Final weekend of June 2025

This weekend is shaping up to be about where I thought it would be, and it looks like a repeat of last week where we’ll be $20 million to $30 million behind last year’s total (A Quiet Place Day One, Horizon: An American Saga Chapter 1, Kalki 2898 AD). So we’ll give back a little more of our surplus this weekend, but next week looks like we’re in the game to tie or beat last year. However, since next Friday is the 4th of July, the weather can play a really big part in how good the box-office is that day. If it’s nice, the day can be just okay, but if it rains it’s like printing extra money.

These days you often hear the term ‘they outta go Theatrical’, and it sounds like a pretty simple idea but the more substantial the film is the tougher it gets, and once you get to the rarefied air of tentpole budgets it’s years of work to ‘go Theatrical’. Back in the 90’s, when Michael Jordan and the Bulls were ruling the NBA there was a joke running around (that a lot of you who don’t follow sports won’t get, but I’ll do my best to tell it in a way so you might get the point); ‘who is the only one that can keep Michael Jordan from scoring more than 20 points a game? Dean Smith (he was Michael’s college coach at North Carolina who didn’t let him be the player he eventually became). I’m bringing it up because as I look at what’s going on this weekend at the box-office, ‘who is the only one who could keep Jerry Bruckheimer with a 9 figure budget (and then some) and a 86% RT score under $50 million in its first weekend? Apple.

There’s a ton to unpack this weekend on F1, but if you take a step back and realize that since Apple started targeting some films towards theatrical, other than Killers of the Flower Moon (more on that in a minute), the results keep coming in low. They’ve now had 4 different studios (Paramount, Sony, Universal and WB) as service deals, and in each case those studios keep knocking stuff out of the park theatrically, but then can’t seem to make the Apple films work. So clearly this is an Apple issue and it’s not like this is a production issue, the quality of films are probably in line with the batting average of the theatrical studios, and the exits today are excellent on F1. But the theatrical sector is hard, really hard, and sometimes the difference between success and mediocrity at the box-office can boil down to details and subtleties in Marketing, but it takes a firm hand on the wheel of the Marketing ship from inception to guide a film to box-office success.

If you look at the recent history of Apple Films, they had a firm hand on the wheel marketing wise during the Covid years and won a Best Picture Oscar. But then that firm hand told Apple ‘hey, I’m going out for a gallon of Milk, I’ll be right back’. Another seasoned vet came in after that for their first foray into Theatrical with Killers of the Flower Moon. It opened to $23 million, and even though that opening got beat up because of the cost of the movie, looking at what films like that have done since Covid, it was a pretty damn good result considering what the film was. But then that seasoned vet told Apple, ‘hey, I’m going out for a newspaper, I’ll be right back’. So if you have two execs of that caliber that both moonwalk out the side door in the middle of the night, and then curl up in the fetal position in their bathtub rocking back and forth humming to themselves for a couple of days* (Generally people in that line of work at that level leave when they feel ineffective), there could be a culture issue.

One of the aspects of Theatrical that’s completely unique is how important the knowledge of subtleties and nuances of Marketing generally are. We’ve seen it a couple of times where a studio head will try to ’shake things up’ by bringing in a successful Marketing head from Consumer Goods or some other non-theatrical sector, and they always flame out. The treadmill moves so much faster in Theatrical, plus you don’t have to launch two new soft drinks a week apart at Christmas in the Consumer Goods sector against 7 other soft drinks. And that doesn’t even take into account situations where the carbonation in the soft drink isn’t speaking to the Stevia because of something the Stevia said during manufacturing. The Phosphoric Acid doesn’t really want to work the film but will if they can plug their Hair Care line, and the aluminum can (although it was absolutely the correct choice during manufacturing) is so dull you can’t put it on the road, so it’s useless. This sector is just different, and really hard.

But if there’s a reason you need a firm hand on the Marketing wheel in Theatrical from the very beginning, it’s positioning. It’s one of the reasons every studio has a Marketing presence in the room during the green light process, and even after production when you see what you’ve got, the most important voice in the room in the cases where there is a fork in the road regarding Theatrical vs Streaming; it’s Marketing, and their ability to position it Theatrically.

Which brings us back to F1, by the time this got to WB, it was firmly positioned as a F1 movie about racing, and unfortunately that limits its box-office substantially. F1 hasn’t tipped here in the US, and Americans actually get very confused when race cars go left and right. There were more people at the Army’s 250th anniversary parade than there were at the Las Vegas Grand Prix last November, so the sport has a long way to go. As much as there was effort to activate the big dogs of racing in the US, NASCAR and Indy, they just didn’t seem to bite. So by positioning this film as a F1 racing film from inception, instead of another title that might have taken to to a broader audience, it was limited.

So what does all this mean for a lot of you? Well, as you’re out there pitching, the Theatrical carrot is something that is often a pretty big deal point, and there’s a big difference between a theatrical release and a successful theatrical release. Looking at the three new media giants, it’s clear that the purchase of MGM by Amazon was a really smart idea, because you got a plug and play army that understands all the nuances and subtleties of a theatrical release. And because of that experience, if you earn a theatrical release, they can pull it off. Apple is a big puzzle and if you’re promised a theatrical release, they’ll throw a lot of resources at it (including a ‘for hire’ theatrical studio), but history says it’s going to be a little off. That’s also a side effect of ’service deals’, they rarely work out on the high end. You can still make a good movie there, but maybe once they officially name someone to be the head of the Marketing department you might have a shot at success in theaters. As someone who was in a job where in theory I was in charge, but the higher ups never got around to telling the rest of the company, it’s really frustrating and it limits your effectiveness.

