Third weekend of December 2024

We’re getting into the home stretch of the always unpredictable Christmas release window, and we’ve got a much better roster of films this year than last year (Aquaman: The Lost Kingdom, Migration, Anyone But You, Iron Claw and Poor Things) so we’ll crush the same weekend last year and might even get close to doubling it. In fact, just the grosses from Sonic and Mufasa should best the total from 2023, however Christmas Eve was on Sunday last year so that drove the numbers down a little. Next Wednesday will add some more titles, but outside of Christmas Day (where The Color Purple had an outlier $18 million day), this years films will add about the same gross to the total as last year.

For those of you who have been reading this for a while, almost exactly 4 years ago today (in response to WB’s decision to put their entire 2021 slate on Max day and date with Theatrical), I began a weekly rant about what a monumentally stupid idea it was, and we needed to pump the brakes on the idea that theaters are dead and everything would go straight to streaming. Although I still think we needed that time period just to see what would happen if we collapsed windows, and we now know how valuable theatrical is to increase viewership when it gets to the TV streamers, some are apparently still just catching on. There was an article in The NY Times this week about how successful MGM’s release of Red One was, and how it made some nice money in theaters and then set a viewership record once it got on TV with Amazon Prime; the headline read ‘Here’s a Hollywood twist, streaming success runs through theaters’. Cue the slow sarcastic clap. I needle the lazy entertainment press on a regular basis, but everyone in the business has become acutely aware that there are virtually no data points over the last 4 years of experimentation with windows that show anything but a lift in P1 tiers (and beyond) from a theatrical release. But in the NYT this late in the game? So depressing.

Let’s talk about Red One though, because as good as it was (and for what it was, it was very good), let’s not treat it like a template we can use on every film going forward. I’m not a data scientist (but I play one in real life), but I don’t know any data scientists that would make decisions based on a sample size of one, and Red One is a sample size of one. As a side note, because all films are so unique and different, at their core every film is a sample size of one and that’s why our sector drives the quant guys kinda nuts. But back to Red One. Although it had a pretty tight window for a film of its size, there was a shelf life issue due to its seasonality, so it had to have a tight window. And although that window worked this time, we should look back at the WB slate of 2021 and remember how that experiment shouldn’t be forgotten.

The first couple of WB films released in 2021 (as theaters began opening back up), did good enough that it seemed like the day and date wasn’t cutting into theatrical that much, and when Godzilla vs Kong opened over Easter to $48 million (with a lot of the big markets still closed or limited because of the 2nd wave of Covid), there were a few people around town saying ‘we solved this, this is the way to go’. But consumers have a slow learning curve, and as the slate rolled out the rest of the year, we saw the platform cut into the theatrical grosses deeper and deeper. Consumers who went to a theater on opening weekend got hazed by their friends who watched it at home on Max the same weekend, so as the public found out they didn’t need to go to a theater, they stayed home and watched it on TV.

Which brings us back to Red One. Yes, this was very successful in theaters, but because Christmas films tend to leg out, the softish opening weekend was good enough to get them their P&A money back (and then some). Of course the ‘glass half empty crowd’ says that the softish opening was because consumers knew it was going to be on Prime, but I just don’t think consumers are that in the know. This was a male buddy action film that happened to have Santa Claus in it, so it was a tough theatrical sell from the beginning, and the fact that MGM got this open to what they did is a Christmas miracle on it’s own. But the next Christmas film from a studio that also has a platform might not be as lucky, because we’ll possibly see the consumer waiting to watch it on TV, based on what they learned here. A lot of us in the industry knew this was gonna drop on the platform before Christmas, but there wasn’t a peep from MGM about it, it just happened. Which was a very smart strategy, for one film, until the consumer catches on.

And that’s the ultimate puzzle of windows and theatrical, how long do you have to keep the window clear so you can wring all those high revenue (and taste maker) eyeballs out of theatrical? Because no retailer would ever have a ‘clearance sale’ while something was still selling at retail prices, unfortunately the clear answer is ‘until it’s done in theaters’, and in a perfect world you just have fluid dates for your P1 tier. But the P1 folks don’t love that and want firm dates so they can plan, but as long as theatrical is the tier that sets the bar for every step that follows, a fluid P1 is more efficient and they are going to have to come around to the idea that they need to wait. Unless it’s a seasonal situation.

Anyway, based on something I heard at a seminar titled ‘Controlling your narcissism as a Show Runner’ with Tyler Sheridan giving the keynote address, here are some thoughts on the weekend box-office.

This weekend has been a weekend I’ve been curious about since the beginning of the year. As I’ve pointed out here, this time of year is just so different from the rest of the year, and to have two films of this size opening on the same day just doesn’t happen any other time of the year. Imagine being in a dating meeting and someone suggests putting a massive tentpole on the same day as another massive tentpole in June? The leader of the meeting would ask you kindly to ‘please put yourself on mute and never speak again’. But this time of the year is different and it’s fine to set things up this way because you’re dealing with 17 days of robust business instead of 3, so you’re in it for the long game and both films can be successful.

