated its own momentum and it’s going to have an amazing 2nd weekend. But let’s be clear about Moana, even though they might have done more business had they moved up to last week, based on what I’m guessing its green light pro forma looked like, this might be the most over performing film in Disney history based on the pre production forecasts.

Since Moana 2 was greenlit for Disney +, and then elevated to Theatrical (and I’m guessing some more money got put into it to make it more visually theatrical), all it had to do was make back it’s P & A (and maybe whatever extra they had to spend to bring it up the theatrical standards) to get it past those pro forma numbers. And this might blow by that P & A spend by mid day Friday, so the rest will just be found money. And it looks like they’ve found a lot of money, especially if this runs for a while.

But a few of you reached out about why it was so important for Wicked to go first, and the way both films are playing today supports what I thought all along. Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but this country seems to behave differently depending on where you live. Wicked was strongest on the coasts last week and it continues to play that way, however the more you got into the heartland it was pretty good, but not as sensational as it was on the coasts. Moana is the exact opposite, the best theaters are the same theaters we saw at the top of the list for Twisters, and the coasts are really good but they aren’t aligning the way the usually do with the red states. Looking at the big gun theaters in the big coastal cities like Century City, The Grove, Lincoln Square, Union Square, etc; Wicked is still the #1 film at those theaters, Moana is still good, but not as good as Wicked. Why is that?

There was a decent amount of audience commonality between Wicked and Moana, but because one was a Broadway musical and one was Disney Animation, the Disney animation aspect has the upper hand because it casts a much bigger shadow at the box-office. It’s the historical pedigree and consistent quality of Disney Animation that gets you there; and because Wicked is an outlier in the Broadway musical genre (they are usually built only to appeal to the core, and that’s usually why they struggle at the box office), as strong as the Wicked IP was, it was still a Broadway musical and needed a cushy release date to broaden out. And that cushy date last week made a monumental difference; it was able to capture those ‘at large’ tagalongs (because Moana wasn’t an option last week), now those tagalongs contribute to the word of mouth for Wicked, and it built itself a beachhead at the megaplex. Had Moana opened last weekend and Wicked was opening today, I’m not sure you would have peeled those non big city consumers away from Moana for Wicked today. Because of that broader appeal of Disney Animation, and the high IP value of Moana, it’s tougher to get consumers (especially tagalongs) to take a chance on a genre that they don’t have a lot of confidence in. So it needed to be the only game in town to soar the way it did. But now that it’s rolling (and of course even tagalongs are finding it to be very satisfying), it can stand up to the dependability of Disney Animation and the Moana IP. Just as a hipshot guess, I’d say that whatever Wicked does this weekend over the 5 days, it what it would have done had it opened today. But because it opened last week without the Moana headwinds, it’s got $144 million in the bank already, so moving to last weekend was a really big financial decision.

Bottom line here, had Moana opened last week it would have been every bit as good as Wicked was in the big cities, but because it’s Disney it would have been way better than Wicked was in the Red States. Wicked is actually holding Moana down a little on the coasts, because it got a foothold last week, and because the weaker genre got to go first, we’ve got a bigger box office pie. So like I said last week, everyone is gonna be good here.

Anyway, with the accuracy normally expected from a Rogers and Cowan data security system, here are some thoughts on the weekend box-office.

Moana 2 - Had a nice Tuesday Opening Day yesterday, but it’s really good today. As I said above it’s really strong in the Heartland and it’s pretty good on the coasts as well. It’s going to be interesting to see how this plays out over the weekend, the critics seemed to say it’s a 2 1/2 star movie, but the audience score seems more in line with a better movie. But it’s always interesting to see how these Wednesday Thanksgiving openings hold up as you go through the 5 day weekend, and this title has such strong fanship so there could be some front loading, so we’ll see how today aligns with the weekend. For now, I’ll say it looks like a 3 day of about $90 million and once you add all the gross from yesterday, today and tomorrow it should end up around $170 million.

Wicked - Considering how much Moana is doing today, this film hasn’t really shown any decay at all. It’s having a really good day and same as last weekend it’s best on the coasts and the more upscale theaters. This looks like it’s headed to a pretty amazing 2nd 3 day of $65 million or so, and a 5 day around $100 million.

Gladiator II - It’s just okay today, but I’m not sure any of these other movies are having much of an effect. Before this film opened, the word around town was that it was one of the ‘highest testing films in Paramount history’, but it got a B cinemascore; so there’s clearly a disconnect with the test screening scores and the audience reaction. That seems to be showing up today, and for now it looks like a 3 day in the high 20’s and a 5 day in the high 30’ with a shot a 40.

Red One - When this film opened, I pointed out that these Christmas films leg out and you need to play long. Well, this MGM/Amazon streamer that got promoted to theatrical is holding it’s own today and if it continues to hold up over the weekend, they’ll only be down 15 to 20% from last weekend’s 3 day. That would mean they have a shot at finishing the theatrical run at $90 million to $100 million, and would mean they recouped their P & A costs, and then some. If that happens, the trade press that ran large font headlines calling it a bomb should offer MGM/Amazon an apology, in the same big font headline (I’m looking at you Variety). The 3 day looks around $11 million and the 5 day should end up in the mid/high teens.

Queer - Opened 7 theaters, 4 in LA and 3 in NY and they’re all pretty solid, with maybe Century City being a little soft. Figure a psa around $40k for 3 days, mid/high $50’s for 5 days.

Everyone have a great Thanksgiving.

• I know, I know, it’s weak as hell, but it’s the best I could come up with.