Weekend Box Office 9/17 - Not The Fall You Remember

[AndyDursin]

Here's the cold reality of the next 6-8 months for movie theaters: if you don't have a big corporate brand coming out, get ready for weekends like this when nobody shows up. This is apparently going to be the 2nd worst weekend of 2023 at the box-office.

I know MJ liked A HAUNTING IN VENICE but I don't really understand why Disney is continuing to press forward with that Kenneth Branagh series -- especially when they've cut the budget down and now it's basically just a slightly pricier version of one of the zillion Agatha Christie TV movie adaptations you can find anywhere. Anemic gross even with the cost savings -- plus Tina Fey in the "Phoebe Waller-Bridge role"

1.) A Haunting in Venice (Dis) 3,305 Fri $5.5M, 3-day $14M-$15M/Wk 1

2) The Nun 2 (NL) 3,743 theaters (+15), Fri $4.4M (-66%) 3-day $14.6M (-55%) Total $56.3M/Wk 1

3.) Equalizer 3 (Sony) 3,528 (-437) theaters Fri $2.1M (-38%) 3-day $7.3M (-39%), Total: $73.8M /Wk 3

4.) My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 (Uni) 3,678 (+28) theaters Fri $1.39M (-62%) 3-day $4.6M (-54%) Total $18.4M/Wk 2

5.) Barbie (WB) 3,012 (-269) theaters, Fri $1M (-30%) 3-day $3.6M (-37%) Total $625.7M/Wk 9

6.) Blue Beetle 2,386 (-400) theaters, Fri $575K (-32%) 3-day $2.5M (-34%), Total $67.3M/Wk 5

[Monterey Jack]

Blue Beetle not topping $70 million after FIVE weeks.

[AndyDursin]

I thought even a few years ago releasing 3-4 DC movies within a year was a fool's errand. Just oversaturating the market. DC fans tend to be older -- plus add in that the whole super-hero genre seems to be maxed out and that's what you get.

Will be interesting to see what happens with AQUAMAN 2 and THE MARVELS which as we've said looks (and apparently runs as long as) a Disney+ product.

[Monterey Jack]

Will be interesting to see what happens with AQUAMAN 2 and THE MARVELS which as we've said looks (and apparently runs as long as) a Disney+ product.

The first Aquaman - incredibly - remains the sole DC movie to cross the billion-dollar mark, but it came out FIVE YEARS ago, and the sequel has been rife with pushbacks and reshoots as the future of the DCEU has been in constant flux. The first was one of the more entertaining movies to come out of the franchise, but considering that it "no longer counts" with the forthcoming James Gunn top-to-bottom reboot, who's going to care to see this? The Marvels will likely be lucky to clear $400 million worldwide. They already blew their McDonald's Happy Meal-tie-in months ago, the trailers look lame, and this one doesn't have the one-two punch of being nestled in-between the last two Avengers movies or the "You HAVE to like this, or else you're a sexist knuckle-dragger!" atmosphere of the time. People are no longer seeing movies because Twitter tells them they have to, and that's rather refreshing. Look at Dud Of Destiny or The Woke Mermaid.

[AndyDursin]

Yeah. Remember too some (many) of the DC characters don't and never have had worldwide appeal. The original SUPERMAN THE MOVIE is easily over $1 billion adjusted but not even BATMAN '89 would quite get there. Still, as uneven (and derided by many) as BATMAN V SUPERMAN was, it made a ton just shy of $1 bil so those characters -- the CORE DC heroes -- have huge appeal everywhere. (Just imagine if they made a movie as beloved as SUPERMAN I or II today -- they'd make loads of dough. Instead audiences suffer thru the mediocrity they've mostly put out there).

But Blue Beetle? Shazam? Black Adam? Harley Quinn minus Batman? Yeah not so much. Plus THE FLASH has been on TV for 9 years already and he's never been more than a side player to begin with. I do think that movie would've done better a few years ago though. But Marvel is having the same issue. The brand is only going to get them so far when the movies are lame and the characters aren't that popular to begin with.

I think the studios especially Warner need to realize not everyone needs or wants some huge "connected universe". Just make some decent movies. WONDER WOMAN was a huge hit. AQUAMAN was also. Those movies didn't need a ton "planted seeds" like these Marvel movies which are little more than glorified episodes in some big TV series now and have been for years. Even that CAPTAIN AMERICA movie most everyone liked -- was it CIVIL WAR? the one that stopped dead for 30 minutes so they could introduce Sony's Spider-Man -- was the start of that.

The audience is onto it -- and I think pre-planning out, say, a half-dozen movies is just a mistake the way things are going. People are tired of it. I mean who's excited about the next AVENGERS movie? They're going to run out to see THE MARVELS the same way they did for ANT-MAN 3 (or 4, or whatever the hell it is)? The reckoning you could see coming from years back it finally feels that inflection point has been reached.

This is all on the studios though and Disney most of all. They thought they could serve up crap and the audience would eat it up simply if the brand was plastered over it.

[Monterey Jack]

The audience is onto it -- and I think pre-planning out, say, a half-dozen movies is just a mistake the way things are going. People are tired of it.

Look at the whole controversy surrounding Jonathan Majors, who was supposed to be the new Thanos-style "big bad" to lead up to the next Endgame-style crossover event but has left Disney twisting in the wind because they'll obviously have to write him out or recast the role because he got himself Cancelled. You can plan half-a-dozen movies down the line, but things happen, and you have to roll with them. The steady erosion of interest in superhero cinema due to a combination of post-Covid fatigue and glutting the marketplace - on the big and small screens - with too much samey content doesn't help. Yeah, things looked golden in 2019, when Disney had like SEVEN movie cross a billion worldwide, but they haven't had a success story on that level since, and the aggressive "inclusivity" of their recent movies (combined with how glaringly mediocre a lot of them are) isn't helping. If they were smart, they'd be planning to END the MCU sooner rather than later, because they're gonna hit the same wall the DCEU has very soon.