Final weekend of January 2026
The headline for this weekend is going to be about box-office revenue from non traditional sources and it’s happening in theaters that usually aren’t at the top of the gross sheet; and although we have a couple of surprises this weekend, we’re still going to fall short of this weekend last year (Dog Man, Companion) by about 10%. Unlike the last couple of weeks where the holdovers have made the difference between this year and last, it’s the new movies this weekend; and whatever we fall short should be very similar to the difference between the $45 million last year’s films grosses and this year. Next week’s films should gross about the same this year as the Super Bowl weekend films last year, but the week after we’ll have Captain America’s $89 million to deal with, and as good as the roster of films are this Valentine’s Day, unless one or more of them breakout (possible) we’ll be behind last year that weekend too.
The big story this weekend is all about disruption, and the name of that disruption is Iron Lung. An independently produced Sci-fi thriller based on Video Game IP. But there’s a twist here that’s worth keeping an eye on, ever since the evolution towards narrative video games, we’ve struggled to leverage those narrative video game IP’s into something that’s an attractive moviegoing proposition. And there was a very good reason for that, the creators of the games were able to craft a much more desirable storytelling experience at home by allowing the player to craft it, and the industry struggled to top that storytelling experience when they made a movie from the IP. So the gamers stayed home and gamed.
But one of the other evolutionary aspects of the video game sector was the rise of the super player, who would get people to watch them play the game online (I know, I don’t get it either, but it’s a thing). Many of you are probably aware of this, but content creators (like these gamers) make an insane amount of money doing it, and in this case Mark Fischbach (who goes by Markiplier online) pushed some of those chips back on the table and self financed a movie that would leverage both the video game IP and his own IP playing it as the star of the movie. So the brilliance of this package is that you’ve got a narrative experience that uses the narrator of that experience the consumer is comfortable with, and you have a natural built in marketing machine (Fischbach’s YouTube Channel) to trigger purchases.
There are a couple of takeaways here. The most important aspect (to me anyway) is that I keep hearing that ’the at home experience is so good these days, why do you need to go to a theater’. Oh, really? So you’re telling me that we’ve got a film here that has a core demo (and the IP it’s based on) that’s all about never leaving the basement, and it might contend for the weekend crown based on getting people who really never leave the house to go to a theatre? And the second point here is that we’ve struggled to get to this demo (especially the young male part of it), because they don’t consume any of the normal media we buy in order to sell a movie, they just game all day and never see our campaigns. But now we have some breadcrumbs to follow and figure out how to make what’s happening here happen more often.
Bottom line here is that no matter how much people say that Theatrical is dead, it’s still a premium experience that gets people out of the house, and does it at a price point lower than anything else you can do out of the house. And the numbers here prove that if you can get a demo that hasn’t seen the sun in months to a theater, it might be just a question of what we’re making for them. Hopefully they’ll see trailers for other films that get them back, unless they miss the trailers because they’re in the car getting high (one of the downsides of reserved seating).
Anyway, with the same expected accuracy of a Costco Chicken label (and since this email can also cause dehydration and nausea), here are some thoughts on the weekend box-office.
Send Help - Coincidentally on a weekend of non-traditional revenue sources, 20th Century and original IP. 20th has been on the struggle bus with original IP on a consistent basis ever since they relocated from 310 to 818, but it looks like they’ve got something that’s a step in the right direction here. They started some previews last Saturday and it looks pretty good today. The grosses are typical for what you would see from a Sam Rami thriller like this, it’s kinda art film adjacent and fan boy driven, so the NY and LA theaters are dominating the list. Exits are pretty good so this should play and at this point it looks like $17 million or so for the weekend.
Iron Lung - The grosses here are sensational, and it’s in theaters that usually aren’t sensational; Oklahoma City, Des Moines, Knoxville, Indianapolis, Ft Wayne, it’s a who’s who of…where? For a $3 million film that (from what I can find) had almost no paid marketing, this is mind blowing. The biggest question at this point is what’s going to happen tomorrow, and sometimes films like this cycle through the audience pretty quickly. The exits are very good, but exits from the choir about the sermon tend to follow that path, and I’ve heard from non-fans that went last night that the film is borderline unwatchable (especially at over 2 hours) if you’re not one of the choir. They had a great first night last night and today is headed towards an improvement on last night’s number. If this completely craters tomorrow, this should end up in the low teens or just short of that, but if there’s any sort of depth to this audience, it will win the weekend in the high teens. Crazy.
Melania - There’s good news and there’s bad news here. The good news is we have a documentary bringing in decent business, probably including a lot of consumers who haven’t been to a movie since Sound of Freedom; and hopefully they’ll see trailers for other films that get them back, unless they miss the trailers because they’re in the car getting high (one of the downsides of reserved seating). But the downside is when Melania’s husband gets told that this film opened exponentially better than the movie about him, whoever gets to be that messenger might disappear into an ICE camp for a while. It is kind of amusing to me that the spend on this movie is being called out for ‘currying favor’. Did any of those people notice The Electric State? Is spending $300 million on a movie so Chris Pratt will come to your Christmas Party any different? Currying favor is kind of our jam in this business, and neither film was made with profit in mind. Anyway, the places this is doing business isn’t a shock, it’s well to do MAGA neighborhoods. Palm Beach, Nashville, South Orange County, it all makes sense. It’s really good today, but it’s clearly a lot of pre-sales and is behaving a lot like a religious movie, which tracks. Depending on where it goes tomorrow and Sunday, it will go anywhere from $5 million to about $8 million.
Shelter - We’ve got a couple of new mini-studios these days and Black Bear is one of them, but just like the others (K-Street and Mubi), it will take a while to figure this out and get off the struggle bus. But we need these new players to succeed and we should be rooting for them. I’m not worried about these guys, because they know how to make good movies, they just have to figure out this part, but this looks like a weekend of about $4 million.
Back to the Past - This Chinese language Sci-Fi film opened in about 50 theaters and in places with a good sized Chinese population like Toronto, Vancouver and San Francisco, the numbers are really really good. Looks like a weekend of about $600k.
The Moment - Charli XCX’s mockumentary opened in what’s now the sad version of the classic 4* in NY and LA, and the grosses are sensational. All 4 theaters are great and this looks like it’s heading to a psa of around $100k.
The Oscar Holdovers - We are seeing a rebound this weekend, Marty Supreme and Hamnet are both looking really solid and because this Sunday won’t get killed by weather and doesn’t have NFL Football, the percentage drop should be slight. However both films lost a decent amount of runs so even though the theaters that they kept will probably be even with last week, the gross might be down a little. The one Oscar movie I keep forgetting to bring up that’s holding better than anyone today is Zootopia 2, this film just won’t go away and looks even with last week.
*because we have The Grove and Burbank where AMC doesn’t give a shit about these movies, instead the Landmark and the Arclight Hollywood where they did give a shit.