Third weekend of August 2025
Okay, as expected we’re going to go through a little bit of a step back for a couple of weeks, starting with this weekend. We built up about a $500 million cushion over 2024 to this point (about 7 1/2 %), but over the next 6 weeks or so, we’re probably going to give about $150 million back. Most of that is going to happen over the next 5 or 6 weeks, and most of that will be because we’ve got nothing close to Beetlejuice Beetlejuice this year. There might be a net loss in October, but it looks like there are some weeks that could be a little better than last year, but most should be pretty close so if we give anything back it won’t be much.
Last year, Disney decided that Summer went one more weekend than this year, and the key difference between this year and last year’s total for this weekend will probably be very close to the $42 million Alien: Romulus opened to. What’s odd is that last year the only other ’new’ wide release was the 15th Anniversary release of Coraline, and it grossed about the same amount the only new wide release is opening to this weekend. Both releases from last week (and considering the commonality of audience they shared, one should have gone this weekend) are holding really nicely, which is fairly normal when you have a weekend that’s light on new releases. Because we’ve got half the K-12 kids back in school as of today, and about 10% of Higher Education, the drops from last week are going to be a little higher than we’ve been seeing.
A couple of you have reached out to me for my thoughts on the new regime at Paramount, and that’s understandable because when there’s a change this severe, you can easily end up with amateurs who used to work at McKenzie and think they know everything; it’s kind of what happened 5 years ago at WB. But it’s amazing how much has changed in 5 years, and looking at all the signals we’re seeing so far (and it’s only been 9 days), they are clearly people who know what they are doing*. Movies are theatrical, streaming is TV and as easy as it is to say ‘water is wet, the sky is blue’, you can easily end up with a C suite that says ‘we’re going to rethink that’. And if you translate that into English, it means ‘we have no idea what we’re doing and we’re just gonna guess’. But that’s not the case here and they clearly see the opportunity in the theatrical sector, and how a successful theatrical slate generates tier after tier of revenue, and feeds your streaming platform in ways that straight to platform content can’t.
As I’ve pointed out here several times, since the Covid shutdown, one of the problems we’ve had in this sector is simply a supply chain issue. First it was the question of theatrical viability (and the streamers over paying for material because of the ‘don’t be Betamax’ war with each other), then the strikes, but hearing Paramount talk about ramping up the number of films (as well as MGM/Amazon fully committed to a large theatrical slate) are a couple of more aspects that could get us back to the business level we saw pre Covid. It leans into the core of what drove those higher numbers pre-Covid, the habitual moviegoer, and having more titles in the marketplace should help with that. This is just one more sign that we can get there.
Anyway with the same accuracy and efficacy of a Dodgers Relief Pitcher, here are some thoughts on the weekend box-office.
Weapons - It’s looking pretty solid today, but when you consider they lost most of their IMAX screens (to F1), it might even be a little better. Horror is notorious for big drops on the 2nd weekend, but this looks good. Because this film had a pretty high Thursday gross last week (as a percentage of the reported weekend gross), it’s starting this weekend 12.5% in the hole, rather than the more normal 10%. This looks down about 45% for a weekend in the mid 20’s.
Freakier Friday - Looks pretty good as well here, and because 3/4 of the audience was over 25 last weekend, they’re only getting dinged a little by the kids going back to school this week. Looks like it’s down 50% for a weekend in the mid teens.
Nobody 2 - Back in March 2021, when almost anything in theaters was day and date, Nobody went only in theaters and captured almost 50% of the weekend box-office…at $6.8 million. As I said above, what a difference 5 years makes and even though it’s going to nearly double the weekend it had back in 2021, this time it will only be about 10% of the weekend gross; which is a good thing. But looking back at what Nobody would have done in a normal marketplace, my part time amateur data science skills say it would have grossed about $10 million opening weekend. And this sequel looks like it’s going to gross about $10 million, so like a lot of sequels lately, it’s about the same.
Coolie - It’s been a minute since we’ve had a Bollywood film do some business, and this looks pretty good. They reported a gross of $4 million yesterday, but it’s possible that Bollywood films do the same bullshit Distribution math that we do for movies here, and it could be for more than shows happening yesterday. Looks like about $5 million or so for the 3 day, bringing the total to about $9 million.
Americana - This 3 year old Sydney Sweeney film went on about 1000 screens this weekend and it doesn’t look like much, but it looks in line with other films that were released in the same manner. Looks like a weekend of about $600k or so.
- which could be because I agree with them**.
** Of course it’s because I agree with them.