THB #723: Box Office A Go Go

The thing is, overcompensating to the positive is 80% as bad as overcompensating towards the negative… because I feel better about the positive… I believe in theatrical (as anyone who is closely paying attention and not just riding the wave of the same old bullshit excuse making should). But 80% wrong is still wrong.

F1 is Apple Original Films 16th non-doc film as a producer (as opposed to picking films up for distribution). It is their 5th film put into theatrical distribution.

Of those 5 films distributed theatrically, it is one of the 4 that cost $200 million or more.

The 2 highest-profile Apple Original theatrical releases, until F1, from Scorsese and Sir Ridley, were both R-rated and ran 3 hours and 26 minutes and 2 hours and 38 minutes. (F1 is not short, at 2:35… but it is PG-13.)

F1 will be the first Apple Original to gross more than $225 million at the worldwide box office.

F1 is the first Apple-produced film to have a chance at breaking even in theatrical or coming close.

Apple has theatrically released only 1 feature with a nor-blockbuster budget, though it was still overly expensive, Fly Me To The Moon, costing a reported $100 million. It opened domestically to under $10 million, Apple theatrical balls pulled up into its body like it jumped into the North Atlantic, and they have shown no sign of releasing anything but blockbusters - just the 1 in the last year - since.

Paul Dergarabedian is a smart guy and one of the few people who have been doing this as long as I have. However… “Like a perfectly tuned F1 car, the Apple and Warner Bros. teams mounted a theatrical marketing and distribution plan that will be a blueprint for others, studios, and streamers alike, to follow moving forward and much like a crackerjack pit crew their strategy, executed with balletic precision, resulted in a successful launch while simultaneously delivering a great moviegoing experience.”

Uh… bullshit.

Yes, both the Apple and WB teams did well. But movies don’t open on the balletic execution of marketing and distribution strategy. Honestly - c’mon, we can be honest with ourselves, can’t we? - that balletic execution is the expectation of every single movie that every single major distributor expects on every 1 of the 8 - 15 films that are released in a year.

Don’t get me wrong… the campaign for F1 is absolutely gorgeous. Combine beautiful imagery in photographic in-theater promotion, billboards, and the like with the intensity of the screaming engines of F1 in every audio or video offering and the combination is a winner. I am a fan of the film and every person I have told to see it, I have told to see it in a theater on an IMAX screen or at least a Dolby or a similar quality Premium screen at chains where there is none. So that push worked.

Not quite as well as Deadline Anthony suggests: “For those cynics wondering why F1 didn’t move the odometer past it’s already overindexed $55M, we’re in a 10-day holiday stretch, dummies. The fantastic buzz is out there on this Brad Pitt movie, and now everyone wants the best Imax or PLF seats in the house, so they’ll wait. No one wants to sit in the first two rows. Plus, there’s plenty of times to go to the movies.”

Okay… calm down, friend-o. Tony himself later writes, “Imax screens cleared $12.8M, repping 23% of the North American debut from just 414 auditoriums.” GREAT! More than 80% of Americans who went to see the film this weekend saw it on non-IMAX screens, on tickets that cost around 30% less. Your friends in L.A., where we currently have 6 commercial IMAX screens, may well wait for late this week or next weekend to see the film in IMAX before Superman sucks up all those screens. But the vast majority of people in America who see the film in theaters will see it on non-premiums. So let’s not overexplain what “everyone” is doing.

(SIDEBAR: Someone on Twitter recently pointed out that there is currently no IMAX screen in Chicago is capable of showing a 70mm IMAX - much less 70mm IMAX on film - which Christopher Nolan will deliver yet again next summer. Yikes. #3 market in the country!)

Pauly D continues: “Most importantly, “F1 The Movie‘s release took a risk and cracked the elusive code on how to take a motorsports-themed movie and take it mainstream while demonstrating to Apple and other streaming-centric companies that a theatrical release represents (for the appropriate film) a branding bonanza and prestige-building opportunity that has no peer.”

Half of this is 100% correct.

“a theatrical release represents (for the appropriate film) a branding bonanza and prestige-building opportunity that has no peer.”

Yes. But the whole “motorsports-themed movie” thing is, like over-analyzing Apple’s FIVE whole movies in theatrical distribution over the last 3 years (remember, CODA was never given a theatrical amidst COVID) is nuts. There have been just FOUR major releases on the car racing subject over the last decade, including F1. Ford v Ferrari was profitable. Gran Turismo was dumped by Sony at the end of August. And Ferarri was independently financed and released on an hard-sold output deal with Neon. Nothing to comp here.

And by the way… Robert DeNiro has played 6 real-life characters in the last decade. There have been 9 Paw Patrol movies in the last decade. Elon Musk has sired 8 children in the last decade.