Hello everyone,
- “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” was the #1 movie for the weekend but it wasn’t the blockbuster that everyone (especially movie theaters) was hoping for. It came in below predictions making $82 million over the 5-day holiday weekend and $60 million for the 3 day weekend. There was a close tie for second between “Elemental” which made approx. $17.9 5-day and “Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse” with approx. $17.8 million. Those may switch when the final numbers are released because “Elemental” dropped to third on the daily box office on Monday and 4th of July. For the 3-day, “Elemental” was $17.9 million and “Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse” was $17.8. The only other new release was Dreamworks animated “Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken” which was #8 with $7.3 million 5-day – although it was #6 over the 3-day weekend with $5.5 million.
Once again, the average box office tells a different story. “Indiana Jones” was still #1 with over 13000 per screen on around 4600 screens, #2 was Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse with $3500 on about 3400 screens, “Elemental” had $330 per screen for 3650 screens, #4 was “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts” (#5 on the box office list) with almost $2600 on 2850 screens. Then there was “No Hard Feelings” (#4 on the box office list) with about $2450 on 3200 screens. After that was “Asteroid City” which increased its screen count to about 1900 (about 250 more screens than last week) but went down to about $2250 per screen. It was #9 on the box office charts.
People say one of the reasons for such a low box office for what is usually one of the best box office weekends of the summer is because all the talk shows are not on due to the writers strike. The stars of the movies tried their best to promote the movies but it’s mostly in magazines interviews and on the internet. Harrison Ford was recently on the Conan O’Brien podcast and Jennifer Lawrence went on “Hot Ones” to promote “No Hard Feelings” (if you want to see Jennifer cry in pain, check out that internet video). However, there’s only a small percentage of people who watch the internet shows, read the magazine interviews, or listen to podcasts compared to the people who watch the television talk shows. It could get even worse though because if the actors go on strike they they’ll probably be required to STOP doing press tours for upcoming movies (it’s a good thing they postponed the strike so they can keep promoting “Mission Impossible and “Barbie” for now).
If you don’t know: “Hot Ones” is part talk show (a lot of people say they ask great questions on the show) and part stunt show. During the interview the guests eat chicken wings that gradually get hotter from “that’s a little spicy” to “OH MY GOD I THINK I’m GOING TO DIE”. Some guests have quit before eating all 10 wings. There have also been some hysterical outcomes. Jennifer Lawrence and Cate Blanchett (who did the show because her children recommended it when she was promoting “Tar” last year) cried. Several guests start yelling about how hot the wings are. Julia Louse Dreyfus supposedly FIRED HER PUBLICIST for suggesting the show. I would LOVE to see Harrison Ford on the show but I’m guessing he’d never do it.
- Internationally, “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” also didn’t do very well with a worldwide total of $130 million (not counting the Mon – Tues holidays in the US). In China – where they’re not that familiar with the famous archeologist – the movie only made $2.3 million. It was #1 in several other countries except – oddly – in Korea where it was #2 behind “Elemental”. The highest international box office for the movie was the UK where it made $8.9 million.
- For the mid-summer recap of 2023 which starts on May 1 (so most of “The Super Mario Bros Movie” gross is NOT part of the totals), the box office total is approx $1.88 billion which is about 2% lower than the same date last year and about 17% lower than the pre-pandemic 2019. However, there is still hope for this summer because last summer there was only a couple big releases after 4th of July – the box office hit a lull after “Bullet Train” in early August. This year there’s “Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning Part 1”, “Barbie”, “Oppenheimer”, and “Haunted Mansion”, and there’s also a few big movies in August including “The Meg 2”, “Grand Turismo”, and the DC movie “Blue Beetle” (which I forgot to mention in the half year review I had a couple days ago).
The current domestic top 5 of summer 2023 are:
“Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3” ($350 million)
“Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse” (340 million)
“The Little Mermaid” ($281 million)
“Fast X” ($145 million)
“Transformers Rise of the Beasts ($135 million).
(On the summer box office list, the #1 movie of the year (so far) – “The Super Mario Bros Movie” – is 8th because it only made $82 million since May 1.)
For some reason, captions for movies have become very popular. There are some movie theaters that now have open caption screenings for new movie releases (see photo below). Some people say it started because of all the international programming on streaming channels like Netflix “Squid Game” but they’re now watching English shows with the captions on. According to one survey, 80 percent of 18 to 24-year-olds use captions or subtitles when watching TV and only 10 percent of those surveyed were deaf or hard of hearing. Some people say it helps to figure out what’s going on when several people are talking at the same time. It has become such a big business that some studios have created a set of standards of how they want their captions displayed. There are also some new companies that just started up only for captioning movies and television shows. One particularly hard subtitling job is captioning live events in real time.
Little bit of humor…
Former Superman Henry Cavill is from “Jersey” (NOT New Jersey – it’s the largest of the channel islands between England and France), former Batman Christian Bale is from Wales, and current Batman (I believe) Robert Pattinson is from England. So, I think the next James Bond should be Tom Hardy….wait….Aaron Taylor-Johnson….nope…..Idris Elba….not him either………Brad Pitt!!!! YES! HE’S NOT FROM ENGLAND.
LOS ANGELES FILM REVIEW 