Industry News
by saidiontheside

saidi’s take – 3/13/2023

Hello everyone,

  • Another good weekend for movie theaters.  “Scream 6” was a franchise record opening with approx. $44 million.  Also, the other new opening “65” beat estimates and made approx. $12 million for the #3 movie of the weekend.  “Creed 3” was #2.  It made approx. $27 million which was enough for it to pass $100 million total domestic box office. 
  • Worldwide “Scream 6” made approx. $67 worldwide which is also a franchise record, and “Creed 3” worldwide total is now approx. $180 million worldwide which means it is currently #2 on the worldwide box office for 2023 (“Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” is #1 with $448 million worldwide in 2023.

Of course, the biggest news is the Academy Awards

  • The Academy Award ratings rose about 12% from last year to about 18.7 million but that’s nothing to brag about since last year was the 2nd lowest ratings ever at 16.6 million.  The lowest ratings ever was the year before for the scaled down pandemic show in 2021 with 10.4 million.  Pre-pandemic the ratings have never been lower than the 23.6 million in 2020.
  • “Everything Everywhere All at Once” almost swept the Oscars winning all the major categories – Picture, Director, Actress, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, and Original Screenplay.  It also won best editing.  The only nominations it didn’t win were Best Costumes, Best Score, and Best Song.  It was nominated for 2 twice for Best Supporting Actress for 2 different women but it usually isn’t a tie.  Jamie Lee Curtis won.
  • Movies like “Tár”, “The Fabelmans”, “Elvis”, and “The Banshees of Inisherin” walked away with 0 wins.  “All Quiet on the Western Front” won international picture and a lot of the technical awards – Cinematography, Original Score and Production Design.  “The Whale” won best actor and best makeup.  The rest of the winners won only 1 Academy Award each including “Women Talking” (best adapted screenplay), “Black Panther – Wakanda Forever” (costume design), “Top Gun: Maverick” (sound), “Avatar: Way of the Water” (visual effects), and “RRR” (best song).
  • I didn’t watch the show but I hear the best moments were Rihanna singing (some of my friends only watched the show to see her sing),  and Harrison Ford (who announced best picture winner) hugging Ke Huy Quan at the very end of the show.
  • Also from what I hear, the WORST moments were the commercials that played DURING THE SHOW.  They had the stars of the upcoming “The Little Mermaid” introduce the new trailer for the movie DURING THE SHOW.  Then later Warner Bros showed a promo about their 100th anniversary (Disney is also celebrating it’s 100th anniversary but they ran their promo during the commercials because they wanted to show the trailer during the show instead). 

A friend of mine commented: Since Harrison Ford AND Phoebe Waller-Bridge were both attending the awards, why didn’t they introduce a trailer for “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny”????

  • Also, as usual, the “In Memorium” missed a few people including Paul Sorvino, which his daughter Mira Sorvino complained about on social media.

Little bit of humor….

It’s true – Jason went to New York in “Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan” 34 years ago.  My money is on Jason in that fight.