China’s Record Setting New Year Box Office

If you’re looking for positive movie theater news, look no further than China. They are tearing it up over there, setting records that rival or beat those set in the United States.

The Chinese New Year box office achieved yet another milestone Wednesday, with grosses for the holiday period growing to an estimated RMB 7.78 billion ($1.2 billion). This beats the previous all-time high set during the comparable 2019 holiday (RMB 5.9B). China often outdoes itself, but the fact that 2021’s Lunar New Year frame came with Covid capacity restrictions makes the performance even more staggering.

China New Year Box Office Hits Record $1.2 Billion Over Holiday Period – Deadline

The pandemic has not had any long lasting effects on moviegoers in this country, at least. This just reinforces what we believe will happen domestically as well: moviegoers will return when they feel it’s safe enough to return and there are movies they want to see.

Add to this the opening weekend record which once belonged to Avengers: Endgame has now been surpassed by Detective Chinatown 3 in China:

Detective Chinatown 3 grossed $398 million in its opening weekend in China, which was timed to coincide with the Chinese New Year. That box office haul puts it ahead of the $357 million domestic opening weekend of Avengers: Endgame. $23.5 million of Detective Chinatown 3’s opening weekend came from IMAX showings, a record for IMAX opening weekend grosses in China. Ticket service Maoyan is projecting an eventual final gross of $750 million.

Avengers: Endgame’s Opening Box Office Record Has Been Crushed

Foreign movies this popular should be showing domestically. I’m not seeing this movie at AMC theaters playing anywhere. I realize it’s probably not dubbed, but at least it could be subtitled. A sequel this popular with Chinese moviegoers? I’m very curious. Get on it, AMC!

Yes, Man Earned Jim Carrey $35 million for negotiating $0 salary and 36.2% of backend profits + Controversial SNL Biden Impression

If I see another movie star say that we’re facing the end of art culture as we know it, I might just throw up all over the screen.

Maybe grossly overpaid actors and actresses — in fairness, most of them aren’t, it’s just a small subset of movie stars that command large salaries — should wake up and do more like Jim Carrey did when he was in a career slump.

Yes, Man wasn’t a great movie, but performed well at the box office. It’s also an example of how movie stars can earn a bunch of money betting on a movie doing well vs. taking a higher upfront salary.

Following his previous movies such as Fun with Dick and Jane having flopped, Carrey felt that he didn’t need to get paid an upfront salary. He, therefore, declined any payment before filming. He instead chose to negotiate for 36.2% of the movie’s profits. At the time, Carrey’s move was considered a risky affair. However, the risk paid off when Yes Man grossed $223 million worldwide at the Box Office. Carrey eventually had the last laugh and took home $30 million, making it one of his biggest paydays.

Jim Carrey Once Accepted $0 For a Movie Role That Left Him With a $35 Million Paycheck

Now, understandably most actors won’t be able to negotiate that kind of percentage of profits, nor in these current bleak movie sales times generate larger sales, but there is a reasonable salary number between $0 and millions per film for actors to consider so that the film budget can be reduced.

The high paying actors we see crying in the media about the death of art being upon us, when the closer reality is they’ll be seeing the reduction of the giant cash cow they’ve been milking.

Before striking back in the comments below or dismissing what I’m saying, it’s not that I’m against actors and actresses making all the cheddar they can. I’m suggesting if the movie is good that they should enjoy the financial success of it, but if it’s not, they shouldn’t be paid more money than the film earned. For six months work making hundreds of thousands of dollars may not pay the mansion mortgage, but it’s a lot of money to the average family that make like $50-75k a year.

This wage disparity turns off the vast majority of people out there working their tails off to pay the bills.

In other Jim Carrey news, he is under some fire over his current Joe Biden impression.

Carrey is trending on Twitter after the latest episode of the sketch comedy show as SNL fans call for his replacement as Vice President Biden. Carrey debuted in the role in SNL’s high-rated 46th season premiere, replacing Woody Harrelson. Some took instant offense to the casting as part of a recent SNL trend of handing high-profile impersonations to outside celebrities instead of regular cast members. Carrey’s performance has received mixed reviews, but it seems his third episode was the breaking point for many viewers.

Jim Carrey Trends After Saturday Night Live Fans Call for His Replacement as Joe Biden

I was underwhelmed with what SNL did with the fly in Pence’s hair (see: The Shocking, Viral Star of Last Night’s Vice Presidential Debate? The Fly!), and that skit included Jim Carrey as Joe Biden also.

