THB #630: There Is No "Getting Your Groove Back"

For the third time this week, I have been smacked in the face with a false narrative, so I feel like I should speak to it specifically.

The idea that having a big hit changes the fortunes of your upcoming movie is… simply… false.

It can certainly bring energy and focus to a marketing/publicity department. It does bring some extra opportunities to put what is coming in front of a potential audience for that future film.

But the idea of the Tentpole goes back to the studio system of more than 60 years ago. Back then, particularly before the Paramount Decree, movie theaters were often owned by studios, in part or wholly, and even those that were not had a tendency to be known to be the home of this studio or that. Want to see a Warner Bros movie… Theater X in your town pretty much plays all of the studio’s movies. Thus, a big hit movie served as a tentpole, enlarging the tent for that particular studio for months or years to come.

To some degree, this is a simplification. The most undiscussed piece of movie distribution history is the road show, which set premium pricing for limited run opportunities to see the “big” movies of the moment. Gone With The Wind, for instance, started as a road show movie, charging a multiple of the normal ticket price to attend for months before opening in regular theaters at a regular price. This practice, I am pretty sure, mostly ended around the time of Fiddler on the Roof, which did a fairly wide roadshow in 1971… not coincidentally near at the end of the the old studio system.

Into and through the 1980s, movies stayed in theaters for much, much longer than they do now. Jurassic Park’s 1993 release coincided with a major round of bankruptcies in exhibition, which led to the first wave of new non-AMC multiplexes with THX and stadium seating. Jurassic was also one of the last big “second run” theater movies. It added second run screens in August, then dropped under 1000 screens for the first time after Weekend 17 in September, and still brought in another $31 million. Barbie, as an example, dropped under 1000 screens after Weekend 11 and only pulled in another $3 million as it slowly played out for another 16 weekends.

You can’t argue that Barbie served as a tentpole for the other WB releases last year. It was the only WB movie to gross over $140 million domestic with $636 million in July and the studio wouldn’t score another $100 million domestic grosser until Wonka, released in December.

Failure works the same way, really. A movie expected to hit big that does not is not the end of the road for a studio or its marketing department. There is no connective correlation between the success and failure of the next “big movie.”

I hate to keep kicking some of these movies, but the same studio currently enjoying the success of Wicked was the same one that failed painfully with a pretty well liked The Fall Guy. even after delivering more billion movies post-COVID than anyone before Disney’s double dip this summer.

In the post-COVID era - which saw the first post-COVID billion dollar title with Spider-Man: No Way Home - open in December 2021. The summer of 2022 saw 2 billion dollar titles open within within 15 days of one another, Top Gun: Maverick and Jurassic World Dominion. But what was the media narrative of that year? Tom Cruise saved the movie business. Avatar: The Way of Water grossed $800 million more than Maverick at the end of 2022. What was the media narrative after that? Tom Cruise saved the movie business.

2023 brought us 3 billion dollar babies Barbie, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, and Oppenheimer.

This year, it’s been Inside Out 2 and Deadpool & Wolverine so far. There looks to be at least 1 more and maybe as many as 3, 2 of those potential billions also from Disney, the other from Universal.

But The Audience has been in the coalition of the willing for years now.

The post-COVID billion dollar club Sony, Paramount, Warner Bros and 3 each for Universal and Disney. In other words, every major left standing was able to mount a film in the 2 years of COVID recovery to $1 billion or more worldwide in box office. Universal got the most praise, as it was the only studio with multiple billion dollar films. Now Disney is lapping it up. Fair enough. But would any sane person say that the success of Super Mario spoke to the success of Oppenheimer? No. Of course not. Universal, to its credit, ran dramatically different campaigns for the 2 films, one for children, one truly for adults. They probably got a boost of $100 million to $200 million from BarbieHeimer, a phenomenon they (and/or WB) did not create.

More than ever, each movie is its own universe.

What this does not mean, as some obsessively assert, is that every movie needs to be a major event to be successful. The theatrical ecosystem is designed to support both the biggest hits and the middle class. No one is looking to release flops. But it is not that every movie needs to make $500 million worldwide or it is irrelevant.

Even at the height of theatrical success by gross, 2018, “only” 16 English-language movies grossed $500 million or more worldwide.

33 English-language films grossed between $150 million worldwide and $499 million.

And another 55 films grossed between $40 million and $149 million.

In 2024, to date… just 8 films have grossed $500 or more (including Moana 2 and Wicked) worldwide and Gladiator II on the bubble another 2 more with the legitimate potential in December.

19 films grossed between $150 million worldwide and $499 million.

And another 33 films grossed between $40 million and $149 million worldwide.