Box Office: It Doesn't Have To Be Like This

Amid another empty weekend, a reminder that 'Split,' 'Taken' and 'Bad Boys For Life' show that January is only a dead month if studios don't bother to release anything

Ten years ago, I wrote a piece for Forbes in relation to I, Frankenstein, Pompeii and The Legend of Hercules discussing the extent to which audiences have grown accustomed to — and indifferent to — a level of onscreen spectacle and fantastical imagery that once would have been the talk of the town. That’s not to say these films are “good, actually,” although I will defend Paul W.S. Anderson’s “volcano eventually goes boom” action melodrama, but nor did I think I’d find myself nostalgic for when moviegoers could at least expect this level of theatrical offering even in the allegedly dead month of January.

How bad is this empty weekend? Well, the overall cume is going to be around 43% below this weekend in 2019. This weekend’s top-grossing movie will be Mean Girls, which will earn $7 million (-40%) in its third Fri-Sun frame for a $60 million 17-day total. Just last year, Shah Rukh Khan’s spectacular Bollywood action blockbuster Pathaan placed third with $6.7 million amid a $9.4 million Wed-Sun debut.

It doesn’t have to be like this. 15 years ago, theaters were rocking and rolling following the deluge of early-year biggies like My Bloody Valentine, Hotel for Dogs, the wide release expansion of Gran Torino and Paul Blart: Mall Cop (which had topped MLK weekend amid the prior frame with a $39 million Fri-Mon debut). The next weekend would see the domestic debut of Liam Neeson’s Taken, which would surprise over Super Bowl weekend with $25 million on its way to a genre-refedining $145 million domestic cume. Folks like to talk about January as a dead month, but it usually isn’t.

Again, we lost the Oscar expansion season which gave way to breakouts like American Sniper, The Revenent, Hidden Figures and 1917. But beyond that, Kung Fu Panda 3 opened in late January of 2016 (to get away from The Force Awakens and concurrently position itself around the Chinese new year) and topped $500 million worldwide. Ride Along solidified Kevin Hart as a movie star in 2014, wile M. Night Shyamalan’s Split exploded out of the gate with a $40 million debut in 2017. Heck, amid the last months before Covid shut down the world, Bad Boys for Life opened with a $72 million Fri-Sun MLK frame on its way to a $204 million total, a new opening weekend and domestic cume record for a *new* January release (American Sniper had platformed in December of 2014).

A hit movie can open anywhere

To paraphrase Rataouille, not every movie can be a hit, but a hit can open anywhere. Warner Bros. opened Demolition Man in early October of 1993 in a then-rare example of a “summer movie” opening just after summer. They did likewise with Gravity in 2013 and essentially created a new “prime” tentpole opening weekend for the likes of Gone Girl, The Martain, Venom and Joker. Ditto their launching It to $117 million just after Labor Day, creating a new horror-friendly slot which will surely pay off this year with (relatively speaking) Beetlejuice 2.

Disney launched Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings over Labor Day weekend in 2021. The acclaimed/buazy MCU martial arts fantasy (arguably, fair or not, the last time Diney’s MCU was seen as kicking ass on all cylinders) shattered records ($94 million Mon-Fri) for that presumed-dead end-of-summer weekend. Speaking of which, Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame both shattred opening weekend record ($258 million in 2018 and $356 million in 2019) depite opening not in early May but in late April. Before that, Warner Bros. redefined when summer started by opening Lethal Weapon 3 in mid-May of 1992 and then opening Twister in early May of 1996.

Those are obviously blockbuster-sized examples, and a huge problem in 2024 compared to 2014 is that far fewer moviegoers will go to the theaters just to see “a movie.” It’s not like I, Frankenstein was a hit, and I’m entirely unconvinced that family audiences today would show up for an original high-concept star vehicle like Kevin James’ Paul Blart: Mall Cop in anywhere near the numbers they did in 2009. Conversely, the first film cost just $26 million, so Sony and friends would have profited on a global total well below its $183 million finish.

