MLK weekend 2025
The MLK Holiday weekend has been a really great weekend to release a movie over the years, and usually this is prime real estate for a decent sized film. But we’ve still got supply chain issues in our sector dating back to the disruptions (that keep lingering), so if studios had a big film to put here, they would have done it; but they don’t. Instead we have a couple of smaller films this year that will only gross a little more than half of the money that the MLK films did last year (Mean Girls, The Beekeeper, The Book of Clarence). However since we’re in a holiday leap year this year, the 3rd weekend in January last year was the weekend after MLK weekend, and with only one wide film (I.S.S.) opening, we’ll soundly beat the same weekend for last year. But it’s a good thing the front half of last year was soft, because it’s more of the same this year.
A few of you have already reached out to me today about the IMAX Narnia announcement, and my initial reaction was just a shrug and a head scratch. First of all it’s almost 2 years away and a lot can happen between now and then. But considering the amount of concrete data we have that validates how much lift a successful theatrical run elevates a film once it gets to the platform, if they want to do something that makes them less money, it’s their money. But let’s talk about why we should all hope that this idea evolves in the next 21 months.
Most importantly, Netflix is good for this industry and we need them to succeed, but I don’t know of any business anywhere that wants to make less money. Netflix has been so supportive of economically challenged portions of our business like Shorts and Docs, they are practically a patron of the arts. Their international presence has caused emerging creative communities like Korea and under-represented countries like Spain to grow to a place where they are now entertainment hubs that can produce content that generates revenue outside of the home territories. So the more money they make, the better it is for the rest of the industry; but unless they evolve in the way they look at their theatrical presence in North America, they are leaving money on the table. And that’s not good for any of us.
The ‘ah-ha’ moment that hopefully will resonate enough with everyone (including Netflix) is what happened a couple of months ago on Red One. There were a couple of moments in the life of that film that were pretty expected; they had a full throated theatrical campaign that got the movie open, and then the movie was good enough that it hung around a while (and ended up at a good Domestic Total Gross at just short of $100 million). It dropped on the platform to record viewing numbers, which was also not a surprise. But then it did something unexpected, it didn’t do what straight to streaming movies do, it hung around a while on the platform and didn’t fade out quickly. And as an extra bonus, since it had established itself as a bone fide theatrical movie, it kept doing business in theaters. So now MGM’s investment in a theatrical run gives them a library title that has real value, and you can’t say that about the many Christmas movies that have been made for and gone straight to their platforms.
The key phrase that keeps popping up as I look at recent data is ‘bone fide theatrical movie’, and once you get a film to identify to the consumer that way, there is a butterfly effect that lifts it as it lives through the rest of its lifecycle. This shows up a lot in the PVOD numbers, and since PVOD is super expensive in relation to anything else you do at home on TV, it’s a different type of consumer from the Theatrical consumer. However, you need those theatrical consumers to make that expensive purchase worth it to the PVOD consumer. It’s one of the main reasons you don’t go day and date Theatrical with PVOD, you need that time to legitimize it as theatrical, and that drives the PVOD. And that type of consumer behavior is something all the streamers need to consider.
Taking that idea a little farther, as much as the streamers have a lot of pride in the effectiveness of their home page and the algorithms that steer consumers to their movies (as well as other content), as the old saying goes ‘you can lead a horse to water…..’. So it’s great that they serve up a title to a consumer with precision, but you still need them to click, and the data keeps telling us over and over again that the theatrical cache a film acquires during a theatrical run is a difference maker when it comes to clicking. And the click might be for something that the algorithm didn’t consider, but it’s happening because of the downstream effect of a theatrical release; but because of the click the algorithm reconsiders what to recommend going forward. So it’s all wins.
But let’s circle back to Narnia. Even though it’s a long way down the road, and if they do what they did with Glass Onion two years ago and just did a half hearted toe dip in theatrical, in the 2nd or 3rd week of the platform release they’ll probably be behind week 3 of the streaming release of It Ends With Us 2: It Only Ends When We Run Out Of Money Because We Gave It All To Our Lawyers in viewership; but if that’s cool with them, so be it.
But speaking of Glass Onion, if there’s a press release I pray for every night, it’s that we’ll hear one day that they are going to follow the ‘Red One’ model with the next film in the series, Wake Up Dead Man. If they went full in on a theatrical release on Wake Up Dead Man in mid November, let it play for a while, and then surprise dropped it (one of the reasons Red One was so effective theatrically is Amazon/MGM kept the platform date quiet and didn’t announce it until the week it dropped) on Christmas Day they would create an amazing data set to study and learn from. Especially the performance on the platform, and compare the data on Wake Up Dead Man to Glass Onion; in our business there are so few opportunities to A/B test release methods and this seems like a gift from God. And of course there’s all that revenue from the Theatrical release that can zero out your Marketing spend.
What’s especially ironic here is that Netflix has become so huge being a disruptor, but by clinging to ideas that data debunks, they might have ceded the disruptor title to MGM/Amazon since they are the disruptor who is evolving. For the sake of the business, you would hope they will evolve as well.
Anyway, based on something I heard at a court ordered anger management class for Eagle fans banned from the Linc, and they kept yelling STFUYUC at the instructor, here are some thoughts about the weekend box-office.
One of Them Days - It’s nice to have a surprise these days (and I’m not surprised much), but this is really good today. Clearly it’s amazing in the AA theaters, but what’s really encouraging here (besides sending Adrian Smith into retirement with a #1) is that the marketing spend here was really tight and efficient, so again it’s not what you make it’s what you keep. Plus I love to see Actors protect their IP’s with work ethic and the ‘being everywhere’ of Keke Palmer seems to be coming back to her. The exits here are very very good, so with a weak slate over the next couple of weeks this might cross over and be around for a while. For this weekend it looks like 14 in 3 days and around 16 for 4.
Mufasa: The Lion King - Because there’s not much new film coming in, the tried and true holdovers are flexing their muscles and this isn’t down much at all today. Figure it’s only down about 10% from last weekend for a 3 day of about 13 and a 4 day of 15.
Wolfman - Looks a lot like Night Swim right now, but apparently the playability is pretty sketchy so far. Unless the bottom drops out because of the playability, figure about 12 for 3, and 14 for 4.
A Complete Unknown, Moana 2, Babygirl, Sonic and Wicked are all having a really good day today, so they all look down about 20% for the weekend. Nosferatu is the film that’s a little more normal today with another horror film coming in the marketplace.
The Brutalist - Added another 250 theaters (to get to 330) and it’s got the usual bright spots in upscale theaters, but the theaters they took last week are way off for the most part, so it looks like the audience isn’t terribly deep here. Looks like a 3 day of $1.3 million and a 4 day of about $1.4 million.
September 5 - Expanded to 125 runs and there’s not really much to talk about, figure a 3 day of about $400k and a 4 day of about $500k.