BoxOfficeFangrl

Do we think the limited functionality of some ticketing apps will cause any problems for this week's openers? At the moment, the AMC app isn't letting Stubs members redeem rewards points for tickets (accumulated points and viewing history are zeroed out right now) and there were reports of non-Swifties not being able to book tickets for other movies. These are likely temporary issues but if the Equalizer previews come in lower than expected...

There aren't any Thursday shows on the OW; the shows start on the 13th. After that, it seems like the dates are Thursday-Sunday but I wonder if the schedule will change based on demand.

Lol The Wife made more than Tár in the US, you'd never know that from all the "Lydia Tár is real!" memes and right wingers going viral for misunderstanding the movie. I wonder how many Film Twitter types having the "cultural conversation" about Tár actually saw it for free at festivals/festival screenings/screeners/etc. Great for awards hype but does nothing for the box office. Oppenheimer showed that big budget Oscar movies can still make major $$$ under the right circumstances, more than anyone had predicted. So maybe there's a chance that smaller prestige movies can get back to pre-pandemic levels too...

My AMC app timed out for Eras tickets, now it's just posted a message saying AMC Stubs Rewards can't be applied to ticket purchases at this time. Have never seen anything like it outside of thee biggest CBMs.

The whole squabble is so embarrassing on both sides: Sony, because a movie like Gran Turismo still couldn't clear $20 million even with 9 extra days of early access screenings, and Warner Bros because they’ve taken so many other Ls this year that they're desperately clinging to moral victories in a movie's sixth weekend performance. Another weekend at #1 would be nice but Barbie has more than gotten her flowers. WB doesn't care about "accuracy" in box office reporting-they just wanted a win. It isn't like they themselves have never rolled multiple days of early screenings into an opening weekend before. Granted 9 days is absurd, but if it was just 3 early access days (Paramount has done that multiple times this year), would WB have been more magnanimous? Is what WB did with Tenet different in their minds somehow because it was "only" Canada? Do they just block that time from their minds because they'd rather forget fumbling their own bag with Nolan?

Saw a movie, got a small drink and popcorn for $9.98 (tax included). Had $10 in rewards so it was basically free for me. Thumbs up for Year 2 of National Cinema Day! My local AMC has 18 screens. The only titles on the emptier side this afternoon are Golda, Back on the Strip and American Graffiti. Here, they probably could have swapped a couple of Gran Turismo screenings for more Blue Beetle.

What would Tony and Paulie Walnuts say?

Is WB blocking out their shenanigans with Tenet? It had like a 10-day opening weekend with the Canada numbers. Gran Turismo's "previews" are absurd but the studios all engage in creative box office reporting here and there.

Why are U punishing me Heaven knows what sort of emails they're sending each other about the strikes... I know that's not really the point of that article, but lol Scott Feinberg. Diva actors are ridiculous enough, but the idea of awards blogger divadom is WILD. Like, even among people who pay attention to movies and awards, many still have never heard of Feinberg or Clayton Davis or Sasha Stone and that ilk...

Movie theaters have been around for 100+ years so I wondered if it was another WWF situation? But no, the other NATO had the name first by about 20 years. I guess exhibitors have a very high opinion of their own importance... ABC Thursday primtime goes from Shondaland to Bachelor Nation: 100 percent Bachelor franchise spinoffs from 8-11 PM...

There's got to be a Scooter Braun exposé (or worse) about to drop...

The source is World of Reel, so... Hope I'm still around when they do a "making of" book or movie about this debacle.

National Cinema Day tickets are $4 each, that's a big family you're thinking of... There are even some concessions discounts for the 27th: Regal is offering a small drink/popcorn combo for $4 and Cinemark has $1 off any size fountain drink, popcorn or candy. That said I doubt Mario does huge business next Sunday.

Oppenheimer made $1.3m from IMAX this weekend, out of $10.6m total. That's about 12 percent? The Sunday estimate is $3.23m, 12.25 percent of that is about $395K. Maybe a Cinema Day boost will be enough to counteract the erasure of the inflated IMAX prices. That and some theaters got a bit out of hand last year with security issues. Maybe Cinema Day on a random Sunday (instead of a holiday weekend Saturday) adds a level of crowd control: more people having work/school on Monday, so the attendance is pushed to earlier hours, minimizes the late night rowdy teen issues theaters get on Saturdays (except places where schools haven't started yet I guess).

