Super Bowl weekend 2025
There was a time when Super Bowl weekend was a really good place to put a film that was female skewing, and could survive the idea of only have 2 days in the weekend; or the release schedule was so packed that you had nowhere else to go. Both of those don’t really apply these days, since we’re still dealing with supply chain issues and the release schedule still has weekends that give you 3 full days of business available. As we’ve seen the last couple of weeks, this weekend will be below the pre-Covid norm for SB weekend, but last year (Lisa Frankenstein) really sucked so with a couple of decent wide releases we’ll blow last year’s SB weekend out of the water.
Consistent with the quiet Super Bowl box-office weekend, there’s not much going on. Of course we have the Oscar race getting a little weird with this year’s edition of the ‘February surprise’. But up until, then the weirdest thing to me was that both (apparent) Best Picture front runners were either a film that made no attempt at a real Theatrical footprint (Emilia Perez), and a film that pretty much botched it’s theatrical run (Anora), so in a weird way had no Theatrical footprint as well. It’s not that I think that box-office grosses should play into a film’s ability to win an Oscar, but we keep nominating films for major awards where the dollars spent on the awards campaign is a multiple of the dollars spent to get consumers to see it in a theater. And as long as we allow that to happen, and let the industrial awards complex in the Academy protect their turf (instead of doing the best thing for the sector), one day we might have to change the name of the Oscars to the Emmys +.
Anyway, based on something I saw in the AVN’s Red Carpet Dress Code that said ‘If you look like you’re going to the Grammys, cover up a little’, here are some thoughts on the weekend box-office.
Dog Man - The exit’s were just okay here, and that’s showing up today. However this should right itself tomorrow and end up down about 55% for a weekend in the mid teens.
Heart Eyes - A very similar situation as we had last week with Companion, make a genre movie at a reasonable price, keep the Marketing costs under control and open to a weekend in the high single digits. You can break even on the theatrical run and if you make a good movie, the holdover weeks should generate some profits from the Theatrical, and set you up nicely for the subsequent tiers. The grosses are running about 10% behind Companion right now, but exit polls are just okay (and as usual with Horror, the critics seemed to really like it way more than the consumers), plus they’ll get hit on Sunday with the game, but it should be enough for about $8 million.
Love Hurts - Although this isn’t going to do much business (and the exits look pretty soft so far), there’s something going here I find encouraging. We have two Oscar winners here in Ke Huy Quan and Ariana DeBose (or Key Huy Quan and Ariana DuBose if you use the Screen Engine spelling), and Universal took a shot at two pedigreed actors who really don’t have much box-office power yet. But it takes a while to build theatrical fanship, and enough small films might eventually add up to some real fanship, so journey of 1000 miles….. Anyway, this looks like $6 million or so.
Becoming Led Zeppelin - Opened in 350 theaters and it’s pumping out some really big numbers in the big cities. Looks like an impressive weekend in the mid 2’s with a psa of about $6k.
Companion - For a genre movie, it’s a few points better than the norm today, it’s about the same drop from last Friday as M3GAN had in it’s 2nd Friday, but just like the other films Sunday will drive it down. Still should be good for a drop of 50% and end up in the high 4’s.