Weekend Numbers [05.24 - 05.27, 2024] | 4-day actuals | 32.3M FURIOSA: A MAD MAX SAGA | 31.3M THE GARFIELD MOVIE | 22.3M IF | 17.6M KINGDOM OF THE PLANET OF THE APES

[Potiki]

20 minutes ago, Krissykins said:

Hmm that’s from Netflix though, so it’s always a pinch of salt. Nielsen is flawed too, because it only covers one country. 

 

Why do their films have little staying power or cultural impact though. But their TV shows can be phenomenons: Stranger Things, Baby Reindeer, Wednesday. 

Most of their shows have little staying power as well to be fair, those listed along with Bridgerton and Squid Game are really their heavy hitters. They don't have many franchises in terms of movies, it will interesting to see if Glass Onion resurfaces when the next Knives Out sequel comes out; Extraction is probably their only massive franchise and I feel that gets brought up a decent amount for an outright action film. 

 

Also film is generally high on other streamers that give selective data points, this is a bit outdated at this point but Disney have been given opening week viewership for a bunch of movies and series and their movies are generally larger:

 

Series Debuts:

Ahsoka - 14m (First Episode Only, 1st 5 days)

Percy Jackson - 13.3m (First Episode Only, 1st 6 days, Disney+ and Hulu)

Loki S2 - 10.9m (First 3 Days)

Mando S3 - Over 10.9m (First 3 Days)

Goosebumps S1 - 4.2m (First 3 Days, Includes Hulu Viewership)

Monsters at Work S1 - Over 4.2m (First 3 Days)

 

Series Finales:

Loki S2 - 11.2m (First 3 Days)

Mando S3 - Over 11.2m (First 3 Days)

 

Movies:

The Little Mermaid - 16m (First 5 Days)

Elemental - 26.4m (First 5 Days)

 

Also add in what Encanto did in 2022 with it's 180m+ rewatches in 3 or 4 months and 27B+ minutes in the US according to Nielsen, on top of that Moana having 1B+ hours viewed on Disney+. Film is still huge for the streamers. 

Edited May 26 by Potiki

[Kon]

50 minutes ago, charlie Jatinder said:

The real reason is missing

"Not interested".
 

I agree. Lack of interest is the main issue.

 

When people are really interested on a movie, they will just go to see the movie on theaters. They won't care about higher prices or wait for streaming.

[wildphantom]

“Deadpool, I’ve got to see that in a theatre. Furiosa? Yeah I want to see that too, but I can wait a month”. 

 

And they don’t just mean ‘I can wait an month and pay for it’. They mean they’ll wait six weeks and pay nothing. 4K HDR rips to watch to their heart’s content. 

 

The only way you can get people to pay to see the movie they want to see is by having it exclusively in cinemas.  After that they lose control, but you’ve got to make them really wait to have them rock up in the first couple of weeks and see it. 
 

Again, I don’t disagree with those that say a movie makes most of its money in its first few weeks.  Yet surely we can all agree by now that it would make more in those first few weeks if it brought in those that are being turned off by ‘free in three weeks’ (aka Fall Guy).
 

Windows Windows Windows. 

[filmscholar]

 

 

Worse Memorial Day Box Office since I was teenager and my Parents took me and my brothers to watch "Casper" on the Holiday Weekend.   Crazy turn of events.   (The film did 288 WW on a 55 Million Budget by the way. Spanned two straight to video sequels and a TV series).   How do you have the Holiday Weekend but make less than "Fall Guy" 3 Day?  What in the world.   Speaking of "Casper" would Christina Ricci be down for a Legacy sequel?

Edited May 26 by filmscholar

[Eric is Quiet]

Gotta be honest, the whole “Netflix movies have no impact” thing just doesn’t hold much water as the years go by. Like yeah, a lot of their movies come and go, but anecdotally, Don’t Look Up has been mentioned in climate change circles many a time,Leave the World Behind was brought up when some social media sites are down,  Irishman is still brought up during Scorsese discussions online, Marriage Story memes were a huge thing, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio gets brought up as a modern animated classic. Like Lana Condor was on Abbott Elementary a few weeks ago, and tweets were out saying “Look, it’s Lara Jean”. Sure, they might not be talked about as much as they do when they first came out, but that’s how every movie works. There’s a peak time for discussion for anything, then it dies down. Everything Everywhere isn’t talked as much after the Oscars, but you can’t say the movie isn’t popular.

