Box Office Report for the Week of March 16

It’s hard to look at the week-to-week box office numbers and not feel slightly pessimistic, if not worried about the future of movie theatres. As much as Sean Baker (rightfully) will use his time at the Oscars to talk about how saving cinemas is incremental to the survival of why movies are made, the current landscape of theatrical offerings, as major studios have completely shunned the notion of “theatrical windows,” and large cinema chain rake up prices, is incredibly grim.

And I’m not talking about the quality of films being offered, which is completely subjective. I was not a fan of Novocaine, but it certainly is attracting its fair share of moviegoers, as it became the number one film of the weekend, despite a relatively lackluster $8.7 million opening tally, on an $18 million budget. A moderate opening for a low-budget Hollywood picture, but still far from the results we had before the pandemic.

I’m talking about the fact that there is no real barometer in which a movie — whether a tentpole, mid-budget, or independent feature — can actively succeed on the big screen. The studio doesn’t give time for the film to leg out, therefore conditioning audiences that they can wait for a week or two to rent the title on video-on-demand. We’ve had examples of recent movies underperforming at the box office, only for them to become massive hits, as the studio allowed it time to find its audience, such as Mufasa: The Lion King, which opened at a rough patch for Disney and went on to make over $700 million worldwide.

As good as Steven Soderbergh‘s Black Bag is (and how it begs to be experienced in a cinema), Universal has completely shunned cinemas ever since the pandemic and is now releasing their latest titles two to three weeks after its theatrical debut. They purposefully cut off its legs before the movie has any chance to make an impact, and find its audience. A $7.5 million debut isn’t bad, considering how some larger-scale productions slightly overshadow Soderbergh’s latest, but if the studio doesn’t allow the movie to play in cinemas and convince the audience that the best way to see the movie is in a dark room with a group of people, how will cinemas themselves survive?

Film Twitter certainly has a solution for everything: fix the windows, lower the prices, renovate the auditoriums with state-of-the-art equipment & projection technology. It’s worth noting that none of these ideas are bad. It’s pure common sense that should be taken into consideration, but it’s a far more complex situation than this. When everything is now at your fingertips, amazing home theater set-ups exist, devices like Fire TVs and Chromecast are becoming more sophisticated in their interfaces, IMAX Enhanced is available for several Sony and Disney titles, why would I ever leave the home?

Of course, as someone who covers the latest films and television series, being up-to-date with what’s playing is important, but if I were not doing this endeavor, would I regularly go to the cinema? I don’t think so: ticket prices are far too expensive, audience etiquette has gotten more disrespectful, and (for me), the quality of motion pictures isn’t what it used to be. It’s the sad reality that a lot aren’t willing to admit, but it is what it is. As someone who has always defended the theatrical experience and how watching a movie on the big screen remains unmatched, it gets especially soul-crushing when Cinémas Guzzo, the largest chain of independent cinemas in Québec, with over 140 screens across the South Shore of Montreal, closes down after an agonizingly long saga that showed the fall of the Guzzo empire. 

There’s no doubt the CEO’s mismanagement and neglect of his venues, alongside his political views and personal comments he made on various controversial subjects, contributed to the chain’s decline. However, if this multiplex conglomerate can go down the way it did, even while opening a brand-new location with the latest and greatest in laser projection technology, aren’t we all voluntarily putting our heads in the sand in pretending that people will eventually return to the cinemas when studios aren’t doing anything to convince them to come back? 

I remain hopeful that, eventually, studios will dramatically increase their support for the venues that keep them alive, but today is not that day. However, when looking at the film slate for the next couple of weeks, things aren’t looking too good. We are vastly underestimating how the average person no longer cares about the theatrical experience, and when Film Twitter eventually wakes up and smells the coffee, it’ll be a rude awakening.

Here is the full list of the top ten films of the weekend:

1. Novocaine (Paramount): $8.7M – 3,365 theatres
2. Mickey 17 (Warner Bros): $7.51M (-60.4%) – 3,807 theatres
3. Black Bag (Universal): $7.50M – 2,705 theatres 
4. Captain America: Brave New World (Disney): $5.4M (-35%) – 3,250 theatres
5. The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie (Ketchup Entertainment): $3.1M – 2,287 theatres
6. The Last Supper (Emick): $2.8M – 1,575 theatres
7. Paddington in Peru (Sony): $2.7M (-25%) – 2,489 theatres
8. Dog Man (Universal): $2.5M (-26%) – 2,407 theatres
9. The Monkey (NEON): $2.4M (-37.0%) – 2,294 theatres
10. Last Breath (Universal): $2.3M (-44%) – 2,661 theatres

Source: Comscore