Even in the US, the opening weekend diversity breakdown only had the Barbie audience at 42 percent white, IDK why people are acting like it's another Top Gun Maverick or A Man Called Otto.

That wasn't a plot twist, though, they just put a bald cap on Tilda Swinton rather than lose out on the Chinese market. The writers said that casting someone Asian as The Ancient One would've been stereotypical in one way or another. Uh huh...

Oh I love that idea! I guess that was still the era when Hollywood could get away with casting Euro actors as Asian characters, because it was a plot twist. Did "Benedict Cumberbatch totally isn't Khan, we swear!" put an end to that? I saw Blue Beetle ads on TV and the trailer before many other movies, but I don't know how it fared on TikTok or other platforms. There was just an article saying that social media posts from stars do so much more for awareness than ads, so the strike was really hurting movies released since it began. I thought the way movie advertising worked is that the studio sets aside a certain amount for the year and it's divvied up between the different films. If WB spent most of the summer money on The Flash and Barbie, well, something was going to draw the short straw, so why not the former HBO Max original that might be jettisoned from the new DC anyway? Over at Universal they surrounded Oppenheimer with Ruby Gillman and Voyage of the Demeter, so the lack of advertising on those two doesn't stand out quite as much.

Like Django isn't the fourth most interesting character in his own movie at best... Will Smith was not getting fake whipped and actually naked for a role, just to have Christoph Waltz steal the movie from him. And someone else would've had to play Calvin Candie, because they wouldn't have had the budget for Will and Leo. Inception, on the other hand, is a fascinating what if: it's easy to picture Will excelling with that mix of action and emotion. But who would have played Mal, because 2010 was just 5 years from studios insisting that his love interest couldn't be white (too controversial) or black (limits international appeal), so that's why Eva Mendes was in Hitch. But 2010 was also 5 years away from Will and Margot Robbie in Focus. And if Marion Cotillard isn't in Inception, is she in The Dark Knight Rises?

Another one bites the dust... How is this the most surprising tidbit from the article? Mr. Ex Britney is on that Paramount+ show with Nicole Kidman and Zoë Saldaña?!

Last year's Cinema Day was on a holiday weekend and a Saturday, so the admissions for a regular Sunday might be lower. OTOH, the higher ticket prices can offset any losses in attendance--if any, because the marketplace has more depth than 2022, so that might boost demand. Theaters have experience with National Cinema Day now and won't be as unprepared. Looking forward to how it works out...

Not sure why I'm being snapped at? I didn't object to the post in the first place, nor did I say anything about my personal stance on a total boycott of the trades. I was just explaining the sentiments that some extremely pro-SAG/WGA people hold. I'm not wishing joblessness on anyone but it baffles me that a third Tron with Jared Leto got greenlit and this far into production. I wonder if which strike (2007-08 or 2023) will end up having a longer casualty list before it's over.

Articles have advertising, and Twitter views and engagement on tweets are metrics for success with media outlets. The trades are all owned by Penske Media which owns member studios of the AMPTP. Some very pro-WGA/SAG people feel the trades have a pro-producer bias in their coverage about the strikes, therefore no one should even link their articles let alone read/discuss their contents. They want everyone to get their strike coverage in other ways. Distant has reappeared on Universal's schedule for January, when it's already had 3 announced release dates before being pulled. For a while, it seemed like they'd move it straight to streaming. Strike reprieve?

What's the opposite of a strike casualty?

I flipped past TCM yesterday and what I saw looked normal (bits of Somebody Up There Likes Me, Cool Hand Luke and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof). Maybe it was an East Coast/West Coast feed issue? Oher has been outspoken for years that the movie exaggerated his circumstances and lack of football knowledge. There were always jokes about the Tuohys having ulterior motives for taking him in, not just out of the goodness of their hearts. Still I wouldn't have guessed it was that bad-they didn't even adopt him? The Blind Side always got a lot of flack as a white savior story; the detractors will be feeling vindicated now.