Sometimes, random example, you can grab a destined-for-VOD (or streaming) action vehicle featuring a not-a-white-guy star in an oddly appealing and skewed-to-his-persona action hero role, groom it into an A-level (and potentially Imax-worthy) theatrical release and drop it in late October — or, I dunno, maybe April 4 of this year — and score a perfectly okay chunk-of-change.

Yes, I too am very excited for Dev Patel’s Monkey Man, which Universal and Jordan Peele’s MonkeyPaw snatched up from the Netflix graveyard and are now grooming for a big-deal pre-summer release. “Big deal” is relative, but recall that Keanu Reeves’ first John Wick earned $44 million domestic and $88 million worldwide on a $30 million budget. Between Monkey Man and the Radio Silence-directed Abigail (think Ransom of Red Chief with a vampire), Universal may well own April by default via “Oh, that looks interesting!” high-concept originals that don’t need to break records to break even.

The tide may be turning

And to my surprise, I’m ending this rant on a note of optimism.

Illumination’s Migration will cross $100 million domestic on Sunday as Sony’s Anyone But You clears $70 million. Godzilla Minus One… now an Oscar nominee, returned to over 2,000 theaters with a new black-and-white cut and will earn $2.5 million (+264%) for a new $54.5 million cume. That will make it the third-biggest foreign language grosser ever behind (for now) Life is Beautiful ($57.2 million in 1999) and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon ($128 million in 2000). Poor Things expanded to 2,300 theaters and will earn $2.82 million (+32%) for a $24.5 million cume. That puts it near the post-nomination $26 million total for The Favourite. American Fiction expanded to 1,702 theaters and will earn $2.57 million (+46%) for a new $11.52 million cume.

We’ve seen a slew of promising deals, news bites and related rumblings over the last 48 hours implying that the 2024 theatrical schedule might not be as dead as feared. Sure, I do think Doug Liman is right to be annoyed at Amazon for not releasing his Jake Gyllenhaal-starring Road House remake into theaters. However, as fun as it looks, I weep for the notion that theatrical advocates now have to be “grateful” if/when a Road House remake ends up playing theatrically in the first place.

But Amazon just greenlit a new David Ayer-directed Jason Statham flick penned by Sylvester Stallone, who wrote Statham’s terrific Homefront in 2013. They are clearly happy that The Beekeeper (a $6.75 million third weekend, down just 22%, for a $41 million 17-day cume) is on the verge of passing Transporter 2 ($43 million in 2005) as Statham’s biggest-grossing solo non-Meg action movie in unadjusted domestic earnings.

Disney may be releasing the streaming-intended Joachim Rønning’s Daisy Ridley-starring Young Woman and the Sea into theaters in late May. That may be a PR move, since Ridley is set to star in another Star Wars movie and Rønning is currently directing Tron: Ares, but multiplexes will take it. Amazon MGM (whose Boys in the Boat will clear $50 million domestic next weekend) just set Zoe Kravitz’s directorial debut Blink Twice (starring Naomi Ackie and Channing Tatum) for theatrical release on August 24.

No, a few movies (like Mean Girls) which were supposed to bypass theaters for streaming instead heading to multiplexes won’t fix the gap left by Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse and Mission: Impossible 8. That’s to say nothing of a year mostly filled with B-level franchise titles which would be thrilled to top out at $400 million global. Amid word that Scott Stuber is leaving Netflix at least partially because, as I and others discussed last year, he’s arguably tired of Ted Sarandos undercutting him on theatrical while watching Amazon and Apple lure A-level talent with the promise of conventional multiplexes releases, the tide is turning.

Here’s hoping that the last two weekends are the exception rather than the rule in 2024, because the theatrical companies big and small cannot continue to crawl along amid inconsistent and unreliable release slates as they enter their fourth year of compromised business. They didn’t cause a global pandemic, they didn’t follow Netflix off the streaming cliff and they didn’t cause a half-year dual labor strike, and yet they have thus far borne the financial brunt of these unprecedented circumstances. 2024 is either going to be the year Hollywood steps up to save movie theaters or the year Hollywood realizes that they’ve killed their golden goose in pursuit of a mirage.