 

Really, the big reason why most Netflix movies don’t “leave impact” is because a good chunk of them either aren’t in popular media franchises that have been around for decades, or simply aren’t  good or interesting. Like quality is a far bigger issue here than the platform, since the movies I listed all were a step above quality, or at least have more to say about them.

 

Plus being a box office hit doesn’t automatically mean your movie left some big cultural impact. Like honestly, when was the last time you saw somebody talk about Free Guy out in the wild?

[Potiki]

8 minutes ago, wildphantom said:

Yes. Another windows believer! Witness us! 
 

totally agree. I know some people think the genie can’t be put back in the bottle but I think it can.  A platform decision/agreement by all the studios that they won’t go digital for minimum 45 days, although I’d prefer at least 60.
 

I don’t buy that this can’t be done. They’ll take a hit for a while as people then realise what’s happening, but I think it’ll have an effect in the long run.

 

Hell, they could come up with a way to tell audiences how long it’ll be exclusive to cinemas, I don’t know. But they could!  

Disney has largely reintroduced longer windows usually 60 days or so to VOD (shorter at 45 for some of their smaller titles like First Omen) and 4-5 months for streaming (again shorter for smaller titles, sometimes streams the same day as VOD or very close) but that has not really helped theatrical performance as of yet, it has helped home video some obviously with the gap between VOD and SVOD release. 

 

It also likely harms streaming numbers just looking at top performing titles with long SVOD windows like Avatar 2, TGM, Barbie, Black Panther 2 etc. that didn't blow up on streaming (likely due to some demand burn off from VOD and Piracy) and that is to say nothing of Wish and Indy 5 which likely didn't benefit from a long time until streaming on Disney+. 

 

So it is a tough decision for studios to make, other companies are not in Disney's position where they already have a large and verging on profitable streaming business as well as Parks and Merchandise to offset Broadcast and Pay TV losses. The other studios need streaming to replace the revenue they get from a dying traditional TV ecosystem so they are thinking very short term in how to make money and get their streamers to scale/turn a profit on streaming. Sony is the only other studio not impacted as they don't have a large Broadcast/Cable business. 

[ListenHunnyUrOver]

2 minutes ago, Eric Furiosa said:

Gotta be honest, the whole “Netflix movies have no impact” thing just doesn’t hold much water as the years go by. Like yeah, a lot of their movies come and go, but anecdotally, Don’t Look Up has been mentioned in climate change circles many a time,Leave the World Behind was brought up when some social media sites are down,  Irishman is still brought up during Scorsese discussions online, Marriage Story memes were a huge thing, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio gets brought up as a modern animated classic. Like Lana Condor was on Abbott Elementary a few weeks ago, and tweets were out saying “Look, it’s Lara Jean”. Sure, they might not be talked about as much as they do when they first came out, but that’s how every movie works. There’s a peak time for discussion for anything, then it dies down. Everything Everywhere isn’t talked as much after the Oscars, but you can’t say the movie isn’t popular.

 

Really, the big reason why most Netflix movies don’t “leave impact” is because a good chunk of them either aren’t in popular media franchises that have been around for decades, or simply aren’t  good or interesting. Like quality is a far bigger issue here than the platform, since the movies I listed all were a step above quality, or at least have more to say about them.

 

Plus being a box office hit doesn’t automatically mean your movie left some big cultural impact. Like honestly, when was the last time you saw somebody talk about Free Guy out in the wild?

Nah, outside of a few exceptions Netflix movies don’t leave a lasting impact in the zeitgeist. I've never heard anyone talk about GDT’s Pinocchio,  but I do agree that DLU managed to have an impact.  

[wildphantom]

2 minutes ago, Potiki said:

Disney has largely reintroduced longer windows usually 60 days or so to VOD (shorter at 45 for some of their smaller titles like First Omen) and 4-5 months for streaming (again shorter for smaller titles, sometimes streams the same day as VOD or very close) but that has not really helped theatrical performance as of yet, it has helped home video some obviously with the gap between VOD and SVOD release. 

