First weekend of September 2025
Coming into this weekend, I thought it would be a slaughter compared to this weekend last year, because the $111 million Beetlejuice Beetlejuice opened to was just too high of a hill to climb. However, the sun rises, the sun sets, WB way over performs; and although it’s going to be groundbreakingly good for the genre, it’s still not going to be enough to equal the box office total for this weekend last year.
We’re still going to be about $40 million short of the total weekend last year, but that’s better than what I thought it was going to be. However, because this is so much better than I thought it would be this weekend, the next couple of weeks have gone from ‘close but just behind’ to a good chance of clawing some surplus back. Next week looks especially promising, because we have a lot of wide movies, and there’s a Crunchyroll film where the IP is the Avengers of Anime. Other than the first weekend of October, we should be able to beat every weekend until we get to November, and from that point on we should have a nice edge on last year. As I’ve been saying here, I was pretty sure we were going to end up with a decent surplus compared to last year, but I’m getting a little more bullish that it will be a number that shows the sector is still on a trajectory to get back to pre shutdown levels.
When I was looking at grosses today, and looking at why what is happening today is happening, it reminded me of another big win in getting consumers to theaters. Back in the early days of Marvel’s incredible run, Paramount figured out a way to make the second tier Marvel characters open in a big way. I’m talking about Ironman, Captain America, Thor (Spider-Man was in a different league); and by carefully crafting a campaign with Character, Story and Stakes (in that order) they were getting those IP’s consistently to a $60 million to $90 million opening weekend, which was amazing at the time. Then Disney bought Marvel and soon they were getting those IP’s well into the 100’s and sometimes past 200. Although some of that was Disney growing the footprint with Families because they already knew how to activate them as moviegoers, they spent a ton of time and money figuring out another key demo; Hispanics.
As someone who’s an Amateur Part Time Data Scientist, and lives studies audiences in the theatrical sector, there’s no more faithful and dependable audience than Hispanics. They show up and they show up deep. As I constantly harp on tag alongs, they’re the one demo that’s already showing up in groups, so they are important.
Looking at how the Conjuring/Annabelle IP has played over it’s lifespan, it’s been close the the typical horror split; a little more than a third Caucasian, mid/high 20’s Hispanic and then (depending on the particular film) the rest of the demos split the balance. But today on The Conjuring Last Rites, the Hispanic theaters are crazy good and I wouldn’t be shocked if the exits show at least mid 40% hispanic and maybe high 40’s, so they grew the market share of Hispanics a lot. Not as much as growing the Female market share of Tesla Cybertruck owners by getting a 3rd female to buy one, but it’s still a lot. This IP has always had a little bit of a downscale skew and Hispanic is part of that, but it’s really taking the lead here.
But this is one more example of how WB is figuring out films in ways that take them to new heights in the marketplace. During the 6 previous films, this IP has dependably grossed in the 35-40 range (with the exception of Conjuring The Devil Made Me Do It that got Kilar’d in 2021 with the day and date), and this weekend is going to obliterate that and might even pass those weekend totals by early tomorrow. There’s a possibility that some of this is the upside you get when you have a series finale, but this is considerably better than any lift I’ve seen before on a series finale. But the big win here was the Hispanic demo; and that actually makes sense because with an IP like this that’s based around a demon, which should feed into the Religious slant of the demo.
Anyway, with the same accuracy as a Waze arrival time over the weekend that involves the 405, here are some thoughts on the weekend box-office.
The Conjuring: Last Rites - Clearly it’s massive today, but I can’t shake the fact that this would have been better (as well as Beetlejuice last year) if it went last weekend over the long Holiday. Both this and Beetlejuice are so big that no one will notice, but there’s still money being left on the floor by going on a weekend with the NFL playing on 4 of the first 5 days of the release, and ignore the wide open weekend before. Just looking at how the films that opened last week did on Sunday, they were all pretty much even with Saturday’s gross, so looking at Beetlejuice last year, that would have meant an extra $14 million. Plus films drop about 75% from Sunday to Monday this time of year and only drop about 20% on a Holiday Monday, so that would have been another $21 million. If we want the sector to get to where we want it to get to, we need to put films where people can go to them, this isn’t that. Anyway, this is a home run for WB (again) and if it completely falls apart tomorrow and Sunday (doubtful because the exits are very good), it would be in the mid 60’s. But more than likely it’s going to be significantly higher than that and I wouldn’t rule out getting an 8 in front of it.
Hamilton - The Theatrical release of the filmed stage show is the Avengers of Multi-cultural Hip Hop Historical Musicals or the Avengers of Bridgerton’s, whatever. Anyway it’s clearly got a following and it’s got some really nice grosses in the more upscale theaters. They went 1800 runs and it looks headed to a very high single digit gross with an outside shot at 10 if it holds up tomorrow.
Caught Stealing, The Roses, Freakier Friday, Weapons - They all look pretty similar, should be down in the 45% to 50% range.
Light of the World - This animated Faith based film went 2000 runs and even the best Red State Faith based theaters are just okay. Looks like $1.5 million or so.
Twinless - Went 500 runs and outside of some decent numbers in the core NY/LA art houses (Century City, Burbank, Lincoln Sq and The Grove) there’s not much going on here. Figure about $400k for the weekend.