October 1st, 2020
September is normally the slowest month of the year at the box office as the Summer season winds down and studios start prepping for the holidays and Oscar season. The build-up to the end of the year usually starts in early October. This weekend last year, for example, Joker opened with a massive $96 million weekend that kicked off a big Fall season. This year, a re-release of Hocus Pocus is the highlight, and $3 million will be enough to top the chart. Times really are dismal, and our model is predicting another down week. Unless a new release surprises in October (something that looks unlikely, given the slate), we’ll be headed for a down month at the box office, at a time when the industry desperately needs some good news.
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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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April 20th, 2019
On the Basis of Sex opened in limited release at the very end of last year, so it was clearly aiming for Oscars. That didn’t happen. However, while it wasn’t an Awards Season player, it did very well in limited release and earned nearly $25 million despite never expanding truly wide. Did the film deserve to win awards? Or is it more of a mainstream crowd-pleaser?
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May 4th, 2018
There are not many limited releases on this week’s list and even fewer that have a real shot at box office success. Surprisingly, it is a documentary, RBG, that is earning the loudest buzz. Its reviews should also help it find an audience in theaters.
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