Key 'Rebel Ridge' Lessons, Wrong 'Alien Romulus' Lessons and Concerning 'Joker 2' Reviews as 'Venom' Returns to China

Will 'Joker 2' get dinged by its "Doesn't give you what you want" Venice reviews? Will Michael B. Jordan be allowed to, uh... give his all a 'Thomas Crown Affair' remake?

In tonight’s overly long newsletter…

• Rebel Ridge scores big on Netflix, again showing the value of a solid “just a movie” film over a big-budget would-be franchise flick. (free)

• Venom was huge in China in 2018. How will Venom 3 play there in 2024? (free)

• Joker: Folie à Deux got the kind of mixed reviews that might hurt its box office.

• How much “affair” will Michael B. Jordan get to engage in, and with whom, in his self-directed remake of The Thomas Crown Affair?

• Will Alien Romulus trick Hollywood into not giving up on China while convincing Disney that previously DOA 20th Century Studios properties can be revived?

Rebel Ridge is (actually) a hit for Netflix!

Jeremy Saulnier’s Rebel Ridge, which debuted to primarily positive reviews (94% fresh and 7.9/10 from Rotten Tomatoes) and buzz last weekend, nabbed approximately 31.2 million viewings over its Fri-Sun debut, according to the top-ten charts of Netflix ratings. Third-party validation will arrive next month with the Nielsen figures drop for this respective early September frame, but just comparing apples to apples, this is a spectacular debut. It’s just shy of the 33 million views notched by Gal Gadot’s would-be franchise starter Heart of Stone in its “opening weekend” in September of last year. As I’ve discussed at length, at least since early 2022, the “rate of return” Netflix gets for “just a movie” flicks like Purple Hearts or even The Adam Project far exceeds the “value” they get for failed franchise flicks like The Grey Man.

Just since June of 2023 (when Netflix started listing “complete views” alongside hours viewed just in time for the debut of Sam Hargrave’s Extraction 2), Rebel Ridge’s opening weekend sits behind only (forgive me if I missed one) Murder Mystery 2 (43.5 million), Extraction (43 million), The Mother (42.5 million), Leave the World Behind (41.5 million), Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F (41 million… the top opener of 2024 thus far), Damsel (35.3 million), Leo (35 million), Heart of Stone, Lift (33 million), The Union (33 million) and A Family Affair (32 million). Those films had far higher profiles, more well-known “movie stars,” and, in most cases, far higher budgets alongside franchise or trilogy aspirations. Beverly Hills Cop IV cost $150 million, while The Union kept Mark Wahlberg and Halle Berry from kissing to… save that for the sequel?! 

Rebel Ridge scored a much higher opening weekend figure than was procured by the likes of Fair Play (12.6 million in October 2023), The Killer (28 million in November 2023) and Hit Man (10.8 million this past June), let alone any one of the “four” installments of Rebel Moon (23 million in December, 22 million in April and… uh… under 4 million each for those director’s cuts in early August) or the “obsessed about in the press” Lindsey Lohan romp-com Irish Wish (25 million). Does this mean Aaron Pierre (who subbed in for John Boyega at the very last minute) is a bigger movie star than Glen Powell and Michael Fassbender, while Saulnier is a bigger marquee filmmaker than David Fincher and Zack Snyder? We’ll see if Pierre gets anywhere near the media’s fawning “next Tom Cruise” treatment.

Heart of Stone, which you had most likely already forgotten about, cost $150 million. Rebel Ridge, helmed by the comparatively niche filmmaker behind Murder Party and Green Room, cost (at worst) $40 million. That is 3.75x less for almost identical opening weekend viewership. The action thriller about a former Marine attempting to outmaneuver a corrupt small-town police department pulled initial viewership on par with far more expensive would-be “event movies.” It is another example of how Netflix (and, I’d argue, Amazon) does best when it prioritizes what Hollywood stopped making (high-concept, mid-budget star vehicles in various genres) rather than trying to copy what Hollywood is now dependent upon (IP for IP’s sake revamps and cash-ins). Let’s hope Dan Lin agrees. After all, why remake or reboot First Blood when you’re the platform on which audiences will click “play” on Rebel Ridge?

The Venoms are going to China!

Sony’s Venom: The Last Dance (new trailer dropping tomorrow) will open in China on October 23, two days before its October 25 domestic debut. Generally speaking, whether a Hollywood movie plays in China has been borderline irrelevant since 2021. As longtime readers will recall, the 2020s has seen a downturn in the Middle Kingdom grosses for Hollywood flicks as audiences have gravitated toward the sort of homegrown tentpoles that had continuously broken out, at least going back to Monster Hunt in the summer of 2015. Unless it’s a franchise that has been exceptionally popular there, such as The Fast Saga, the MonsterVerse or Avatar (but not the MCU, which never *needed* China), Hollywood has *finally* begun treating any riches earned there as a bonus and/or “found money.” Where does Venom, which was *huge* in 2018 but didn’t play in 2021, fit in?

Venom shocked us all by earning $269 million in China in late 2018. That amounted to 31% of its $856 million global cume (on a $90 million budget) and more than the $214 million it grossed in North America. Credit China’s ongoing interest in aggressively weird (Transformers) and fantastical (Aquaman) tentpoles and the extent to which the Tom Hardy-led flick could be sold as a quirky monster movie. Two years later, Disney’s overly respectful live-action Mulan remake would bore them to tears. However, Venom: Let There Be Carnage didn’t play in China. That was part of the country’s unofficial ban on Marvel movies until late 2022. That included Disney flicks like Black Widow and Sony flicks like Spider-Man: No Way Home, which were caught in the crossfire and was partially about the franchise’s symbolic representation of Western/American soft power. It ironically worked. 

Marvel found itself on the defensive (from pundits and keyboard warriors who should have known better) when Doctor Strange in the Multiverse “only” grossed $965 million, Thor: Love and Thunder “only” grossed $765 million (more than Ragorak if you remove China and Russia) and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever “only” grossed $855 million. That missing $100-$150 million from an MIA China and Russia left the brand vulnerable to “Marvel fatigue” cries that became louder when two of its 2023 releases (The Marvels and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania) tanked. However, Venom 2 grossed $505 million worldwide without a penny from China, which was more than acceptable on a $110 million budget. Venom: The Last Dance earning 1/3 of what Venom did in China would mean $100 million that most other tentpoles couldn’t count upon. 

Presuming the Kelly Marcel-directed Venom: The Last Dance didn’t cost exponentially more than Venom: Let There Be Carnage, although I hope Peggy Lu got $15 million plus points, Sony should not *need* China to pull 2010s-era box office. Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, which earned $65 million compared to its predecessor’s $298 million gross (26% of $1.148 billion), could have used a lift. Even a 1/3 drop from $506 million would be $337 million, essentially triple a theoretical $115 million budget. If the earned goodwill from Venom and the Woody Harrelson and Naomie Harris-starring Let There Be Carnage suggest a “decline” closer to Bad Boys: Ride or Die (-7% from Bad Boys for Life), well, $471 million plus whatever it earns in China looks pretty good. Eddie Brock may be a loser, but he gets on base.