First weekend of May 2025
The volcanic hot box-office is staying that way this weekend, and once again we’re going to come close to doubling the total from last year (The Fall Guy, Tarot). As far as the cume for this year, going into the weekend we’ve built up a 12% cushion over last year due (mostly) to Minecraft and Sinners, and we’ll clearly add to that this weekend. For the two weeks after this one, we’ll be about even with last year; but Memorial Day this year looks considerably better this year than last, even though I’m not buying the lofty bullshit [https://deadline.com/2025/05/lilo-stitch-mission-impossible-final-reckoning-box-office-forecast-1236382702/] that was in the trades yesterday, it’s still going to be really good. And looking into the near future there are going to be weekends in June that will blow away last year, and even the weekend where Inside Out 2 was, we’re going to be competitive. So the near future is really bright for the Theatrical Sector.
Anyway, based on something I overheard from some State Department Employees during a seminar put on by the Catholic Church titled ‘moving problem employees to other jobs without admitting you made a mistake’, here are some thoughts on the weekend box-office.
Thunderbolts* - It’s nice to see Disney back in the traditional 1st weekend of May slot, and they’ve apparently delivered a film that shows that they’re working their way out of the quality issues they’ve had off and on since the Pandemic. However, there’s one bit of data today that shows they’ve still got some work to do. They had a great opening day yesterday at $11.5 million, which is about 20% better than either Eternals or Shang-Chi generated. But once we got to day 2 today, it’s a little behind both films. What does that mean? Well, that gross yesterday is the Marvel freaks, and once it settles into a normal Superhero fanship today, it’s got the same issue that every other movie has to deal with; tag alongs and walk ups. And they’re dealing with the same downdraft that Accountant 2 dealt with last week, Sinners is the water cooler movie right now and it’s tough to pry those tag alongs and (especially) walk ups away. When the Disney/Marvel movies were a brand that (because of the consistency) almost guaranteed a certain quality, a Disney/Marvel film would have eviscerated a film like Sinners in a holdover week no matter how big it was, but because they had a rough patch they’re gonna have to make a few more Thunderbolts* before they can be trusted again, one film won’t do it. And since the last Disney/Marvel was iffy with both critics and audiences, getting a film like this with non-sequel characters (and following a film that was not great) to what it is today is a miracle of Marketing. The playability looks pretty good so far, and we could see an uptick over the weekend, but for now it looks like a solid $70 million. But if we didn’t have Sinners in the marketplace this would probably be at least 10% more.
Sinners - The band keeps playing here, and although it’s down more that last week, they lost a lot of their Large Format theaters to Thunderbolts*; and if you look at the theaters that don’t have a Large Format theater, the drop isn’t that much different than last week’s scant drop. But those Large Format theaters generate a lot of gross, so this looks down about 30% for a weekend in the low 30’s. That means this film should pass $200 million next weekend. Amen.
A Minecraft Movie - They gave into the chaos and are doing shows that encourage audience participation. Looking at the results, it looks like a market to market issue; the big markets like NY, LA, SF, etc aren’t showing much of a bump on an overall basis. But where it’s working it’s really working, and there a decent amount of theaters that are way up from last week. Figure it’s an overall drop of 30% for a weekend in the mid teens.
The Surfer - Went 900 runs and there’s not much going on, and as an example of a Marketing Misstep, it’s not very good near where there are Surfers. Looks like about $800k for the weekend.
- I still have no idea why the asterisk is there, but I kept assuming if I looked hard enough I would see it referring to a footnote that said Suicide Squad 3.