Weekend Numbers | actuals | 27.75M THE FALL GUY | 8.72M SW: EP I - TPM | 7.59M CHALLENGERS | 6.50M TAROT

[jeffthehat]

Predicting opening weekend is very annoying with these EA shows. Was there ever any clarity on what Civil War grossed true Thursday? 

[Cmasterclay]

Maybe the reason I'm positive for once is because I've been down on the Fall Guy at the BO for months and I just cannot for the life of me get why this would do significantly more than the 25-35 range. A lead star that hasn't opened an action movie ever, mediocre trailers, smarmy inside baseball plot about Hollywood - I guess good reviews were the only thing really going for it.

[fastlane]

less than Mean Girls?! 💀

 

[Eric is Anxious]

50 minutes ago, Cmasterclay said:

In Hollywood, beyond just COVID and streaming, it’s clear that audiences are sick of crap and want some new stuff. They couldn’t coast on Marvel and Star Wars forever.

Do they though? Like 80% of all the movies that are hits post-COVID are still NTCs designed to be part of bigger franchises that make shareholders happy. Even Dune qualifies here. I have a Paul Atreides action figure in my house. Toys and merch were part of its reason to exist. The only other hits this year have been Kung Fu Panda and Godzilla X Kong. And you know darn well what type of movie those are.

 

Sorry mate, but the people just want the same old slop.

[AniNate]

Wonder how I Saw the TV Glow did this weekend. I would understand if young politically-inclined urbanites preferred to shell out money for that

[Unfitclock]

How do the Friday sales compare to yesterday for the fall guy?

[Flopped]

Is it bad that I want Phantom Menace to beat Fall Guy this weekend? 

[John Marston]

It is time to start slashing budgets. If Fall Guy cost 80M or so it would be fine.

[Cmasterclay]

7 minutes ago, Eric the Fall Guy said:

Do they though? Like 80% of all the movies that are hits post-COVID are still NTCs designed to be part of bigger franchises that make shareholders happy. Even Dune qualifies here. I have a Paul Atreides action figure in my house. Toys and merch were part of its reason to exist. The only other hits this year have been Kung Fu Panda and Godzilla X Kong. And you know darn well what type of movie those are.

 

Sorry mate, but the people just want the same old slop.

I think audiences have bought into films that are challenging either thematically or formally over the past couple of years (Dune, Oppenheimer, Barbie, Civil War, Elvis) and they have, outside of Godzilla v Kong and a couple of other exceptions, shown that they are over total horseshit quality wise. I agree most of the hits are still NTCs, but I do think that at least these NTC commercials are starting to evolve a bit artistically. And if you look at the blockbuster budgets this year, plenty of IP, but by most accounts they're good films with actual directorial vision. So that's a start. I agree too much of the original content is being sent to streaming and made into miniseries. Something like Manhunt or Masters of the Air or Beef would have been possibly lucrative films. It sucks so much of the possible hits are just being turned into miniseries. But one advantage of all the mid-ass background noise TV is that audiences are at least looking for quality and creativity when they pay money to watch a film in theaters now, even if the risk exists within a Dune or Joker or Gladiator or other established property. 

[Cmasterclay]

Cutting budgets isn't easy. I just put in a budget request for $9 million to REFURBISH A PARKING LOT. You can joke about that being government waste but at every level of government and private sector that I work with closely, all everyone talks about is how much everything costs nowadays in terms of project deliverables. That's not a political anti-Biden statement, that's just a complicated economic reality. Slashing costs like everyone says would require either cutting down labor costs, which most of us tend to oppose morally, or skimping on the artistic investments of location shooting, sets, etc, which most of us tend to oppose artistically. 80 million for the Fall Guy would be getting away very, very cheap in 2024.

[JustLurking]

12 minutes ago, Flopped said:

Is it bad that I want Phantom Menace to beat Fall Guy this weekend? 

Yeah.

[AniNate]

The movie cost what it cost, i think people need to move away from this assumption that lower budgets are always preferable. If it can't make bank on what is spent on it, then so be it. the studio will just have to adjust their strategy for future projects. I imagine Despicable Me will help make this a distant memory though

 

 

Edited May 3 by AniNate

[Cmasterclay]

Streamers are losing money like water on their budgets, and virtually every cultural space with capital costs except sports is taking a major hit because of costs over what consumers are willing to spend their time and money on anymore, so it's not like this is exclusively a theatrical movie problem.

[AniNate]

There's been this erroneous narrative that's formed in industry discourse circles that the publicly reported budget (or 2x/2.5x of it) represents a stone-etched success/failure divide, or the difference between a "win" or a "loss" as a sports analogy. That's not how the business works. Not every movie is individually greenlit with the expectation that it be a big moneymaker, though I will concede that I imagine Uni will likely be pretty disappointed with this performance barring hugely impressive legs.

[ReturnOfTheBoxOffice]

I really liked the Fall Guy. Hopefully WOM does something. Anything. But yeah, not to go on a political rant or anything but we’re seeing the effect of late stage capitalism. Wages are so small and everything’s so expensive to line the pockets of a few wealthy individuals at the top that people can hardly afford expensive luxuries like the theater anymore.

[AniNate]

People are spending money on luxuries, just not so much movie theaters right now

[Maggie]

I don't think the BO is bad because theaters are a luxury. Last summer was a hit with Barbenheimer. Nothing big financially happened in a year. It's just the lack of attractive product imo because of the strike

Edited May 3 by Maggie

[titanic2187]

1 hour ago, jeffthehat said:

Predicting opening weekend is very annoying with these EA shows. Was there ever any clarity on what Civil War grossed true Thursday? 

I know EA has become a lot more common nowadays but did studios study their positive impact? I seriously can't see the benefit of having EA, at least statistically. Looks like they simply shift the Thursday or Friday crowd to EA without causing the actual OW itself to overperform.  

[MrFanaticGuy34]

47 minutes ago, Flopped said:

Is it bad that I want Phantom Menace to beat Fall Guy this weekend? 

Nope. Though we don’t know yet how much TPM might overperform for it to open at the #1 slot.

[CJohn]

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