But this weekend is still The Hunger Games, and if you’re going to go head to head with another monster, you need to have the upper hand on the other film with 3 key aspects (to get you through this weekend): IP strength and how it’s applied to the film, Critical Response, and level of Entertainment. And sometimes you can think you’ve got the upper hand, but you only know what you know and once you get to opening day, you realize you don’t have the upper hand.

A couple of months ago, if I had bet you that Sonic would have a Rotten Tomatoes score 32 points higher than Mufasa, you would have bet your house on it. But here we are and that is the case, but the other two aspects you need this weekend are rearing their heads now as well, and it’s causing a decent amount of separation between these two films today. In order to cut through all the clutter of the weekend before Christmas, you need to be really entertaining; because outside of the very biggest cities, drama is an iffy proposition until Christmas Day. And when the consumer considers both of these films, the Shakespearian aspects of Mufasa don’t compare well with the dumb fun that Sonic promises. But there’s also a factor on Mufasa that’s just kind of ‘unlucky’, and I feel it’s one of the reasons behind Sonic separating today.

Of all the Disney Animated IP’s The Lion King is Platinum level and there’s a lot of love for it, so doing an origin story seems like a pretty good angle to take. However, one of the reasons we love familiar IP in theatrical is..well…just that; it’s familiar and the marketing angle into the film is easier. But what if there’s a subtext to this film that makes it ’too familiar’? The direction they took here seems sound and logical, two kids who are friends take different routes later so one becomes good and one turns evil…that’s great…oh, wait…it’s Wicked with boys. And without the song fanship, actor fanship and a ton of box-office inertia steaming towards you. Shit. So the reasons Mufasa won’t achieve box-office parody with Sonic this weekend, and what they look like after the 17 holiday days might be a different story, are issues that are very hard to predict when you’re dating something over a year in advance. What’s different here is that unlike the situation we had last month with Moana and Wicked, the one that moved got an upgrade; that was not the case here and if either film moved, it would have been a flinch. So that’s why this is the way it is.

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 - Got off to a really great start on opening day yesterday, and day 2 looks pretty amazing today. The success of this film plays into a lot of the ‘branding’ issues I’ve been talking about. They made a good film with Sonic 1, they continued the quality with Sonic 2, and then they upped the quality again this time and added a really fun villian. So they’ve developed a ‘brand glow’ that’s really paying off here by making consistently good movies. It’s playing like a standard big movie with the big cities and the coasts leading the grosses, but it’s really good everywhere. The boost they got from a big Rotten Tomatoes score (both with critics and audience) is helping them cut through the seasonal clutter, and it’s performing similar (and maybe a little better) than where Sonic 2 was on opening day in April 2022. It’s going to be interesting to see how this tomorrow with the family audience completely available (only about 20% of K-12 is out today) against Mufasa, and tomorrow could be a good barometer on which film is ahead at the end of January 5th. This looks like a weekend of about $70 million, with an upside if it does as well tomorrow with the family audience as it’s doing today.

Mufasa: The Lion King - As much as all the attention will go to Sonic and it’s opening, this is a very good result for the date; and just to put that in context it’s probably going to open to a similar number this weekend than Wonka did last year on opening weekend, and that was the biggest film of Christmas 2023. What’s frustrating here is this film has an iffy RT score but if you look deeper, it got a lot of 2 1/2 star reviews, and that’s the sucky part of RT. When you get 2 1/2 star reviews you can end up with a total score anywhere between 30 and 80, so the RT score is just an example of how things didn’t break their way this time. But we’re at Christmas and you play long, and this weekend is just the beginning of a long journey for this film. Right now this looks like a weekend in the high 30’s with a shot at 40, but a film like this doesn’t tell us what it is until Christmas Day, and the golden 8 that follow. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle opened to about this number, but on Christmas Day it really popped so we could see something similar here.

Wicked/Moana 2 - Considering we’ve got some pretty big titles coming in today, both are showing some good resilience. Both look down only about 35% for the weekend. That would put both films in the mid teens.

Homestead - Angel films are jumping into the Christmas fray with this film that seems to be doing something that we’ve seen from the folks at another faith based studio, Kingdom Stories; the critics sniff at it but the moviegoers love it. This looks a little better than their Thanksgiving film Bonhoeffer, and looks like a weekend of about $6 million.

The Brutalist - Went 4 runs in NY and LA, with 70mm prints at the Village East and the Vista, and standard digital in Lincoln Square and Century City. The 70mm runs are sensational; the shows at the Vista are sold out until Christmas Eve and the gross at the Village East is bigger than the Lincoln Square and Century City combined. Because the film is only slightly shorter than this email, there’s only 2 shows a day in each theater, so the $50k psa this looks headed to is a massive achievement.