Box Office Report for the Week of August 24

A few months ago, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said the following regarding the theatrical experience and its struggling box office:

“What does that say? What is the consumer trying to tell us? That they’d like to watch movies at home, thank you. The studios and the theaters are duking it out over trying to preserve this 45-day window that is completely out of step with the consumer experience of just loving a movie. […] For movie theaters, for the communal experience, it is an outmoded idea. I think it is — for most people, not for everybody. If you’re fortunate enough to live in Manhattan, and you can walk to a multiplex and see a movie, that’s fantastic. Most of the country cannot.”

Despite a very limited release, two days only, with highly limited showtimes (twice during those two days in our local cinemas), Netflix’s re-release of KPop Demon Hunters is the highest-grossing movie of the weekend. A film that, as we speak, is available to watch in the comfort of your home on Netflix, and has been since late June. And yet, when Netflix and Sony Pictures Animation announced that it would re-release the film in theatres, with sing-along bits (likely to qualify for Awards consideration, since the film was never released in cinemas and became a global phenomenon), showings sold out in minutes.

Now, the re-release of a two-month-old film, widely available at home, made $18 million at the box office. This may not be a big number, but it’s significant enough to demonstrate that Sarandos’ quote at the top of this article is completely wrong. People (specifically audiences who loved the movie) wanted to see KPop Demon Hunters on the big screen and have a communal experience of singing along to its incredible songs in a way you simply cannot ever get at home. Sure, you can host watch parties, invite some friends over, or check something out with the family, but a concert-like experience, the way we’ve seen for this movie, can only be experienced in a cinema.

It will also likely be a major player during this year’s awards season, while the other re-release of an incredible animated film, Ne Zha 2, by A24, couldn’t even be in the top 10 and only made a dismal $1.5 million. There are several factors that explain why one was so successful and the other performed so poorly. Still, the immediate reaction I have to these (potential) awards contenders is that Netflix has severely underestimated how people crave for the big screen. On the other side of the spectrum, A24 overestimated the interest of an English-dubbed re-release of a sequel to a movie that most Western viewers are unfamiliar with, even if it broke all-time records for an animated film.

The biggest loser in all of this is, frankly, Netflix, who has desperately tried to convince audiences that they don’t need cinemas, just like they don’t need video stores (I still mourn the loss of my local video store, even ten years after its closing), only for them to be proven wrong even if, to recap:

a) The film was shown for two days only in highly limited showtimes.

b) The film is currently available to stream on the service, and has not been removed to accommodate the theatrical re-release.

It looks like the theatrical experience isn’t an “outmoded idea” after all, and that, yes, people can actually travel to their local venues if there’s something worthy enough to see on the big screen.

That’s not saying that every streaming movie should be released on the big screen, but there are plenty of them that are worthy of such an event, such as the upcoming Frankenstein and Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery. Money’s sitting on the table, which could, in turn, help the film perform even better on the service once released. The ball is in Netflix’s court, and here’s hoping that this renewed interest in KPop Demon Hunters will help them see the light once and for all…though I’m not holding my breath for an immediate change. We’ll likely see it when Greta Gerwig shows them all what they’ve been missing next year…

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

1. KPop Demon Hunters (Netflix): $18.0M – 1,700 theatres
2. Weapons (Warner Bros): $15.6M (-36.2%) – 3,631 theatres
3. Freakier Friday (Disney): $9.2M (-35.6%) – 3,675 theatres
4. The Fantastic Four: First Steps (Disney): $5.9M (-34.7%) – 3,190 theatres
5. The Bad Guys 2 (Universal): $5.1M (-32.2%) – 3,288 theatres
6. Nobody 2 (Universal): $3.7M (-60%) – 3,282 theatres
7. Superman (Warner Bros): $3.4M (-34.7%) – 2,338 theatres
8. The Naked Gun (Paramount): $2.9M (-40%) – 2,776 theatres
9. Honey Don’t! (Universal): $2.9M – 1,317 theatres
10. Jurassic World: Rebirth (Universal): $2.1M (-29.1%) – 2,100 theatres

Source: Box Office Mojo