 

It also likely harms streaming numbers just looking at top performing titles with long SVOD windows like Avatar 2, TGM, Barbie, Black Panther 2 etc. that didn't blow up on streaming (likely due to some demand burn off from VOD and Piracy) and that is to say nothing of Wish and Indy 5 which likely didn't benefit from a long time until streaming on Disney+. 

 

So it is a tough decision for studios to make, other companies are not in Disney's position where they already have a large and verging on profitable streaming business as well as Parks and Merchandise to offset Broadcast and Pay TV losses. The other studios need streaming to replace the revenue they get from a dying traditional TV ecosystem so they are thinking very short term in how to make money and get their streamers to scale/turn a profit on streaming. Sony is the only other studio not impacted as they don't have a large Broadcast/Cable business. 

and what a gamble it is.  They can make more money on one movie in theatres than they can on months of streaming profits. How the hell did we get here? It’s lunacy really.  Sacrificing the tried and tested in the arms race to be a major player in the streaming landscape.  
 

Sony did it right. They’re not bleeding out money every day on a service that they don’t need. Just licence their stuff out to others, like the tv days. That’s the way to do it. 

[AJG]

15 minutes ago, Krissykins said:

Hmm that’s from Netflix though, so it’s always a pinch of salt. Nielsen is flawed too, because it only covers one country. 

 

Why do their films have little staying power or cultural impact though. But their TV shows can be phenomenons: Stranger Things, Baby Reindeer, Wednesday. 
 

but yay 21.2m views of Scream 5 (according to Netflix) 

 

Same reason why no streaming movie makes a cultural impact - minimal one time promotion.

 

Studio movies used to go through prolonged periods of promotion. First the big push for and throughout the theatrical release, then the second run promotion for the DVD, and then the third round for the cable/TV debut. Nowadays we have a similar model, it feels much more limited - but its still there. 

Netflix, on the other hand, pump out a smaller scale one-time campaign for each new movie - and that's it. It works for them and that's fine. It gives the impression that Netflix is constantly adding new content and that's what NF wants. The issue is that if you don't see a NF Original movies within 2 weeks of its debut it feels as if it just dropped off the face of the Earth.

 

The benefit to the larger and multi-tiered campaign is that more people can be exposed to the product. Far more people will have seen the Ads for a film than will actually watch the film itself. It's the Advertising that creates 'cultural impact', not the movie itself.

 

If you ever want to check to see how highly effective proper movie advertising can be - try and see how many SONY movie and TV titles you can guess just by looking at a single letter from their poster fonts on this old THR cover - I got 11.

 

[wildphantom]

2 minutes ago, ListenHunnyUrOver said:

Nah, outside of a few exceptions Netflix movies don’t leave a lasting impact in the zeitgeist. I've never heard anyone talk about GDT’s Pinocchio,  but I do agree that DLU managed to have an impact.  

GDT’s Pinocchio is amazing too. Can I buy it on digital though? No don’t be silly. It’s just on Netflix.  Lmao  

 

Criterion have it, but I’d have to import it from the US for about $35. 

[wildphantom]

9 minutes ago, Eric Furiosa said:

Gotta be honest, the whole “Netflix movies have no impact” thing just doesn’t hold much water as the years go by. Like yeah, a lot of their movies come and go, but anecdotally, Don’t Look Up has been mentioned in climate change circles many a time,Leave the World Behind was brought up when some social media sites are down,  Irishman is still brought up during Scorsese discussions online, Marriage Story memes were a huge thing, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio gets brought up as a modern animated classic. Like Lana Condor was on Abbott Elementary a few weeks ago, and tweets were out saying “Look, it’s Lara Jean”. Sure, they might not be talked about as much as they do when they first came out, but that’s how every movie works. There’s a peak time for discussion for anything, then it dies down. Everything Everywhere isn’t talked as much after the Oscars, but you can’t say the movie isn’t popular.

 

Really, the big reason why most Netflix movies don’t “leave impact” is because a good chunk of them either aren’t in popular media franchises that have been around for decades, or simply aren’t  good or interesting. Like quality is a far bigger issue here than the platform, since the movies I listed all were a step above quality, or at least have more to say about them.

