Hello everyone,
BOX OFFICE: As expected, the “Taylor Swift Eras Tour” concert film did very well this weekend but it DIDN’T meet predictions. It is the highest opening weekend for a concert film but it wasn’t the highest weekend for an October release and it didn’t make over $100 million domestically as some had predicted it would. It made just shy of $93 million which puts it about $3 million dollars less than the highest October opening ever (“Joker” made $96.2 million opening weekend). It also was the ONLY REASON that the overall domestic box office was over $130 million for the weekend (the first time since the first weekend of August) which is up 82% from last weekend. No other movie made over $11 million this past weekend.
However, it will still be a slow week this week because they decided to only play the Taylor Swift movie on weekends. The reason for this is because “they want it to be an event…..not just a few people watching the movie in an empty movie theater” since most of her fans will be in school on weekdays. Still, since it only made an average of $24 thousand a screen on 3800 screens, there must have been MANY showings that weren’t completely full.
If you go by per screen average, the second best movie this past weekend was the recent Cannes winner “Anatomy of a Fall” which was only playing on 5 screens (in New York City, Los Angeles, and San Francisco) and made approx. $23.5 thousand per screen for a total of almost $118 thousand.
WORLDWIDE BOX OFFICE: “Taylor Swift Eras Tour” also did well internationally making a worldwide total of $123.5 million after making over $30 million in foreign countries, but there is virtually NO CHANCE it will make enough money to even be in the top 10 of the 2023 box office. Also, it doesn’t look like “Oppenheimer” will reach the $1 billion mark since it made a total of about $6 million WORLDWIDE this past weekend for a worldwide total of $942 million. It only made about $310 thousand domestically this past weekend.
STRIKE NEWS: Last week there was a lot of talk about people ready to go the moment the actors strike finished. Then the bad news came on Wednesday afternoon that the negotiations had been “suspended”. Just like when the writers strike negotiations paused, both sides released press releases saying it was the other side’s fault. Now, there are a lot of people who work on movies and televisions shows wondering when they’ll be going back to work. It doesn’t look like it will happen this month. If it doesn’t happen in November, then it may not happen until 2024 since a lot of people are on vacation for the holidays from Thanksgiving to New Years. The other production unions sent a letter asking for negotiations to resume right away.
RUMORS: A few days ago, Variety had a story about all the troubles that the upcoming “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom” where they briefly mentioned that “….some on the lot are convinced that another company, most likely Universal, will buy Warner Bros. within two years….”. This was repeated by a few other movie news sites who said that they had predicted that Universal would buy Warner Bros.
ONE MORE THING: 100 years ago today (Oct 16, 2023) Walt Disney and his brother Roy O Disney signed a contract that created the “Disney Brothers Studio”, which would eventually become The Walt Disney Co.
LITTLE BIT OF HUMOR:
Comic??? That should be the next Superman MOVIE!!! I’d go see that movie!!!!
LOS ANGELES FILM REVIEW 