Industry News
by saidiontheside

saidi’s take – 2/8/2023

Hello everyone,

  • “Avatar: The Way of Water” is no longer #1 domestically.  It dropped down to #3 this past weekend.  The first 2023 movie that was #1 at the domestic box office was “Knock at the Cabin” with $14 million.  It’s #1 but it’s one of the lowest opening ever for a M. Night Shyamalan movie – even lower than his last movie “Old” which was $16.8 million during the pandemic in 2021.  #2 is “80 for Brady” with almost $13 million.  Actually, “80 for Brady” brought in more people to the theaters over the weekend – 1.3 million to 1.1 million for the other movie – but had a lower total box office due to a promotion Paramount and some movie theater chains had.  Some theater chains had “$8 for 80 for Brady” so all showtimes were just $8.  “Avatar” went down to #3 with $11.3 million.  However, it was enough to movie it to #10 on the all-time top 10 domestic releases.
  • Internationally, “Avatar: The Way of Water” did a lot better.  It made about $28 million which moved it up past “Titanic” to be #3 on the all-time worldwide box office.  The first “Avatar” is #1 and “Avengers: Endgame” is #2.  “Knock at the Cabin Door” made about $7 million in about 60 foreign countries.  “80 for Brady” didn’t open in foreign countries.
  • Sony just moved the Adam Driver sci-fi pic “65” just moved up it’s release date to the week before “Shazam 2” opens next month.  It will now open on March 10 .

Streaming News:

  • The “Epix” cable and on-demand channel just switched it’s name to “MGM+”.  This is sort of confusing because MGM is owned by Amazon now and they have their own “Amazon Prime” for streaming. 
  • The “Paramount+” streaming channel is merging with the Showtime cable and on-demand channel for some reason.  I think it’s because Viacom owns both.
  • The Ben Affleck/Matt Damon movie “Air“ is being released by Amazon Studios but it WILL HAVE A GLOBAL THEATRICAL RELEASE on April 5 including over 3000 theaters domestically before playing on Amazon.

In the “what the heck” news:

  • AMC just announced today that they’re going to start charging different prices for different seats in a theater.  Most seats will keep the same price except for those in the center of the room which will be higher priced and seats in the very front rows which will have a lower price.  Not sure how much people will like that new deal.  If you go to a movie with a group of friends there might be different prices for different people in the group.
  • There are now TRAILERS FOR COMMERICALS.  Currently online you can see PREVIEW COMMERICALS for the Super Bowl commercials playing this Sunday including a “Breaking Bad” reunion with Btyan Cranston and Aaron Paul.

By the way, there’s probably going to be A LOT of commercials for upcoming movies during the Super Bowl including “Air”, “The Flash”, “Fast X”, “Oppenheimer”, “Super Mario Bros”, and maybe even the first trailer for “The Marvels”.

Little bit of humor:

If someone can figure out how to get past the 3 tests to get to the grail room in “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” then they probably won’t pick the plate….but you never know.