 

Plus being a box office hit doesn’t automatically mean your movie left some big cultural impact. Like honestly, when was the last time you saw somebody talk about Free Guy out in the wild?

Agree @Eric Furiosa  

it’s more their refusal to put their films out anywhere else that would go some way to alleviating this for me. 
 

If all of those you mentioned I could add to my digital library on Apple then I’d be thrilled.  I have all the Scorsese films, save The Irishman that I can only watch by going into Netflix and finding it? That almost cheapens the movie for me.  
 

All of the films you have above I would pay money for to have. More money than a year’s sub to the service. Like do they hate money or something?  It’s crazy. 

[Speedorito]

22 minutes ago, wildphantom said:

“Deadpool, I’ve got to see that in a theatre. Furiosa? Yeah I want to see that too, but I can wait a month”. 

 

And they don’t just mean ‘I can wait an month and pay for it’. They mean they’ll wait six weeks and pay nothing. 4K HDR rips to watch to their heart’s content. 

 

The only way you can get people to pay to see the movie they want to see is by having it exclusively in cinemas.  After that they lose control, but you’ve got to make them really wait to have them rock up in the first couple of weeks and see it. 
 

Honestly, does pirating really make much of an impact? Maybe for the millennials who still do that, but for young(er) people? I haven’t explicitly asked but I don’t know anyone really pirates, they just rotate streaming services or borrow from family/friends.

 

Gen Z can barely use a file explorer. Gen Alpha is feral and can’t even read. One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish is just as complex as Beowulf to some of these 11 year olds.

 

14 minutes ago, Eric Furiosa said:

Plus being a box office hit doesn’t automatically mean your movie left some big cultural impact. Like honestly, when was the last time you saw somebody talk about Free Guy out in the wild?

I genuinely have heard people talk about Free Guy in the wild. People really liked it.

Edited May 26 by Speedorito

[Potiki]

1 minute ago, wildphantom said:

and what a gamble it is.  They can make more money on one movie in theatres than they can on months of streaming profits. How the hell did we get here? It’s lunacy really.  Sacrificing the tried and tested in the arms race to be a major player in the streaming landscape.  
 

Sony did it right. They’re not bleeding out money every day on a service that they don’t need. Just licence their stuff out to others, like the tv days. That’s the way to do it. 

Total revenue would likely be way down though if the other studios licensed their shows/movies unless they could get $10-20B a year deals which I doubt, they would also have rely on Netflix, Amazon and Disney paying them fairly. It will be very interesting what happens when Sony's deals with Netflix and Disney end if they can get anything close to that $$$ figure again in a much less upbeat market for Film rights. 

 

It is also rough but partially unfair that Netflix got to lose money for over a decade to get to a position they are in now. The studios rightly (due to decline traditional TV revenue and terrible mergers Warner/Discovery and CBS/Viacom leaving them with debt and heavily invested in Pay TV) and wrongly (do to wall street shortsightedness) have to get there is less than half the time. 

 

Also to make the kind of money to offset this theatrically they would need an Avatar, Top Gun and Barbie every quarter or to put it another way a movie that tops $1B every month to make the kind of revenue and profit that traditional Pay TV used to bring in a decade or so ago to pay down their debt and not be as dependent on future streaming success. Paramount and Warner's are in deep shit, Universal luckily for them has theme parks and is owned by Comcast, Sony is a much smaller company when it comes to Film and TV and only has a niche streaming play in Crunchyroll.

[Potiki]

Sorry for going a bit Russell Crowe and getting Unhinged in the last few posts. 

 

It is just frustrating watching the film and TV industry contract in real time, it sucks and I also love and have fond memories of going to the cinema growing up (even if pricing I feel has gotten a bit egregious personally and quality of the screens has been mixed.) Anyway with how much things are struggling and the fact we are probably down on last years Box Office, which itself wasn't great and still globally off about $8-10B from 2015-2019 numbers, mean we could very well see a contraction of screens and product being made, just as there has been a contraction in scripted shows and films being made for TV and streaming in the last couple of years (and it will likely increase as there is usually a 2-5 year delay on production until release depending on how big the show/movie in question is.) 

