THB #687: Box Office Bottom?

Once again… I was planning on leaving this weekend alone. But…

Fuck.

I don’t have to tell anyone reading this that I am a great believer in theatrical and that I believe that the marketplace is healthy, but that the flow of films is still not.

Then I see Paramount really, really working hard for Novocaine. Very focused sell. Kind of an old-fashioned low-budget character piece with a big gimmick starring Jack Quaid.

Just 6 weekends ago, Warner Bros shat the distribution bed with Companion, which didn’t really open that poorly considering that WB ran a peek-a-boo concept campaign for this similarly old-fashioned low-budget character piece with a big gimmick starring Jack Quaid.

The $9 million open for Companion led WB to decide to give up almost completely after the 2nd weekend, pushing the movie into PVOD and cutting screen count from 3285 to 1062. Sadly, for the producers, the film seemed to be building strong word-of-mouth, despite a hard 2nd weekend drop precipitated by the entry of 2 more old-fashioned low-budget character pieces with big gimmicks in Heart Eyes and Love Hurts. The studio cut more than 2/3 of the screens and the film still held 61% of its box office before it bled out with more deep screen cuts in Weekends 4 and 5.

To be completely fair to Warners, they did give up the gimmick - the lead female is a sex robot who could be growing past her programming - in the days before release. Too little, too late. The movie was never going to be Barbie… but in a spiritual way, it played against that massive WB hit… which maybe is why it seemed to scare its distributor.

Point is… 6 weeks later, here comes Novocaine, another Jack Quaid starrer. I like Jack Quaid. But he hasn’t opened anything ever. And as much as I like Sophie Thatcher, the co-star of Companion, like Quaid, has no weight beyond the TV set. And in the case of Novocaine, I think Amber Midthunder is really interesting and I wish Disney hadn’t pissed away Prey… but they did and all the potential ticket buyers got in the ads was “pretty/sexy ethnic girl”, leaving no movie muscle with the exception of Jacob Batalon, who is great in his small role but is still a sidekick.

All four of the movies I have mentioned here (Companion, Heart Eyes, Love Hurts, Novocaine) have production budgets under $20 million. None of them will lose money for their studios because post-theatrical will be enough to take them into the black (in reality… not necessarily studio accounting).

But this is also a set-up - probably unintentional - to screw the theatrical pooch in all four cases… least of them Heart Eyes, though attaching hard-R horror to Valentine’s Day is, uh, challenging.

4 movies and not a single person who has ever opened a movie, ever. Not speaking to talent, but these are all led by likable B-listers. TV talent. Heart Eyes doesn’t even have that.