THB #667: A Very Brief History Of January

Someone has to keep writing about the actual facts about the box office instead of making excuses.

One Chart…

On top, the new wide releases in the first 4 weekends of the year in 2019. On the bottom, the new wide releases in the first 4 weekends of 2025.

Let’s be entirely reasonable and assume that this weekend’s 3 new wide releases total $20 million at this weekend’s box office.

Box office for new films is off 53%. Box office for this weekend (in total) vs 2019 is off roughly 39%.

Anthony at Deadline is tap dancing as fast as he can, but, “For all the blah blah from distribution heads that moviegoing can be a 52 weekend business, there are just some dead zones on the calendar,” is bull bull shit... with maybe one or two weeks as true exceptions.

Equally, “This is just where this plane genre lives, and audiences have seen it before,” is just crap. Audiences have seen (almost) EVERYTHING before. Anthony brings up other studios mocking that Lionsgate stuck with one trailer… but if you ask …