 

The fact that on top of that the amount of viable studios being successful enough to produce awesome films and shows seems to be likely to dwindle in the coming years is just depressing and that is just as a fan. Working in this industry is rough and seeing the frequent layoffs as well as freelancers who are going without work for months/years pretty much since then end of 2022 has also been rough. I've been fairly lucky thankfully but it is possible that could change. 

[Kon]

1 hour ago, Speedorito said:

Honestly, does pirating really make much of an impact? Maybe for the millennials who still do that, but for young(er) people? I haven’t explicitly asked but I don’t know anyone really pirates, they just rotate streaming services or borrow from family/friends.

 

Gen Z can barely use a file explorer. Gen Alpha is feral and can’t even read. One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish is just as complex as Beowulf to some of these 11 year olds.

 

I genuinely have heard people talk about Free Guy in the wild. People really liked it.

 

Honestly, piracy tends to be a hassle, especially if you are interested in several shows (although just watching one pirated episode of a show can be very annoying). Therefore, people are willing to pay for a streaming service with many shows.

 

That's why I have a hard time believing people angry at Netflix who say they're going back to piracy. Maybe they do it for a particular show, but if they are interested in seeing several shows it is less bothersome to pay for streaming.

Edited May 26 by Kon

[ScareLol]

I work as a manager in a cinema in Spain and things are bad, pretty bad. Spanish cinema is practically dead at the BO, except for 3 or 4 films, US films are not doing the numbers we expect and future doesn't look particularly good, only Inside Out, Deadpool and DP4 are seen as potential cinema savers because the rest looks bleak. This weekend is the worst we had since the start of the year. Furiosa is doing nothing in Spain (€543K in 2 days). We have National Cinema Day on 3-6th June (3.50€ per ticket) and our new releases for next weekend are Back To Black and Arthur, both uninteresting for the public.

[MightyDargon]

I...really don't want to go into the concern trolling discussion here, but the "Netflix movies have no impact" thing isn't approaching the discussion from a good vantage point. For what it's worth, it used to be extremely common for movies to actually have a relatively good run but also have zero lasting fandom, as Eric said. I can't remember the last time most people discussed even a lot of high grossing 00s romcoms (Wedding Crashers?) in realspace. Yeah "generic Netflix movie" doesn't inspire much but "generic Hollywood blockbuster" (which is what a lot of Netflix movies that get heavy views) don't either. Frankly the sweet spot is stuff like Monsterverse or Avatar where the fans show up and actually enjoy the films but don't go insane over THE TWI'LEK HAIR TENTACLE AND CONTACT LENSES ARE WRONG. The older I get the more sick I am of that kind of "fandom".

[JimmyB]

Netflix/YouTube/Social Media killed Cable/OTA TV. 

 

Disney, WB, Comcast need to fill that missing cable revenue with streaming servicers.   

 

Streaming servicers killed DVDs.  Companies move films from Theatrical to PVOD sooner to recoup missing DVD revenue.  

 

In the long run these huge companies will figure it out but theaters will be the ones that get hurt the most and contract.  

 

I dont think its the death of theaters just we'll have a large number of theaters close due to the changing times.

 

 

[MightyDargon]

1 minute ago, JimmyB said:

Netflix/YouTube/Social Media killed Cable/OTA TV. 

 

Disney, WB, Comcast need to fill that missing cable revenue with streaming servicers.   

 

Streaming servicers killed DVDs.  Companies move films from Theatrical to PVOD sooner to recoup missing DVD revenue.  

 

In the long run these huge companies will figure it out but theaters will be the ones that get hurt the most and contract.  

 

I dont think its the death of theaters just we'll have a large number of theaters close due to the changing times.

 

 

It's not that simple though. Despite all the "Streaming is the new cable!" stuff most people won't pay to replicate all the cable channels on streaming. The companies will suffer from the transition because in their old model, most people paid for channels they didn't want or need.

[AJG]

12 minutes ago, MightyDargon said:

It's not that simple though. Despite all the "Streaming is the new cable!" stuff most people won't pay to replicate all the cable channels on streaming. The companies will suffer from the transition because in their old model, most people paid for channels they didn't want or need.

 

The Verge always pump out these "streaming is like cable" nonsense articles.

 

If you don't want Peacock then just don't buy it.