Hello everyone,
BOX OFFICE: “Civil War” sunk approx. 56 percent making approx. $11.1 million but still managed to retain the #1 spot for its 2nd weekend. The best of the 3 new releases was “Abigail” which was #2 with approx. $10.3 million. The other 2 new releases were “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare” which was #4 (after “Godzilla Vs Kong The New Empire”) and made $8.9 million and the animated “Spy X Family Code: White” which made $4.8 million. However, based on per screen average the “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare” had the best wide release with $3133 per screen and the second highest was “Abigail” with $3384 per screen. “Abigail” was on approx. 200 less screens than “Civil War”, if it had been on the same number of screens, it probably would have been #1 for the weekend.
Overall, the total weekend domestic box office dropped again too approx. 13% to $65 million. That’s the 4th lowest total domestic box office of 2024 so far and the lowest it’s been since the end of Feb.
WORLDWIDE BOX OFFICE: This past weekend “Godzilla Vs Kong” moved up to the #2 movie of 2024 so far at the worldwide box office with a little over $486 million. That means that Warner Bros currently has the #1 (“Dune Part 2” – $696 million) and #2 movie of 2024 so far. However, the #3 movie “Kung Fu Panda 4” is just under with $481 million. It’s still doing well at the international box office.
Also somewhat notable is “Oppenheimer” which is STILL trying to reach $1 BILLION at the worldwide box office. It’s worldwide total just slipped past $970 million after making $588 thousand in foreign countries – most of it in Japan.
UNION NEWS: One more union has made a local-specific agreement with IATSE so that leaves only 2 more negotiating. They’re hoping the other 2 will be done because the negotiations for the basic agreement of the ENTIRE union is scheduled to start in approx. 1 week (April 29).
AWARD NEWS: The Motion Picture Academy just changed a couple Academy Award rules starting with next years awards. One of the changes is a change back. They had included drive in movie theaters as qualifying commercial venues during COVID, but they just changed that rule back to NOT include them. Another new rule has Dallas replacing Miami as one of the half dozen cities a movie must play in to qualify for a nomination.
OTHER NEWS: A new company has joined the list of companies that will possibly acquire Paramount Pictures. This time it’s an agreement with Sony Pictures. This actually makes more sense to me since there’s less overlap. Sony doesn’t currently have a streaming site and they currently don’t have any TV or cable channels like Paramount does.
LITTLE BIT OF HUMOR:
This could be another revenue stream for movie theaters and/or studios. Sell movie theater standees after the movie is released. Some movie posters become very valuable.
LOS ANGELES FILM REVIEW 