. Each week Jacob recaps the weekend box office and the winners and losers in the Midnight Warrior Fantasy Movie League.
WEEK 05 BOX OFFICE BREAKDOWN
Did you overthink this week like I overthought this week? I knew Baby Driver would run the other movies off the road, but I didn’t expect it to outperform everything by this much. I thought leaving $120 in the bank would tank the cineplex, so I went with a screen of Transformers: The Last Knight. This was good for second place, but it doesn’t match the 1,982 cineplexes that went all in on the creative car flick.
It’s hard to be insightful when a major film blows away the competition and posts the highest $ per bux ratio since The Shack in Spring Week 01, but let’s talk about how well 47 Meters Down continues to do. The FML pricing team is either underselling this picture, or it’s outperforming every single week. Sticking at $125K/bux, we may see this Mandy Moore flick find its way into a Perfect Cineplex again as a low-end filler, especially when no other summer horror film is there to compete.
In the Midnight Warrior league, we see a long-time player snag a sweet victory by nailing the Perfect Cineplex. I’m not sure how closely you watch the leaderboard, but you may have noticed listener Amy has changed her cineplex name to All My Worms in One Can. As her name suggests, she has been maxing out her cineplex with various 8x plays each week. Two weeks ago she played 8x 47 Meters Down for a 3rd place finish, and now she takes the weekly crown with a PC lineup.
I Smell Cineplex and Candy played the PC except for one screen of Transformers, and landed about $25 million above challenger School of Rock. This puts some distance between first and second place, but the season is still very young. If the last 3 seasons have taught me anything, it’s that any week can see up to $50 million dollar swings, especially when you have a big release splitting into 3 days. But those don’t come along very often, so I wouldn’t worry about it at all.
WEEK 06 PREDICTIONS
This week sees a big release splitting into 3 days as Spider-Man: Homecoming swings into cineplexes near you. Let’s face it: unless you trust Baby Driver to repeat (at an even higher price than last week), you’re playing the man-spider. Let’s break down the new releases to see if we have any trust in these new flicks.
- Spider-man: Homecoming ($501/$448/$339) – Does the phrase “MCU film in 4,348 theaters” get your Spidey-sense tingling? It should because this thing is going to make bank. I’ve been burned lately by being team #alwaysFriday, but I’m starting to learn my lesson. Spider-man is one of the most family friendly superheroes, as the high schooler is mom and dad approved. Tom Holland makes Peter Parker skew younger than ever. That means Saturday and Sunday may be strong plays since families tend to skip the busy Friday nights.
- The Big Sick ($28) – This jumps to 326 theaters, up from 71 last week where it grossed $1.6 million. If it maintains it’s PTA, you’re looking at something in the $5 million range. With my numbers, you’re looking at a BP bonus if this reaches $3 million. So, a wide release can drop 40% on PTA on what is the opening weekend in many markets when it has a 97% fresh Tomatometer and a 91% audience score? Play this many times in your cineplex.
So if you going to max out The Big Sick, you can do 6 screens with two anchors. You can trust Despicable Me 3 if you want, but I think Spider-man eats into its gross because kids love the webbed wonder. Go Spidey SAT / Spidey SUN / 6x The Big Sick and thank me for your PC victory.
If you think I’m wrong and see some other lineup beating this out (one screen of Transformers maybe?), tell me about it on Twitter @jakerg23 before it’s too late.