The start of the summer box office is not off to a great start and some of that might be the fault of the types of movies being released, but some of it might be because of us, the consumer.
After a lackluster Memorial Day weekend box office only grossing $128.3 million over the 4-day weekend and was headlined by Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga and The Garfield Movie, it was supposed to be a great one-two punch for the movie industry with an R-rated franchise film and a bankable kid-friendly animated feature set to open. The final tally means that the box office is down 37% from last year and the lowest since Casper opened in 1995 with $22 million. This was always supposed to be a lean year with many movies being delayed because of the SAG-AFTRA and WGA Strikes and with a slew of sequels and remakes, the film bros weren’t going to be necessarily happy with the upcoming slates. But with that being said, I try to figure out why there has been such a down turn in attendance at the theaters.
STOP WORRYING ABOUT OPENING WEEKEND
This might be a newsflash to many people, but movies don’t usually make back their whole budget on opening weekend. It’s extremely rare, especially in this day in age where most movies that are released wide cost about $100 million before advertising. So it might take a few weeks to string together before the film sees its budget or profit.
Are opening weekends important? Sure, they are. There are projections and if they meet or exceed them, it is usually an indication that the film will have legs after it opens. I’ve seen a lot of obsessing over movies not opening or hitting projections like The Fall Guy and Furiosa. Many factors can boil down to why films don’t have big returns out of the gate. But, sometimes movies take time to gain traction with the public; you can spend all the money you want on advertising and still get people saying, “I haven’t seen a trailer for that.” It baffles people like me who are in the know about what movies are coming out, but for many it comes down to their friends or co-workers telling them. “This movie is out and it’s good and you should go see it.” You have to give your movie time to breathe and be out in the world. Studios don’t like to hear that because it costs them more money for it to be in theaters and they want an immediate return, but using Anyone But You as an example. It did not do gangbusters opening weekend but slowly, but surely it gained a profit and has made stars of Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney.
THE FRANCHISES AREN’T STRONG ENOUGH
Franchises have proven as of late to not be bulletproof, but they usually have really good body armor to start and can at least receive do respectable at the box office. Furiosa is an interesting test of that. Mad Max: Fury Road was released about nine years ago and has since become a staple of 21st-century film lexicon and has hordes of people singing its praise as one of the best films of the last 25 years. Coming off critical and slight financial success, many projectors thought it would do well at on opening weekend. But for some reason, nobody showed up. It should be noted that Furiosa is a great film and should be experienced on the big screen, but It could be that the audiences didn’t gravitate toward Anya Taylor-Joy the way that I did — maybe Chris Hemsworth isn’t as interesting without his hammer and cape.
It could just boil down to the fact that the film nerds just didn’t have enough to want to go back to The Wasteland. When you consider the Mad Max franchise has five installments but three of the five were all released before 1990 you can see that most people don’t see it as much of a franchise. With really only Fury Road to connect it to the Furiosa story. I enjoy standalone stories, but the viewing audience who want more lore and more easter eggs might find the lack of source material hard to care about.
Other franchises that have been released this year have been Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, Godzilla vs Kong: A New Empire and Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire. These are well-known products and some have had success like Apes and Godzilla vs Kong but these would all be considered B-level franchises compared to Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings and the Marvel Universe. This could just be chalked up to weak movie franchises or just the lack of interest in these stories. The summer is not over and the year still has a bevy of sequels and franchises on the horizon, including Twisters with the man of the moment Glen Powell where every watt of his movie stardom will be tested. Despicable Me 4 and Inside Out 2 have yet to be released and if those don’t open, then it might be a real look-yourself-in-the-mirror-moment for Hollywood.
WE ARE THE PROBLEM
Much of the movie-going public has learned that if you don’t see it in theaters, it will hit streamers relatively quickly. There are obviously some exceptions like Oppenheimer and Dune Part 2 that didn’t make their streaming debuts until many months after their releases. This incentivizes audiences to see these movies in theaters because if it’s still in theaters way past the initial release date, it must mean it is doing well.
Many are pointing to The Fall Guy and its streaming availability. Be it on VOD (Video on Demand) where you have to pay a similar markup to watch it at home. Many are settling for this way of doing it out of pure convenience. That mixed with the studio’s fear of losing money on a film contributes to the quicker home releases trying to recoup their money as fast as possible. We could just be in a time when home releases and streaming are the new normal but there are consequences for films not performing at the box office.
WHY DOES THE BOX OFFICE MATTER?
Ultimately, why does the box office matter? There are art house audiences that say that movies are a form of art and it shouldn’t matter how a film does financially. Well, the problem is: filmmaking is balancing art and commerce and is one of the most expensive art forms around. Movies are expensive to make and certain movies must make money so we can continue to have a film industry. There are certainly films out there that grant massive ownership to the director and their vision for the film. These films may not make much money, but they can contend for awards which brings prestige to the studio which inadvertently works as a way to bring more business to the studio.
A24 is a great example of a studio that finances elevated art house films and is getting into the more commercial filmmaking space. They were able to do this by making a lot of really high-quality movies that brought in award nominations and wins. That’s why if you can’t win awards like they do, you have to show something for your effort and the easiest way to show a studio that your film is worth it, is by making money. It isn’t fair, but that’s the movie business. Just ask George Miller whose next Mad Max film is on hold for now due to the box office weekend it just had. The box office needs to perform to continue to let artists create the films they want to make or else you’re stuck financing your own movies like Kevin Coster and Francis Ford Coppola. If we learned anything from Mel Brooks’ play The Producers, “Never put your own money in the show!” Using that logic there must be a good reason why you should never do that.
— Written by VSiN’s Brian Ortega