Cinemas Bet on Themselves, Lionsgate Teams With AI and More

'Moana 2' and 'Mufasa' get those Imax screens, 'Beetlejuice 2' becomes 2024's sixth $200 million grosser and 'Nosferatu' hopes to buck a trend of failed vampire flicks.

In tonight’s bending-over-backward-to-be fair newsletter…

• Theater chains to spend $2.2 billion improving the cinematic experience. (free)

• Moana and Mufasa get Imax engagements while Sonic the Hedgehog taps his toe impatiently, and Art the Clown waits for the call that will never come. (free)

• As Beetlejuice 2 passes $200 million domestic, a look at how much box office wealth has been spread thus far in 2024 compared to the last several years. (paid)

• Will Nosferatu suffer the same grim box office fate as Abigail, Renfield, The Last Voyage of Demeter, Fright Night, Vampire Academy, Priest, etc., etc.? (paid)

• A deal between Lionsgate and an AI firm reignites the debate about whether artificial intelligence can help filmmaking or merely undercut it. (paid)

The movie theater industry (wisely) spends over $2.2 billion on itself. 

“There is no question that movie fans of all ages love heading to the local theatre to see great movies on the big screen. But the competition for consumers’ hard-earned dollars is fiercer than ever,” said NATO President & CEO Michael O’Leary. 

The National Association of Theater Owners (NATO, but not *that* NATO) announced plans to invest $2.2 billion in “the cinematic experience” over three years and spread out across the eight largest chains. The overall number for every participating multiplex is closer to $3 billion. Still, the top eight chains (AMC, Regal, Cinemark, Cineplex, Marcus, B&B, Harkins and Santikos) make up 21,000 screens and 67% of the box office. The plan is to upgrade the overall quality of the auditoriums – crucially not just the PLF ones – including cozier seats, more varied food options, greater use of laser projection and whatever the current “best of the best” sound systems happen to be. Also of note is that – behind making sure the theaters look nice (better carpeting, improved lighting and signage) -- they’ll also invest in non-movie entertainment options such as bowling alleys and arcades. 

I have no objection to enhancing the concession (more decent salads, please) and adding arcades (the theaters that offer *actual* old-school video games get my money). Still, I’m always slightly side-eyed about anything suggesting that the movie itself isn’t enough. However, even my kids prefer theaters with better food (like the Studio Movie Grill shown above, which opened near me in 2015) versus the best nearby Imax or Dolby auditoriums. If making money from a bowling alley allows theaters to better “survive” a well-liked Focus Features release that nobody sees, fine. The notion of theaters that double as glorified Dave N Busters isn’t new. I took my kids to a The Boss Baby showing in one of those “controversial” Cinepolis Jr. Playground theaters. No, kids don’t play during the movie, but I imagine there might sometimes be some PG or PG-13 activity in the comfy beanbag chairs. 

More important is the investment in the overall quality of the auditoriums. It’s not just “make better movies,” but “make movies better.” I have five high-quality multiplexes (two Regals, a Cinepolis, a Studio Movie Grill and an AMC) within 20 minutes’ driving distance (plus a top-notch Cinemark a bit farther out). The AMC Thousand Oaks is so overdone (massive screens for almost every auditorium and A+ seats) that I sometimes skip press screenings with the knowledge that I’ll have a better experience if I wait and see it locally. Since the 2010s, moviegoers in much of the country knew that their local theaters (if they even have one nearby) cannot guarantee an audio/visual experience at least on par with an HDTV and soundbar offering of a Blu-ray. Offering a “can’t get this at home” promise, especially for those non-PLF screens, will go a long way.  

That’s just 1/3 of the puzzle. There needs to be an effort to spread the wealth in terms of locations. There may be too many theaters for the number of films offered and in-theater consumption of non-event flicks. However, as Indiewire’s Tom Brueggemann noted earlier this year, a growing number of potential theatrical moviegoers live in the multiplex equivalent of a food desert. If you want more moviegoers to *casually* decide to attend an opening night showing of Civil War or The Fall Guy, you can’t force them to drive 30 minutes or (often far) more to a halfway decent theater. The other third is spending money on humans. Hire more employees and pay them more, tasking them with ensuring the presentation is correct (light levels, screen masking always, etc.) and that inconsiderate moviegoers do not get away with lessening the theatrical experience.

I don’t expect the box office for non-event films to approach the pre-streaming levels. The industry will likely rely on a handful of mega-movies that comprise an increasing part of the annual moviegoing spending. There can still be headways made in making moviegoing a casual activity again. Making sure that the non-PLF theaters are of a certain quality, there are enough people able to (and “deputized” to) deal with problems, and more moviegoers have a theater near enough to allow for spur-of-the-moment trips to the cinema will go a long way. Two key final points: If I’m at an AMC, I don’t need 5-10 minutes of ads for AMC! If you want arcades in the lobby, I expect at least one pinball machine alongside some old-school classics (Final Fight, TMNT, NBA Jam, Street Fighter II, Sunset Riders, Ms. Pac-Man, Time Crisis 5, etc.).

Mufasa and Moana are going to Imax! 

Imax announced this morning that Moana 2 (November 27) and Mufasa: The Lion King (December 20) will be getting the Imax treatment. The news came as the large-screen company noted a sky-high third quarter for 2024, earning $225 million courtesy of (among others) Deadpool & Wolverine and Alien: Romulus. Deadpool 3 is Marvel’s fifth-biggest Imax earner, with $86 million out of $1.3 billion thus far. Alien 9, with $40 million out of $335 million and counting, is the top-grossing horror movie ever for the format. Since it opened just days after Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them in November 2016, the first Moana did not generally play in Imax amid its $635 million-grossing run. The Lion King earned $63 million in Imax in the summer of 2019, representing just 4% of its $1.662 billion global cume.  

So, yes, Imax and Dolby and those various high-end auditoriums help, but they aren’t a do-or-die situation. Even Avatar: The Way of Water earned a massive $253 million in Imax and $2.06 billion in global cume elsewhere. I mention this because while movies that look good tend to look best in Imax and Dolby, a quality auditorium is a quality auditorium. I attended the opening of Universal’s new lot last night (it was a lovely celebration of a studio that I’d argue has correctly kept its head down and hustled amid industry-wide chaos while its rivals tore themselves apart) and got to sample the new screening rooms. The atom bomb scene played great, thank you very much. While I imagine Universal will be annoyed at losing its Imax monopoly for Wicked Part One just five days after opening, if the film clicks, it’ll leg out regardless.  

Ditto Paramount’s Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is slated to open concurrently with Barry Jenkins’ Lion King prequel/sequel. The rest of the Imax line-up this year includes Lionsgate’s Megalopolis (which may over-index toward Imax to a Dune Part Two-level degree), Warner Bros. Discovery’s Joker: Folie à Deux, Sony’s Venom: The Last Dance and Paramount’s Gladiator II. Oh, fresh off the presses, Sony has announced that Crunchyroll’s Solo Leveling – ReAwakening will debut on December 6 in (but not remotely limited to) Imax theaters. It’s not a movie but one of those “recaps the previous season and offers the first two episodes of the newest season” packages, but I guess it counts. Imax claims that further additions to the fourth quarter slate are incoming, so here’s hoping that Sonic 3 finds a place in the Imax line-up while Terrifier 3 gets seen the way god intended.