THB #513: The Rube Goldberg Media Machine
Talking about the industry has become like a Rube Goldberg machine or a Ferris Bueller machine if your memory is, uh, younger. All the pieces are laid out and each actual real life event triggers the next step in how it is written up and discussed, accurately or not.
Of course, our entertainment media Rube Goldberg machine is even more complex, since there are multiple routes to the same end… another hysterical headline to grab attention, no matter how non-headline-grabbing the actual news is.
This weekend, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire went into the machine.
To be fair, Variety used the machine fully:
Heading into the weekend, the monster mashup was projected to earn $50 million to $55 million to start. But “Godzilla x Kong,” which sees the two otherworldly beasts team up to save the planet, trounced those projections after benefitting (dp note: sic) from several factors, including premium large formats (accounting for 48% of ticket sales) and audience enthusiasm (it landed an “A-” CinemaScore”). Critics were less impressed by “The New Empire,” starring Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry and Dan Stevens and directed by Adam Wingard (“Godzilla vs. Kong”). It holds a 55% “rotten” average on Rotten Tomatoes.
A. Tracking - This wildly abused tool for marketing, not to create a betting line (which is also not what it seems… sigh…), explains why the trades and others, who rack up clicks every week by guessing at the box office like what they think matters as anything more than gossip, got this opening wrong by more than 50%. So they lead with the mistake that wasn’t a mistake, because the methods of tracking young people and people of color are often wrong because they either don’t respond to phone surveys or are never called. Be clear… tracking companies want to solve this and adjust their math to try to get it right… but it’s very consistent in its unpredictability.
B. Excuses - There is nothing wrong with the tracking… we got it wrong because… well… uh… premium screens. BZZT! Everyone knows that the big opening movie is going to dominate IMAX, Dolby, and most other premium screens nationwide… every single time. The only alternative is when a big movie demands those premium screens for multiple weeks, keeping other films out. That was not the case here. Dune Two got 2 weekends, then split their Weekend 3 with Kung Fu Panda 5. Then, Ghostbusters got a week. And this weekend, GxK. This is not brain surgery or a surprise to anyone.
The monsters will hold most of their Premiums next weekend, then Civil War will be Top Premium. We can now guess that exhibition isn’t very excited about The First Omen based on it getting very little Premium play. The weekend after (April 19), the market is so soft that Crunchyroll’s Spy x Family Code: White, an anime’, will eat a lot of Premium screens, as the audience is hard core. Expect tracking to be too low on that one too… unless they overcompensate for being too low on anime’ in the past.
Next excuse… “audience enthusiasm (it landed an “A-” CinemaScore”).”
Oy. Rebecca Rubin is not a dumb person… clearly. I don’t know that I have ever met the person. But this one is just undeniably wrong on its face. CinemaScore, which measures the reaction of people who have come to the theater to see opening movies on the first night or two of release, has absolutely nothing to do with the enthusiasm that brings them out to movie theaters in numbers, large or small.
I can’t really express it clearly enough. This is a function of habit, not reporting. CinemaScore has been so misused for so many years now that it doesn’t stick out when a beat writer of long standing uses it to make a claim that has nothing to do with the intention of the tool… not even arguing the all-too arguable validity of the CinemaScore as a way of predicting multiples or any other forward box office predictions.
Third, I actually appreciate that Rubin offered up that the movie did terrible numbers with Rotten Tomatoes. My friend, Anthony at Deadline, stopped mentioning RT as regards GxK after Thursday night’s update… and even then, only in context of the poor critics numbers vs RT’s unreliable audience rankings after a strong start.
But neither makes the point that is true and proven… Rotten Tomatoes scores mean NOTHING to opening a movie wide, unless they are at the most extreme levels… under 20% or over 90%.
But to write this simple fact would be to eliminate one of the Rube Goldberg steps that are used to fill column inches every single week now. This weekend’s coverage included Rotten Tomatoes, CinemaScore, Imax, PLF, and PostTrak, a Comscore company.
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