First weekend of March 2025

Okay, as bad as the difference between the same weekend this year (to last year) was last week (-51%), it’s gonna be worse this weekend. With Dune 2 settling in for a long run in week 2, we added Kung Fu Panda 4, Imaginary and Cabrini; which totaled about $75 million in gross. Just Kung Fu Panda 4 alone will outgross the total for this coming weekend. We’ve got one more week of being way behind last year before Snow White gives us a chance at matching last year, but the week after that we’ll be way behind again. But in a market where we are still dealing with supply chain issues, this is what we’re gonna get.

A piece in one of the trades caught my eye this morning, AMC is apparently pitching the idea that distributors need to rethink their windowing strategy, and should go back to a 45 day window. Cool. A couple of thoughts, both of which don’t align with the logic and experience of a 3rd grader.

First, as most of you know out there, movies are all unique. A movie is as unique as all of you who read this, and throwing a one size fits all rule at something that varies so greatly from one film to another, isn’t probably going to be effective or efficient. I would suggest another angle on windowing strategy, but I would need to ask a question of each studio first. How long does it take to start the mechanisms associated with each post theatrical tier?

The idea here is not to have a window where the clock starts ticking on the theatrical release date, but it starts ticking once the film is finished in theaters, and align it with some sort of theatrical benchmark. And just to pick a random number, let’s say that’s when a film’s theater count goes below 1000 theaters. Just taking something recently, say One Of Them Days; it opened in 2600 theaters, but last Friday it dropped down to 875 theaters. And then let’s say there’s a 21 day window once that happens, and when whatever the studios post theatrical deals are, kick in, it happens after that window. So in the case of One Of Them Days, it would have a 56 day window (35 days with more than 1000 runs in theaters and a 21 day buffer window), but it earned it with it’s theatrical success. Taking another film that opened on the same date but didn’t hold up after opening weekend, Wolf Man; it fell below 1000 theaters after week 3, so using the same formula it would have a 42 day window.

But going back to my original question, once you have a good idea how long a film is going to warrant more than 1000 theaters (and know when it’s going to drop below the threshold, which you can usually figure out a little before it happens), how long does it take to ramp up the post theatrical distribution channels? The goal here is to give a film a little buffer between the theatrical run and the ‘at home’ options, without losing the value of the theatrical glow. Can it be done very quickly or does it take time? I don’t know the answer, but I think the discussion should shift from a window from release date to a window from theatrical exhaustion. You’ve spent all that money for the theatrical run, you need to make sure and collect everything you can from the high revenue viewers. By shoving everything into a window that doesn’t take those high revenue viewers into account, it’s probably not the smartest thing to do.

Anyway, with the same expected accuracy as a CFO (who deals in international trade) sleep pattern, here are some thoughts on the weekend box-office.

Usually I talk about the films opening in order of weekend gross, but a slight change up this week, I’m going to order them by production budget.

The Electric State - This $300 million + film is opening in theaters today, and there are several aspects I find super interesting; I want you to read the following very closely, please don’t skim it.

First, this $300 million + film is opening in two theaters, yep just two. And if you didn’t know that was happening, there’s a reason for that, there has been zero marketing support for it. Clearly they aren’t reporting grosses, which is normal for Netflix, but If you go on the website for the theaters (the Ipic Westwood and the Ipic NYC), at the time of this writing they have sold 27 tickets over the 48 showtimes currently posted; so that lack of marketing support is showing in the grosses (to say the least). So this $300 million + film currently has a weekend gross of about $600. Netflix has taken TV spots for this movie, but they all point to the platform drop date of next Friday, so as usual that’s what’s important to them. And that’s okay, if this is what they want to do with movies like this with this kind of negative cost, god bless ‘em. A movie like this creates a lot of jobs, and if you see the materials for this film, it’s a really big creative swing and it’s as risky as it gets; and a risk like that can pay off with ground breaking success. With Netflix’s stock soaring for the last year or so, if Wall Street doesn’t care that they’re throwing money out the window, why should we.

