Industry News
by saidiontheside

saidi’s take – 3/7/2023

Hello everyone,

  • “Creed 3” was the biggest opening for an MGM movie since the company merged with Amazon.  It’s also the biggest opening of all the Creed/Rocky movies.  It beat expectations with approx. $58 million domestically.  “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” came in 2nd with approx. $12.8 million followed closely by “Cocaine Bear” with $11.1 million.  Just like last week’s #3 surprise, this week there was another surprise at #4 with “Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba – To the Swordsmith Village” making approx. $10 million.  The key thing about that is it was only playing on about 1800 screens compared to the 3000 – 4000 screens the #1-3 movies were on so the per screen average of the movie ($5,700) was over $1400 more than the per screen average of “Cocaine Bear” ($3100) and “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” ($3349)
  • “Creed 3” also made approx. $42 internationally making its global total over $100 million worldwide.  This has a lot of people thinking that Amazon and other streamers will consider opening more movies with a worldwide theatrical release since there’s no chance a movie playing on Amazon Prime can ever make $100 million in just 3 days.
  • Movie theaters are hoping that the box office for “Creed 3” is a good sign that people are going back to movie theaters.  They’re hoping that people will keep coming back with the other wide releases this month.  “Scream 6” opens this weekend, “Shazam! Fury of the Gods” is Mar 17, followed by “John Wick: Chapter 4” on Mar 24, and then “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” comes out on Mar 31.

Award news:

  • Except for next weekend’s Academy Awards, all the other awards have been given out.  The Independent Spirit Awards were heavy on “Everything, Everywhere…” which took best picture, best lead performance (they merged the best actor & best actress awards) for Michelle Yeoh, best supporting performance for Ke Huy Quan, best breakthrough performance for Stephanie Hsu, best screenplay, and best editing.
  • The Cinematographers Guild gave its award to “Elvis” cinematographer Mandy Walker.  The first woman ever to win their top award.
  • At the writer’s guild awards, “Everything, Everywhere..” took best original script and “Women Talking” took best adapted script. 
  • For the Editors Guild awards, “Everything, Everywhere…” won for best movie (comedy) and “Top Gun: Maverick” won for best movie (drama). 
  • Finally, “Top Gun: Maverick” took the top prize at the Cinema Audio Society awards.

..so it’s looking like “Everything, Everywhere…” will probably win a lot for the final award show of the season next Sunday. 

Little bit of humor…

They do seem to be doing that a lot these days.  Harry Potters last movie, Hunger Games last movie, this summer is supposedly part 1 of the last “Mission Impossible” movie.  Even for movies that aren’t the last in the franchise like “Avengers: Infinity War” and “Avengers: Endgame”.