In this week’s episode of the Boxoffice Podcast, co-hosts Daniel Loria, Rebecca Pahle, and Shawn Robbins break down a busy news week, covering the Viacom/CBS Investor Day conference—and its implications for Paramount’s theatrical exclusivity window—the reopening of New York City theaters, and Tom and Jerry‘s outsized box office performance on its opening weekend.
Listen to the the full episode below and subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
On Tom & Jerry‘s $14.1M Opening Weekend
I think it speaks to the fact that families, particularly parents with young kids, are just itching to go back [to the movies]. And when the content is there, even if it’s available at home, they’ll still go out and see it in a theater. We’ve also seen data that it was a very diverse audience, and that’s always been crucial to these box office surprises. So what that speaks to is: We’re not back to a level of normality, but we’re seeing micro trends of what normality looks like.
On What the Reopening of New York City Theaters Means for the Global Exhibition Landscape
What New York does is provide that template. Now that they’re reopening, studios can look at their releases later this year and have, at the very least, more confidence than they have at any point in the last 12 months. What that means is marketing engines can fire back up. New York is particularly important there, because what happens in New York—contrary to the Las Vegas saying—from an entertainment standpoint, spreads throughout the world. It’s essentially the marketing capital, outside of L.A., particularly for the movie business. And what we see now is that March has a slate of the most mainstream films to come out in theaters since before the pandemic. We have Raya and Chaos Walking this week. We’ll have Godzilla vs. Kong and Nobody later in the month. And at that point, I think Hollywood sits back and and looks at the trends, not just in New York, but countrywide in March and April. And it will really play a big role in determining what happens to that summer schedule.
On the Potential Box Office Impact of Paramount Releases Going to a 30-45 Day Window
When we look at the last Mission: Impossible movie, it did 96 percent of its final gross, by the 45th day of release. It was out of the top 10 after 57 days. At that point, [with Paramount’s 30-45 theatrical exclusivity window plan], the film would be on streaming. It’s, I don’t want to say not relevant in theaters, but it’s really marginal at that point. Very similar for A Quiet Place: It achieved about 94 percent by day 45 and was also out of the top ten after 57 days. So what this suggests is, whether it’s a franchise movie or an original movie, this could end up being that sweet zone where studios can maximize [a film’s theatrical] performance and still be able to reach their streaming audience as soon as possible without having to fire up the the marketing spend again after three months.
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