Second weekend of March 2025
One more week of dismal comparison to the same weekend last year, and although last year’s new films (Arthur the King, One Life, American Society of Magical Negroes) grossed less than the new films will gross this year, we still had Dune 2 and Kung Fu Panda 4 in the marketplace so we’re going to be another 40% behind last year’s total. Disney should get us back in the running next weekend with Snow White, however with the culture war folks taking their usual shots at Disney over creative choices, we’ll have to see how it all plays out after we know how good the movie is.
I’m down in Australia at a wedding right now writing this on Saturday morning*, which is kind of weird that I’m telling you what’s going to happen….yesterday. However, I got a lot of responses last week on a couple of the issues I spoke about, but quite a few of you really liked the idea of fluid windows. The one point I didn’t quite get to is that in order to protect the high ‘per eyeball’ revenue of theatrical, we need to keep the theatrical consumer guessing when the streaming date is. I’m not sure about your friends, but the civilians in my social circle are far too aware of the streamer brands in the theatrical space. When they see a brand like Apple anywhere attached to a film, they know it’s going to be available for free very soon, and a theatrical purchase dies. The less certain they are about that drop date, the better theatrical should be. Of course the folks that run the platforms would like some time to publicize the drop date, but since platform viewing doesn’t have the trigger threshold that theatrical does, a couple of weeks should get the job done (as opposed to the 5-12 months it takes to activate a theatrical audience)/
But here is a place where some experimentation and data analysis should give us answers. Is there any difference between the minutes viewed for a film that drops on a platform 14 days after the theatrical is exhausted vs 28 days? And if there isn’t, should we try the longer window for a film or two to see if the later weeks of the theatrical run have better legs? It’s all a big puzzle but with costs for production going up and up, and the revenue from streaming isn’t quite the golden goose we thought it was 5 years ago, we need to maximize every tier and get the most income from every pair of eyeballs.
The other part of the windowing issue was AMC asking for longer windows, but if they (and the rest of the exhibitors) want the industry to help them with longer windows, they need to give a little back to the industry. Over the last 15 years they’ve consistently looked for ways to pump up the gross for weekdays, starting with the Thursday ‘previews’, and now it’s ‘fan shows’ and ‘mystery Monday’s’. But based on the data I’ve been seeing over the last 15 years, it just dilutes the Friday gross and spreads about the same revenue over the days of the extra shows.
Here’s why that’s a problem and why the exhibitors want it. As I’ve said here over and over again, we need tagalongs. And if we want to keep growing the consumer pool of theatrical, tagalongs are the best source. But if we keep allowing the exhibitors to whine at the studios for more preview shows to prop up their slower days of the week, tagalongs are less likely to tag along on a weekday when they have to work the next day. The big fan of each movies’ IP has no problem going on a day (when it’s maybe not so convenient) because they want to see it first, but I really think the industry will grow faster if we stop this preview nonsense, and get the fans to go on weekends so they bring tagalongs. So why do the exhibitors want these extra preview shows? It’s very simple, since they make a decent share of their profit from concessions (now including the bar), and they only have so much capacity at the concession stand and the bar, by spreading gross from the busiest night to less busy nights, it makes their concession infrastructure more efficient and their per capita sales will go up. If the exhibitors want longer windows ‘for the good of the sector’ how about backing off on all those shows that are only good for them?
One last issue from last week that’s worth mentioning, I dared the Entertainment press to bring up The Electric State’s disastrous theatrical run, and for the most part they were too dumb and out of touch to do it. But Deadline did and pointed out that it’s really hard to point the finger at WB for a film where the opening gross didn’t justify the cost without pointing out The Electric State’s opening. I know it’s not much, but it’s always nice to see someone actually trying and paying attention.
Anyway, with the same expected accuracy as the value of my stock portfolio, here are some thoughts on the weekend box-office.
Mickey 17 - The drop from last week doesn’t look bad today and this has a shot at retaining the top spot this weekend. Like most Sci-fi films, this skews older male, and they tend to go on Saturday so this will either come in 1st or 2nd based on tomorrow’s gross. Right now it looks down 50% for a weekend of about $9 million.
Novocaine - They had some extra shows coming into the opening yesterday, and although I have a beef with all the extra weekday preview shows some films are having, there’s a different idea here. For films like this that have low star power and have good playability, it makes sense to do previews the weekend before and try to let the film be its own advocate. And by having those shows on the weekend, it’s more likely you’ll get tagalongs. Looks like a weekend of about $8 million.
Black Bag - This Steven Soderbergh film is actually the highest grossing film on the sheet right now, but its upscale/adult skew lends itself better to pre-sales than the films around it. They also have a few less runs than Novocaine (and didn’t have extra preview gross), so between those two factors this will come in 3rd. It’s pretty good in the coastal upscale theaters and should come in around $7 million for the weekend.
The Last Supper - Went 1500 runs and looks good enough for $3 million or so.
Opus - Went 1800 runs and has some fair numbers in the most upscale theaters, should be good enough for $1.8 million.
- I actually was going to publish this so it showed up in your email upside down (get it? I’m down under), and you know I’m not afraid of cheap gimmicks here; but so many of you didn’t love the email over TAYLOR SWIFT WEEKEND WHERE IT WAS ALL IN CAPS; so I decided not to do it. You’re welcome.