And then there’s Netflix. If there’s one thing that’s apparent over the last few years as we’ve learned more about the Theatrical/streaming dynamic, Netflix has made it clear over and over again they don’t want to have a theatrical presence, but people keep telling them to do it. Looking at how Apple has struggled in Theatrical it makes sense, Netflix keeps saying they won’t do it because they can’t do it. They don’t have the personnel or the culture to be as successful as they have been with TV. It’s just a different proposition; in the streaming world you can look at V2 of a trailer and say ‘good enough’, but in theatrical you can get to V22 and say to yourself ‘okay, we’re getting close, but we’ve got a lot of work to do’. So we’ve got to stop with the idea of saying ‘it should go theatrical’ when it’s at Netflix, because it’s not that easy. They’re built to do what they do, and they do it very well, so if you make a deal there and you have designs on a Theatrical release, just let it go. If it even happens it won’t be good, and the fact that they don’t ever report their Theatrical grosses shows you they know they’re not good at it; but don’t blame them for something they don’t want to do.

Apple has been very good for the industry, and they’ve been so good to the industry I’d argue that the insane amounts of money they spend on their slate borders on Philanthropy. But if they really want to make a mark in Theatrical and turn that investment into profit, they need to invest in some experienced Marketing experts and then listen to that expertise, they know what they are doing. WB really did an amazing job on this film and we’re seeing similar results at the end of this campaign as we’ve been seeing from them all year. But they had to dig out of a hole with this movie, and they were able to do that based on experience and expertise. If Apple was Dean Smith (and once again for those of you who aren’t sports fans, Dean Smith is considered one of the greatest College Basketball coaches of all time, in the same way Apple is considered to be one of the great companies of all time, but no one is great at everything), WB was Phil Jackson; and one can only imagine what Michael Jordan could have achieved if he had Phil Jackson from the start.

Anyway, with the same accuracy and dependability as Brad Pitt’s home security system, here are some thoughts on the weekend box-office.

F1: The Movie - Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, Jerry Bruckheimer made a really good movie. One of the greatest aspects to his (insanely good) filmography** is how many of the movie’s he’s made have been outliers in week 2, 3, 4, 5, etc; and what’s really encouraging here is that the exit polls are pointing towards another really long run. The trick on this film is that the IMAX component was a key part of the sell, and those screens don’t have a ton of seats, so the upside on this film will be if consumers are cool with a non IMAX presentation once those IMAX screens tap out. We saw this effect a couple of years ago on Avatar: The Way of Water, and consumers waited to see it in the preferred format, but that was over Christmas and the cadence of attendance is different. The grosses here are leaning in a way that makes sense, it’s better in the big cities and the East Coast, and it’s best in theaters that have the old school IMAX presentations.

But it felt like this film tipped this week (which WB keeps doing over and over again), and I wonder if the Previews they did on Monday night might have been where it all started, because the movie got a chance to speak for itself. But as I keep ranting here week after week, WTF is up with doing those on a Monday night? It might be an IMAX availability factor, but why don’t we try doing it with one of these other formats and help them get established? This film should be a blast in 4D with moving seats, why not do an exclusive preview there…on a weekend. Doing it on a weeknight, you’ll just get fans that would have gone anyway, weeknights are challenging for tag alongs. The demos here skew older male, plus this isn’t a short film, so the grosses probably should fall off the table after the 7pm shows, but it sure looks to me like the pit crew at WB did a number here and got it in the low 50’s, but with the playability on this movie there could be an upside off that. Don’t forget Jerry Bruckheimer’s last movie, Top Gun Maverick was $100 million at this point and ended up at $127 million. One more fun aspect of the early positioning here, if this ends up legging out over the next couple of weeks and they want to do a sequel, by calling this F1 are they stuck with F1 2?

How to Train Your Dragon - Looks pretty steady right now, should be down a normal 50% for a weekend in the high teens.

M3GAN 2.0 - Ooooofff, did this film get fucked over by the trades and tracking a couple of weeks ago when the headlines screamed that they were going to beat F1. But this sequel isn’t even close to the numbers M3GAN (which opened to 30) was accumulating on its opening day. The first film had a very innovative meme based campaign, and although it was groundbreaking then, it’s been copied a lot lately; so it’s possible without that freshness of approach, this campaign just didn’t stick the same way. Also, Horror Comedy is a really tricky genre, and the first film came thisclose to wandering into camp, but they might have taken this just a little over that camp line. The exits are pretty good so far, but this looks like it’s headed to about $11 million for the weekend.

Sorry, Baby - Went exclusive in what’s now the classic 4 (Lincoln Sq, The Angelika, The Grove and Century City) and it’s pretty good. Looks like a psa in the mid 20’s.

• Not saying this actually happened, but having done something similar to it after leaving a job (or two) it’s in the realm of possibility.

** And why hasn’t the Academy given him a Governor’s Award yet? Oh, that’s right, he’s too good at making movies people want to see.