Industry News
by saidiontheside

saidi’s take – 4/18/2023

Hello everyone,

  • “The Super Mario Bros Movie” once again dominated it’s 2nd weekend with $92 million for a total of $353 million which makes it the biggest domestic movie for 2023 so far – over $100 million more than “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” (which has $212 million total domestic so far) and it looks like it might stay #1 for awhile because predictions of the upcoming movies opening in May (“Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3” and “Fast X”) are around $130 million for each.

The biggest new movie opening was “The Pope’s Exorcist” which was #2 with only $9 million.  “Renfield” just missed the #3 spot with $8.02 million so it took the #4 spot.  “John Wick 4” was #3 with $8.04 million in it’s 4th week.

  • Worldwide, “The Super Mario Bros Movie” is also the #1 movie for 2023 so far with a worldwide total of almost $700 million.  It’s now predicted to be the first movie to hit $1 BILLION worldwide in 2023.  It could reach that amount by next weekend.
  • “Oppenheimer” and “Barbie” are currently scheduled to be released on the same day this summer – July 21 – so some people on the internet are trying to start a little competition between both movies…

Knowing Christopher Nolan, I’m not surprised that “Oppenheimer” will be 3 hours long but I’m thinking “Barbie” won’t be that long.

By the way, if you’re planning to see the “Oppenheimer” movie in 70mm film I’d go opening weekend because a 3 hour 70mm film print is probably going to be very hard to take care of.

  • Regal just announced that they’re taking over the former “Arclight” theater in Pasadena, Ca.  Although they just got out of bankruptcy and – according to reports – they’re still closing a few theaters in the US including closing a theater in Denver, CO and Henrietta NY this past weekend.
  • There’s a lot of talk about LED screens for movie theaters.  There are a few theaters that already have them – including “The Culver Theater” in Culver City, Ca (I’ve been meaning to see a movie there) – and they’re planning on putting it in a lot more theaters.  I believe there will be a presentation about LED screens for movie theaters at the NAB (National Association of Broadcasters convention – in Las Vegas this week) and at CinemaCon (the movie theater convention in Las Vegas next week – I’ll be attending that).
  • Today the Writers Guild voted to authorize a strike if a deal isn’t made with the studios by the May 1st deadline.  If the strike happens and if it continues for awhile, it might mean that there will be fewer movies released next year (almost all of the movies coming out this year have already be filmed).

Little bit of humor

That’s not a “phillips head” screw.  It’s a “cross-cut-thingy-flange”.  If you watch the Star Wars movies or the recent Star Wars TV shows, they have a lot of things that we also have here on Earth. 

They just have unique names for them.