Industry News
by saidiontheside

saidi’s take – 5/10/2023

Hello everyone,

  • Although summer doesn’t officially start until later this month, the first unofficial movie of the summer – “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3” was the #1 movie of the weekend with about $118 million domestic which did not beat the 3-day opening weekend of “The Super Mario Bros Movie” ($146 million).  I’m sure it will do well but with “Fast X” opening in just 2 weeks I don’t think it will be able to catch up to other movie which is now at $518 million domestically. 

The opening weekend also didn’t beat the comparable opening weekend of “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” which opened with $187 million the first weekend of May.  However, prospects for this summer are still a lot better than last summer.  Last May, the major studio releases were only “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” and “Top Gun Maverick” while this year there’s “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3”, “Fast X”, and “The Little Mermaid”,  (plus “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” opens the first day of June).

  • Worldwide “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3” made approx $289 million which makes it the #4 movie of 2023 so far.  The worldwide opening is much better than the first “Guardians of the Galaxy” and a little bit better than the 2nd movie. The movie is within reach of #3 of 2023 “John Wick 4” ($406 million) and will probably pass #2 of 2023 “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” ($475 million) but it’s far from the #1 of 2023 “The Super Mario Bros Movie” with over $1.15 BILLION (and counting). 
  • One thing that wasn’t mentioned a lot at CinemaCon a couple weeks ago were the exclusive theatrical windows of movies.  That may be because no one wanted to talk about how small they still are.  They just announced that the movie “Air” which opened in theaters on April 5 will be playing on Amazon Prime this Friday (May 12).  So, that means it had approximately a 5 week/35 day exclusive theatrical window.  That’s basically the same as the “Glass Onion” window last year (although that only played in theaters for 1 week).  Hopefully, Martin Scorsese and Ridley Scott will be able to get longer exclusive theatrical windows for their movies coming later this year.
  • Another thing not mentioned much at CinemaCon a couple weeks ago were the few movies that are still going to premiere on streaming channels.  Universal previously announced that “Five Night at Freddy’s” (which Universal didn’t mention in their CinemaCon presentation) will be playing in theaters and on Peacock starting on the same day in Oct.  They also just announced today that “Please Don’t Destroy” (another movie Universal didn’t mention at their presentation) will now be removed from its scheduled August theatrical release and will premiere on Peacock later this year.
  • One of the reasons that Universal MIGHT have moved “Pease Don’t Destroy” is because they wanted to move “Strays” from June to the other movies release date in Aug.  Some news sites are saying that this is because a movie like “Strays” could use a lot of promotion – but the late night TV shows that would usually promote a movie like this are currently not on the air due to the writers strike.
  • Speaking of the writers strike – the strike has already affected television schedules with all the late night TV shows stopping new episodes and some other shows stopping production on new episodes.  It was also announced that it has affected it’s first theatrical release.  The “Blade” movie Marvel has scheduled to release in the fall of 2024 has delayed the start of filming due to the writers strike.
  • In movie theater news, there were rumblings about the possible re-opening of the fairly famous (really famous in Los Angeles) Cinerama Dome in Hollywood finally reopening this year.  Maybe for the upcoming “Oppenheimer” this summer or “Napoleon” and/or “Killers of the Flower Moon” at the end of this year.  However, the rumors have been stopped because according to some sources the remodel of the Cinerama Dome is nowhere near completed.  It probably won’t be opening until 2024.
  • One more note about movie theaters.  AMC announced that they’re adding a new premium format theater to it’s multiplexes which currently have “Dolby Cinema at AMC” and “Imax at AMC”.  Soon they will also have “AMC Prime with Cinionic”.  It made a deal to install Cinionic laser projectors in 3,500 US screens.  It should be finished installing all of them by 2026.  No word if the theaters will include some “Screen X” theaters which Cinionic has partnered with.
  • Speaking of AMC.  Since candy prices have been rising recently, AMC has annouced they will start selling their own line of candy at AMC theaters soon.  No word on what kind of candy it will be.

Little bit of humor:

I don’t remember “Heckboy”.  Was that better than “Hellboy”? (they’re seriously censoring movie titles now???)