THB #606: Box Office, Briefly
I don’t want to write about this on Monday and I don’t want to suck up 10 minutes of David Reads The Trades with this, so I am throwing this together on a Sunday afternoon with The Dodgers up by 2 and The Bengals up by 7.
I don’t want to undermine the win of Terrifier 3 or Cineverse or Chris McGurk. It’s the 26th best opening of the year, amazingly right behind Longlegs. There is an interesting specificity to the opening - both openings, really - as they are the only ones between $18 million and $23 million this year.
Why? Because this is pretty much the Mendoza Line for wide studio releases.
The Mendoza Line is baseball jargon for a . 200 batting average, the supposed threshold for offensive futility at the Major League level. It derives from light-hitting shortstop Mario Mendoza, who failed to reach . 200 five times in his nine big league seasons. - Wikipedia
Here are the 10 Major Studio releases behind Terrifier 3.
Trap
Madame Web
Night Swim
Speak No Evil
Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1
Abigail
Monkey Man
The First Omen
The Watchers
Harold & The Purple Crayon
Mixed in there are Argylle, The Beekeeper, and Challengers… which are part of the confused box office world of streaming-first companies.
But you get the idea. Terrifier 3 and Longlegs are absolutely, 100% successes… don’t miunderstand my point. But they have a greater context. They are grand overachievers in a box office moment that has been partially abandoned by The Majors.
It may not surprise you to know that last year, on this very weekend, the #1 movie was a Major Studio flop (The Exorcist reboot) in its 2nd flop weekend (down 59% to $11 million and no other wide releases. Last year’s Terrifier was Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour, who hit the window with a $93 million weekend. Wow. It was exhibitors’ first $100 million overall weekend after 8 whole weeks without one.
Again… not Terrifier’s fault… but this was the worst box office weekend except for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’s opening since August 16 - 18 and 2nd worst since Memorial Day (gag… not kidding… choking). Surprisingly, only the 9th worst of the year thanks to a horrible, abandoned Q1. We actually has a $37m weekend total one February weekend… sickening to think about.
23 of the 24 releases that opened better than Longlegs’ $24 million were from The Majors, the exception being A24’s Civil War, which opened to $25.5 million.
But back to the ugly story…
That list of the 10 Major releases that opened worse than Terrifier 3? It, plus the list of the 24 titles that opened better than Terrifier 3 is pretty much the ENTIRE list of movies opened wide by Majors this year.
Add Apple’s Argylle and Fly Me To The Moon… Focus has had 5, the highest grossing of which was by far The Bikeriders, which had been abandoned last year… Sony squirted out Afraid, The Book of Clarence, and Tarot along the way.
MGM/UA/Amazon has a unique spot, having some real success with Challengers and yes, The Beekeeper and less so with Blink Twice.
There have been 34 other wide releases from (in order of highest grosses to date within this grouping) Lionsgate, Showbiz Direct, Affirm Films, Angel Studios, AA Films, Neon, A24, SDG Releasing, MUBI, IFC Films, Fathom Events, Crunchyroll, Bleeker St Media, Vertical Entertainment… and welcome to the party, Briarcliff.
And this is the problem.
We NEED those 34 wide releases from non-Majors… we need them to be healthy and profitable and strong enough to also have the breakouts like Terrifier 3 and Longlegs and Civil War and more.
But we need more from those Majors and those aspiring to being Majors of a variety of genres and budgets and target demographics. 40ish through the first 9 months of the year with more than half pre-sold by franchise.
Of the 24 Majors movies that opened to over $24 million, only 4 were any kind of Original. (Civil War, If, The Wild Robot, It Ends With Us) The 2 films for kids will likely get sequels. The other 2 will not. So where are the next franchises coming from?
Anyway…
I didn’t sit down to write to bring down the excitement around Terrifier 3. Big win for them. Congratulations. Sincerely.
But make no mistake. This was another SHIT weekend for the film industry.
In the last 30 years, there are only 3 years in which the top September movie was more than 30% of the total September box office. It, in 2017 with 41%. But the upside then was that overall September box office was a record-smashing more 2.5x higher than ever before. Shang-Chi, in Covid-ravaged 2021, with 55%. And last month, with Beetlejuice Beetlejuice representing 42.2% of the total. No other film will contribute more than $60 million domestic to the month. (The Wild Robot will pass that figure domestically, but most of it will be in October.)
This is bad.
And there is no legitimate argument against the month. October neither.
Smile 2 and Venom 3 will perk things up starting next weekend.
But the ebbs and flow of theatrical have become a choice, not fate. They are predictable. And the studios are choosing not to risk. The ROI is not better in Streaming spending. Everyone knows that a proper theatrical creates value in Streaming.
Enjoy the Terrifier 3 win. I don ‘t object to that.
But an $18.3 million opening is not “saving” theatrical.
The impetus is on The Majors to figure out how to make bunch of $18 million openings each year work for them… and for the exhibitors. And also, the big movies with IP on which they want to swing harder.
A $70,671,230 weekend is an unhealthy weekend. And there is no good reason for it.
Boo!
(It’s 6-0 Dodgers and still 7-1 Bengals as I send the newsletter.)
Until tomorrow…