However, there are a couple of aspects here that need to be pointed out (where the finger should not be pointed at Netflix), it should be pointed at other parts of the industry. And let’s start with one of my favorite groups, the Entertainment Press. These dipshits are so clueless they’re not going to even notice that there’s a $300 million film with a $600 gross this weekend. But a lot of you out there have been the victims of their lazy writing, where they’ve decided to label your opening as ‘dissapointing’ or even gone so far as to say the ‘b’ word. And that usually happens because of the budget of the movie or inaccurate tracking. Tracking is its own headache but they’re perfectly fine with labeling something like Red One, which grossed nearly $100 million domestic, as a bomb. Why would they say that? Oh…..that’s right, the budget (which was in the same neighborhood as The Electric State). So when a similar budget film does $97,000,159 less at the box office, apparently that’s just fine and they’ll give The Electric State a pass. Feel free to add this to your personal quiver, and ask them why they stuck their heads in the sand for this when they pick on your film next time.

Second, why would Netflix even bother with something like this? Of course, it’s to qualify for Oscars. And even though the reviews that have dropped so far don’t exactly say Oscar, this is a big budget film and it’s conceivable it could be in the running for some of the below the line awards. And let’s face it, the Netflix awards department has so many financial resources and are so good at what they do, they’ve put films way worse than this one into contention. But here’s where the finger gets pointed at the Academy; as any Lawyer will tell you there’s a difference between the Spirit of the Law and the Letter of the Law, and an awful lot of head scratching legal decisions are made because of the Letter of the Law. A Theatrical Release like this, where there is clearly no intention to attract a theatrical audience, is following the letter of the qualification rule; but is it aligning with the spirit of the Rule? You would wonder why the bar is set so low for qualification, and the answer is pretty simple; to protect the little films. The bar is set low so a film like To Leslie has a shot at bagging a Best Actress Nomination, but the letter of the rule allows films with massive resources to qualify without being theatrical releases.

So in a perfect world when the paperwork for The Electric State is submitted for eligibility, AMPAS should politely say ‘here’s the contact info for the Television Academy, hit them up for the Emmys’. But since the Academy leadership (that writes the rules) is way too intertwined with the Industrial Awards complex, there is zero chance that is going to happen. And if we’re ever going to write rules that can protect the little films without allowing the big guys to skirt the spirit of the rule, the committee that writes the rules cannot have anyone with any sort of conflict of interest, and what we have now is pretty much the exact opposite. And we end up with a $300 million + film doing $1000 on its opening weekend.

As far as this weekend’s gross, figure they’ll get some random walk up business and end up with a 3 day of about $1,000, or an abysmal $500 psa.

Mickey 17 - Hey what a coincidence, a movie that got good reviews (currently at 79%), has good exits, is going to be Oscar Winning Director Bong Joon Ho’s biggest opening ever (by about $20 million) and is going to open #1 at the box-office; but some of the dipshits in the Entertainment Press are going to say it’s ‘disappointing’ because of the cost. On the same weekend where a movie that cost triple of Mickey 17 did $1,000, and they are cool with saying that. Okay.

But let’s focus on this film. They had a good opening day yesterday, and the grosses are pretty good today; but it’s clearly a big city/coastal film with an emphasis on the Large Format Screens. Because those Large Formats tend to be more pre-sales oriented, the grosses are pretty flat today. It should end up around $20 million or a little better but when you look at the box-office drivers, that’s pretty good. The star, Robert Pattinson, is one of the best young actors working today, but without IP he’s not developed into a serious box-office draw and this is going to be his biggest opening without IP. Director Bong has obviously won an Oscar, but even Parasite only opened to $360k and cumed at $54 million…and wasn’t in English; so it’s not like he’s got a broad theatrical following. Also, when you look at what some of these upscale Sci-fi films (without IP) have done in the last several years like Ad Astra or The Creator, this is going to outperform them. Considering what this is, it’s pretty good this weekend.

Rule Breakers - The folks at Angel went 2000 runs here, and it’s not very good and looks like their lowest opening since they burst on the scene with The Sound of Freedom. Looks like a weekend around $1.5 million or so.

The holdover films are all right in line with a normal 40% drop from last week, but Last Breath is showing a little holding (it’s breath) power. If you take out the preview grosses the pure 3 day drop looks like it might be in the 30’s. That should give a weekend in the low 4’s.