October 18th, 2020
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Honest Thief will top the domestic box office this weekend with a $3.7 million opening that is in line with expectations, and provides more evidence that the theatrical business is at least stable in the United States. Relatively good numbers for the re-release of The Nightmare Before Christmas bolster that argument, although 2 Hearts is underperforming hopes. Overall, it’s a story of two steps forward, one step back.
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September 24th, 2020
Disney’s announcement earlier this week that it is moving its upcoming MCU releases into 2021, starting with Black Widow taking over Shang Chi’s previous slot on May 7, was a body-blow to the theatrical business. October’s release schedule is now looking very thin indeed. November isn’t looking much better, and there’s a high probability that at least one of No Time to Die, Soul, and The Croods: A New Age will slip from their current planned release dates.
This weekend has four films technically opening wide: the re-release of The Empire Strikes Back, Shortcut (an Italian horror movie from Gravitas Ventures, opening in around 600 locations), and two movies honoring Ruth Bader Ginsberg, On the Basis of Sex and RBG. However, all of them are such special cases that they don’t fit our prediction model. Instead, I’ll focus on a rare piece of good news: films currently playing in theaters are showing better week-to-week legs than was the case before the pandemic.
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September 13th, 2020
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The return of major new theatrical releases in the United States is great news for the industry, but this past few days have shown just how tough it will be to recover from the effects of the pandemic. After Tenet’s seemingly not-too-good, not-too-bad opening last weekend, two studios revealed what they really thought at end of the week, with Warner Bros. pushing Wonder Woman 1984 back to December 25, and Universal shifting Candyman to sometime in 2021. Clearly business isn’t good enough (yet) to support movies that could be very profitable under normal circumstances.
Warner Bros. and Universal do earn some credit for sticking with a theatrical strategy for the films, at least for now. Disney, meanwhile, have (amongst other things) been criticized for releasing Mulan on Disney+ here in the United States, and didn’t get the best of news this weekend for their international theatrical strategy, as the film rolled out in China with a modest $23.2 million.
New numbers for Tenet, and an opening weekend estimate for The Broken Hearts Gallery also give us new insight into progress in the domestic market.
Here’s a round-up of the weekend numbers released so far.
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September 10th, 2020
With theaters slowly reopening in North America, albeit with significant capacity restrictions, and new releases returning to theaters after a long, lonely, Summer, we thought it was time to take a look at our weekend predictions. Traditionally, these have been compiled through a combination of research and judgment, much like the predictions you’ll see on many web sites, trade publications, and newspapers. While our predictions have always stacked up well compared to everyone else, going forwards we wanted to do something that more closely embodies the ethos of The Numbers: providing objective, data-based analysis of the movie industry.
I’m pleased to announce our new weekend previews, which will be based on a model we’re developing that uses our huge database of movie box office and metadata to predict the weekend box office for movies currently playing in theaters. The prediction model debuts this week with an analysis of Sony’s The Broken Hearts Gallery, and we’ll be refining and expanding the model and predictions over the weeks to come.
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September 8th, 2020
Romantic comedy starring Geraldine Viswanathan opens in theaters on Friday ... Full Movie Details.
What if you saved a souvenir from every relationship you’ve ever been in? Lucy, a 20-something art gallery assistant living in New York City, who also happens to be an emotional hoarder. After she gets dumped by her latest boyfriend, Lucy is inspired to create The Broken Hearts Gallery, a pop-up space for the items love has left behind. Word of the gallery spreads, encouraging a movement and a fresh start for all the romantics out there, including Lucy herself.
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September 1st, 2020
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We finally had some wide releases in August, and things went well, relatively speaking. Antebellum was pulled from the schedule at the last minute, leaving Unhinged as the only semi-wide release for the weekend of August 21, and that helped it open better than anticipated with $4 million. Then The New Mutants had the best opening since the pandemic first caused theaters to close, with $7 million last weekend.
That record won’t last long as Tenet is now playing in US theaters, officially as an “Early Access” release on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, then “In Theaters” (which seems to be basically the same thing, only more so) from Thursday. It should outpace The New Mutants’ running tally, and maybe as early as its opening day. Not only will it have the biggest opening in months, it should stay in first place for the entire month, mainly due to a lack of competition. Three other films are getting wide releases, and each on their own weekend, so there’s no competition between them; however, that’s the end of the good news as the buzz for all three films is quiet. In fact, the buzz for Antebellum is in some ways louder, and that will be going direct to Apple TV on September 18.
Here’s the complete rundown of major movies coming to theaters this month.
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June 22nd, 2020
Romantic comedy starring Geraldine Viswanathan opens in theaters on July 17 ... Full Movie Details.
What if you saved a souvenir from every relationship you’ve ever been in? Lucy, a 20-something art gallery assistant living in New York City, who also happens to be an emotional hoarder. After she gets dumped by her latest boyfriend, Lucy is inspired to create The Broken Hearts Gallery, a pop-up space for the items love has left behind. Word of the gallery spreads, encouraging a movement and a fresh start for all the romantics out there, including Lucy herself.
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