Final weekend of May 2025
As expected, this weekend is going to blow away the new release free weekend (Haikyu!! The Dumpster Battle, In a Violent Nature, Ezra, Summer Camp) from last year, and if it doesn’t triple last year it should come close. The only thing standing in the way of beating every weekend last year in June is Inside Out 2, and we’ve got such good depth in this year’s roster, even that weekend we won’t be that far behind. But just like every Summer, we’ll need the tentpoles to deliver in the heart of the Summer and we’ll have to see how those films (especially the rebooted IPs) perform.
As I pointed out last week, when shit rolls down hill after a disappointing opening weekend, it usually lands on Distribution or Research, but usually Distribution (assuming Marketing ducks the bullet). And that usually happens because the release date is seen as a problem, and sometimes that can be a valid assessment (like putting an adult skewing film in the first couple of weeks of December), but (more often than not) there was some bad luck involved. And since most films opening wide during this time of year, or any peak play period, get set a year or more in advance, sometimes you need some luck.
For instance, a couple of weeks ago The Accountant 2 opened to about the same gross as the first film opened to, but the massive accomplishment was getting to that first film’s number in the wake of the outlier watercolor movie Sinners (and to a certain extent, Minecraft). But although they had a little bad luck being behind Sinners, and in a situation like that they would have very little chance with the tag alongs and walk ups; because they had a movie that came out of SXSW with a 100% RT score (which eventually settled in the 70s) and great exits, so they were able to peel some of those tag alongs and walk ups away. But let’s say the movie wasn’t what it was (quality wise) and it was just good, and fell into the dreaded 2 1/2 star vortex where the critics like it, but more designate it as rotten than fresh. I doubt they would have gotten out of the teens that weekend, but on the flip side if Sinners wasn’t there, with the RT and Audience scores, they might have had a 3 in front of the gross. The flip side this year was Captain America: Brave New World, which got beat up pretty good by the critics and didn’t do much better with the exits, however the business was coming off an abysmal $65 million total box office weekend and allowed the exceptional campaign that Disney created to soar. Had that film been behind Sinners and Minecraft, who knows how low it could have gone.
But even though any movie would struggle behind the big films we have this weekend, there’s a 2nd factor this weekend with Karate Kid. We’ve seen the ‘streamer’ factor come up in so many ways; from the positive effect of the Disney IP’s exposure on Disney + causing the Theatrical treatment of the IP’s to soar; to the negative, where we’ve seen too many ‘movie’ stars become ’TV’ stars because they took the bag the streamers were offering (and now they are struggling to get the movie star factor back).
On Karate Kid, I’m wondering today if the use of this IP on TV has made this film an iffy theatrical proposition, and then a challenging theatrical marketplace made it tough to carve a corner out for itself. Taking a step back for a look at this package, there’s nothing wrong with it, and although the critics put it in the 2 1/2 but rotten vortex, they kind of liked the movie. Sony did a nice job with the campaign, but it’s on the soft side today. The clue here is that the big surprise is the inclusion of the Cobra Kai characters in the movie, but who needs to pay to see them? But having Lilo & Stitch becoming the monster it did is no help, and no one could have seen that coming last Spring when this was dated (in fact, until last October this wasn’t even on the release schedule it was just an Untitled Disney placeholder on this date).
So in the endless puzzle of things that make this business hard, how to use IP’s that have a major presence on TV is just one more piece to the puzzle.
Anyway, with the same expected accuracy of an Elon Musk injury explanation, here are some thoughts on the weekend box-office.
Lilo & Stitch - Looks pretty good today, a couple of points behind where The Little Mermaid was running it’s 2nd Friday. They dropped 57% in the 2nd weekend, so figure this drops 60% and ends up in the high 50’s.
Mission: Impossible The Final Reckoning - It’s running a couple of points behind the best holding MI of the series, Fallout right now. That dropped 42% so figure this at down 50% for a weekend in the low 30’s.
Karate Kid: Legends - They got off to a decent start last night, and the exits so far are very good, but this was facing two types of headwinds. As I said above, it’s a TV IP and that’s a tricky proposition and can work either way for/against you. But when you’re fighting two behemoths, one of which you share a lot of consumer commonality with, walking into a meat grinder marketplace with a TV IP doesn’t help. Right now this looks like low 20’s, but it’s got good playability so tomorrow could push it higher.
Bring Her Back - The folks that brought us the hit Talk to Me are back with another thriller that seemed to hit the critics with similar enthusiasm as Talk to Me, but the exits are considerably softer. Not that critics would be afraid to bang on an ‘it’ film maker even if the film is iffy….no…not a chance. Anyway, it looks like about $7 for the weekend.
The Phoenician Scheme - In one of more head scratching things that happens over and over again, we’ve got a Wes Anderson film loaded with star power going only 6 runs in NY and LA, because ‘we always do it this way’. So dumb, almost as dumb as The Empire Strikes Back opening exclusive (and yes, that happened, because…that’s the way they did it last time). Anyway it’s the same great grosses for a Wes Anderson film (that are only limited to the size of the auditoriums) and it looks headed to the usual sensational $600k or so for the weekend.