Fourth weekend of February 2025
Even though the new films this weekend won’t quite gross as much as the films on this weekend last year (Demon Slayer, Ordinary Angels, Drive Away Dolls), having a Marvel in the marketplace should be enough to get us ahead of the total from last year. Even though this week is going to be one more week of getting ahead of last year’s total (we’re currently about 21% ahead), we won’t have an answer for Dune 2 starting next weekend, so we’ll start giving back.
As the business continues to evolve, we’re beginning to see some new players step up their game and seem to want to play in the same sandbox that the majors play in. We’re seeing bigger openings from the A24’s and Neon’s, and they are beginning to market films in ways that are similar to what the majors do, including TV advertising. And that’s a really good thing, because as I’ve pointed out before, online targeting is really effective at activating the fanship of the IP, but those tag alongside are trickier to get to the point where they know what a film is when they are invited (instead of uttering the death phrase; ‘What’s that?). If you want to be happy with mid/high single digit openings, the digital only campaigns that the boutique distributors have really tuned magnificently well are the way to go. But if you want to swing hard enough so you have a shot at getting past first base, you’ll need to step up and spend some TV.
But when you start playing in the same sandbox the majors play in, there’s a common side effect; moderate to severe industry expectations syndrome*. When you’re a studio that opens films almost exclusively in the mid and high single digits, the press doesn’t really pay that much attention to you. And outside of hard core industry wonks like me, the films are just kind of ’there’. But once you start crossing into the over $10 million weekend territory, you get attention, and with attention comes the lazy press and industry takes as you get closer to release.
This weekend Neon has Oz Perkins’ followup to the wildly successful Longlegs, and rather than take the time to look at the elements of the film and evaluate it on it’s own, it’s immediately……Longlegs. But if anyone took the time to look at it closer, it’s a Horror/Comedy instead of the Horror/Thriller Longlegs was (which makes the marketing trickier) and it’s missing one tiny element…Nicholas Cage as Hannibal Lector(ish). So now Neon has to deal with that ‘dissapointing’ anvil around their neck, when it’s going to be the 2nd biggest opening in their company’s history. So the smart folks in town (that’s you) will take a step back and look at the production budget, marketing cost and the gross this weekend and realize it’s very good. The rest are just idiots that will say ‘well, it’s not Longlegs’.
Anyway, with the same accuracy of Eagle fans being able to spell Eagles, here are some thoughts on the weekend box-office.
Captain America: Brave New World - Because last Friday was not only opening day but Valentine’s Day, today should be way down and it is, plus they’ll take a haircut on Sunday because it’s not a holiday weekend this weekend. Also, the playability here is on the low side of Marvel, and it’s down a little more than a similar time period Marvel like Quantumania two years ago. Figure it’s down 70% from last weekend for a weekend in the high 20’s.
The Monkey - The had a really nice start with last night’s opening, and although so far the exit polls don’t quite measure up to the good critics score, the grosses are pretty good today. The one telltale sign of the grosses, and who the core audience is here is that all the best theaters have a film school within 3 miles of them, and you’ll probably hear most of the audience yelling at each other that they were into Robert Eggers before anyone. But the grosses are good enough to propel this to a really nice $12 million to $13 million opening.
The Unbreakable Boy - Another film from the folks at Kingdom Stories with strong exits, but the low star power here is showing in the grosses. With a film like this it’s hard to tell if it’s going to bounce with the family crowd tomorrow so this could end up anywhere from $2 million to $3 million for the weekend.
- other side effects include nausea, dumb press takes, diarrhea, unnecessary ‘fan shows’ that dilute your opening weekend, vomiting, sleepless nights and crazy high tracking numbers that aren’t predictive. If you experience any of these side effects, immediately realize that everything in this business is hard and the higher you shoot the harder it is.