Easter weekend 2025
It’s going to be another great weekend, fueled by good product and the Easter Holiday weekend. It’s so good we’ll more than double last year’s same weekend (Abigail, Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, Spy x Family Code: White, although it was not Easter Weekend), and we’ll come close to the biggest 3rd weekend in April ever, 2016 (The Jungle Book, Barbershop: The Next Cut, Criminal, but also not Easter Weekend). We have a shot of doubling last year’s totals for the next 2 weeks, but we’ll fall behind a little on Mother’s Day weekend. But because the last couple of weeks have been so good, a lot of consumers are watching the trailers for the Summer Tentpoles, which should give them a nice boost.
This weekend is kind of an odd weekend box-office wise. Since today is Good Friday, there’s about 3/4 of schools on Holiday, plus a lot of business’s are closed, so it’s a really good box-office day. It’s generally the best day of the weekend, and as you would expect the kids and general audience films do the best. Tomorrow is usually a little less and Easter Sunday can be all over the place depending on the film.
There is one aspect of the business I keep meaning to talk about here that’s relevant with Sinners today. There are some film makers these days who like to shoot on film rather than digitally. And that’s an artistic choice, but every once in a while I see a film (and usually a film of size) that shoots on film and then does not strike 70mm prints. Looking at how those 70mm prints perform in the marketplace, that seems like a big mistake.
A couple of years ago, Steven Spielberg shot West Side Story on film, and I always wonder what the theatrical life of that film would have looked like if they had opened it exclusive in NY and LA in 70mm (it went the first weekend in December), and then rolled it out Christmas Day wide. That was the year that Licorice Pizza was selling out the massive Village Westwood (RIP, hopefully only temporarily) in 70mm, and since it was a comedy/drama it didn’t nearly have the presentation cache a full blown musical would have had. It’s possible there were 35mm prints, but if there were I wasn’t aware of them; however I don’t see the box-office lift for 35mm prints.
But the 70mm prints on recent films, including Sinners today, seem to land with the consumer and lead to massive pre-sales and grosses in the theaters that have them. Even theaters with so so presentations like The Vista were packed for the 70mm run of The Brutalist, and I’m sure a lot of those consumers drove right past their neighborhood theater to attend. We do have an infrastructure issue, since there are only so many 70mm projectors in existence and as far as I know, no one is manufacturing them; and who owns some of the existing ones is apparently a tricky issue when it comes to using them. However, with all these gimmicky formats fighting for brand awareness like Sensurround 4D and Sound 360 Screen X, why aren’t we fixing that manufacturing issue?* 70mm is a format that’s fully baked with the consumer and seems to be a plug and play marketing lift, so figuring out how to make few more projectors seems much simpler than installing 200 moving seats. But if you shoot on film, asking for a 70mm print (or two) is an opportunity for extra gross that you should fight for.
Anyway, with the same expected accuracy of Karen Bass’s text archive, here are some thoughts on the weekend box-office.
A Minecraft Movie - With most kids out of school today, including the teen boys who seem to be driving this, it’s only down a little from last Friday. Because this weekend can go all over the place, for now this looks down about 40% for a weekend somewhere in the 40’s.
Sinners - Never piss off the box-office gods; we thought that A Minecraft Movie’s runaway success was the God’s brushback pitch at the Entertainment Press’s heads, but they don’t seem to be done yet. This was one of the films that the Entertainment Press was licking their chops for because they seemed to feel it was too expensive; even though another WB film, Elvis, pretty much had the same cost and opened to much less than this film (but they were cool with that and had a problem here). Yeah, I know, but the deal was weird and it was a big risk. Well that risk resulted in a film that critics and audiences are giving a lot of love to and it’s doing a lot of business; and that’s an outlier situation. So the risk was worth it, and the ‘yeah, but’ will probably be ‘but they won’t make much money’, which is about as ‘glass half empty’ as you can get. Even in this business. Looks great today, and obviously it’s best in the AA theaters; but the 70mm theaters are right up there with the powerhouse AA theaters, showing the power of the format. Just like Minecraft, this should end somewhere in the 40’s, and this could easily end up at #1. Pretty amazing job from top to bottom here; well made, smartly marketed and on a great date, so they hit the trifecta with Production, Marketing and Distribution.
The King of Kings - This film was built for this weekend, and it’s actually up today from last Friday. Hard to say where it’s going for the rest of the weekend, but looking at today’s numbers I’d be shocked if it was any lower than the mid teens, which would only be a 20% drop.
The Wedding Banquet - Went 1100 theaters and it’s just okay. What’s interesting about the way it’s playing is that it’s a LGBT skewing Asian story, and it’s not showing much heat in either the LGBT or the Asian theaters. It’s just the normal upscale and arthouse theaters. Looks like a weekend a little over $1 million.
Sneaks - Went 1500 theaters and spent some decent marketing money, including TV. But it’s not really showing in the grosses and it’s not good today. Normally it would bounce tomorrow but with all the kids out today it should be better today and it won’t bounce tomorrow. Looks like maybe $800k or so.
The Legend of Ochi - Went exclusive in NY (Lincoln Sq and Angelika) and LA (Burbank and The Grove) and it’s good in NY but pretty soft in LA. Looks like a PSA in the mid teens.
*And I didn’t even mention 3D, which is the best kept secret of going to a massive movie on opening weekend. Just go to the 3D theater, even when everything else is full, you can sit wherever you want in the 3D theater. Which brings up the question, why is there still a 3D screen?