Industry News
by saidiontheside

saidi’s take – 9/23/2023

Hello everyone,

  • Starting with the BIGGEST NEWS over the weekend.  It looks like the WGA strike may be over.  The WGA just needs to look over the deal, send the detail to all it’s members,, and vote on the deal but the fact that they have a tentative deal is very impressive.  Some people are saying the talk shows and other live shows like Saturday Night Live might be back on the air as soon as the end of this week. 

However, the bad news is that they’re now ALMOST 5 MONTHS BEHIND SCHEDULE since the strike started on May 2.  Most of the movies and TV shows that immediately stopped production were STILL WRITING THEIR SCRIPTS (the other movies and TV shows stopped when the actors started their strike).  So now – almost 5 months later – the scripts need to be finished, then they need to be filmed (once the actors strike is over), then there’s post production/CGI/ etc.  Some people are saying there will probably still be movie release dates pushed back because A LOT of the movies that are scheduled for next summer – Including “Captain America Brave New World“ and “Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning Part 2” aren’t finished.  Some news sites said that studios wanted the strike to end before October started so they at least have 2 months to start all the productions again.  Between Thanksgiving and the end of the year, a lot of things are on hold because a lot of people are on vacation for the holidays.

  • In box office news, this past weekend is the LOWEST TOTAL DOMESTIC BOX OFFICE of the year so far.  Total weekend box office was just $51 million which is $1 million less than the previous lowest back in Feb.  The new release “The Expendables 4” scored a franchise LOW with just $8 million over the weekend.  Although “The Nun 2” went down 40% on its 3rd weekend it was STILL #1.  It beat “The Expendables 4” by approx. 500 thousand.  Even the per screen average for “The Nun 2” was higher with $2418 thousand per screen compared to $2285 per screen on approx. the same number of screens (around 3525).  The highest per screen average was “Dumb Money” once again.  That movie expanded to approx. 615 screens and made almost $4 thousand a screen.  Its rose to #8 on the domestic box office charts with a weekend total of $2.425 million.  Next week it opens wide.
  • In worldwide box office news, “The Nun 2” is also still doing pretty good passing $200 million worldwide.  “Barbie” is now almost at $800 million on the international box office and its worldwide box office is approaching $1.43 BILLION.  Also, “Oppenheimer” is still doing fairly well and is now over $600 million on the international box office and at $925 million worldwide.  Some people still think it may hit $1 billion worldwide but since it only made approx. $20 million over the last week in international markets and only $3 million domestically, I don’t think that will happen.
  • For some reason, Paramount decided to shuffle around its next movie releases.  Their last 2023 release (other than “Killers of the Flower Moon” which is produced by Apple and Paramount is releasing theatrically) is “Paw Patrol The Mighty Movie” which is opening this weekend.  Last week they moved around their first releases in 2024.  “
  • The “Mean Girl Musical” movie moved from Paramount+ to theatrical release in Jan 2024.
  • The animated “The Tigers Apprentice” – which was scheduled for theatrical release around the same time in Jan 2024 – was moved to Paramount+ (that must be why they haven’t released a trailer for the movie to play with “Paw Patrol The Mighty Movie” this weekend).
  • The “Bob Marley: One Love” movie – which was also previously scheduled in Jan 2024 – is now scheduled for Feb 2024.  This is odd since I had heard a rumor that they might release that limited in Dec so it could possibly get some award nominations. 
  • One last movie they announced was the sequel to “Smile”.  The first movie was a box office success after they moved it from Paramount+ to movie theaters at the start of this year.  The second movie is now scheduled for a little over 1 year away in Oct 2024.
  • They keep raising the estimates for the “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” movie coming out in October.  They’re now estimating up to $125 million for the movie on opening weekend.  Some say it could be the biggest opening weekend of the year, although it’s 2-hour 40 min runtime (it will be over 3 hours if you count the time for trailers) will hurt the movies opening weekend somewhat.  Maybe one reason Paramount moved the “Mean Girls Musical” movie to movie theaters is because it will be a great trailer to play before the movie.

Little bit of humor….

This is a reference to “The Watchmen” comic book about how time passes but stays the same.  It’s true there was an Indiana Jones and a Batman movie all 3 of those years (sort of – Batman appeared in “The Flash” this year).