I think the problem with Jim Carrey is his style is too over the top energetic playing Biden. Carrey just overacts all the time kind of like Nic Cage. Some of what Carrey does is funny but often he goes too far. His Biden impression is weak for that reason, in my opinion. The bit above should be funny, but it’s … not.

On Our Way To Alternate AMC Movie Theater, Other Is “SOLD OUT” for Film We Want To See

The War With Grandpa on Sunday sold out all 4 screenings at the closest AMC to us

It’s reopening weekend at AMC in the greater Seattle/Tacoma Washington area and we had planned to see The War With Grandpa as our second movie this weekend, but the theater where we watched Honest Thief is already sold out (pictured above).

It’s OK, we have several other reopened AMC locations to choose from that have available seats and we already reserved seats at another theater. It’s interesting to note on this reopening weekend because Honest Thief is on its first weekend opening and we’re not seeing the same amount of “SOLD OUT” for that.

This is a very small sampling of data, completely unscientific I’m certain, but curious to note since The War With Grandpa, according to box office sales projections is #2 behind Honest Thief.

The other thing to mention is now that we’re both signed up for AMC A-List passes, we took advantage of their Entourage option to easily reserve tickets for both of us online. It can be done through the application as well and the best part is there are none of those onerous convenience fees like Regal charges.

A review will be forthcoming.

The War With Grandpa Takes #1 Spot + Stephen King “Feels Terrible” For Empty Theater

Every movie, even the best ones, eventually fall from the #1 spot.

These dim theater days it only takes $3.6 million for the weekend box office to be #1. That honor has been Tenet’s for weeks, but this last weekend it goes to Robert De Niro and company with The War With Grandpa.

Despite the loss of more than 500 Regal Theaters, total grosses went up this weekend. Led by newcomer “The War with Grandpa,” the top 10 grossed about $9.7 million. That’s up from $8.5 million last weekend. With so many library titles adding to the pot, the full take might reach $13 million. By comparison. 2019 saw $141 million on Columbus Day weekend.

Tenet No Longer #1 as The War With Grandpa Wins Weekend Box Office | IndieWire

Meanwhile, Stephen King went to theaters Saturday night — lucky guy that he was able to patronize an open theater in his area, ours are all closed around here until this Friday — and the king of horror felt “terrible for the film industry.”

I went to the movies last night. First time since February. No problem social distancing. Saturday night, 7 screens, 4 total customers including me and my nephew. I feel terrible for the film industry.

— Stephen King (@StephenKing) October 11, 2020

Low box office sales are scaring studios in all kinds of bad ways right now, but even so, War With Grandpa showed people are still attending movies in theaters.

We will be this coming weekend too.

Of Course Box Office Revenue Last Year vs. This Year is Ugly

This graph from August 9 on closed theaters vs. open theaters. It’s a little better some 45+ days later, but still … (see: The Top 10 States Having The Most Movie Theaters Opened vs. Unopened)

It’s problematic seeing comparisons with last year box office stats vs. this year. There are so many mitigating factors, the biggest of which is The Thing That Should Not Be Named. We remain believers that moviegoers will return to theaters when the following things happen:

1. Theaters nearby are reopened
2. They feel it’s safe in their area to do so
3. There are new movies they want to see

#1 is out of moviegoer’s control. If your favorite movie theater hasn’t opened yet and doesn’t plan to do so any time soon, then you’re not likely to return. #2 is more challenging to calculate because it involves multiple factors. #3 after #1 is the most important. If new movies are out that people want to see, very little else is going to matter. You know, build it and they will come. Sure, #2 will be a factor, but I think a bigger factor for most moviegoers — I’m talking the people who actually watch at least the average of 3-4 movies in theaters per year — is whether or not there is a movie they want to see.

The biggest movies people want to see, Tenet aside, just keep getting delayed and pushed back. Black Widow has dropped out and it’s up to No Time To Die (Bond #25) coming in November — maybe.

Back to the box office stats today. Why the numbers are wildly skewed?

We look around and see how many theaters, just in our local area, are still closed. Not just a few theaters, we’re talking like 25+ movie theaters dark and doing $0 business.

Factor in all that revenue, whatever it would be, if these theaters were open. None of that money is or can be reflected in the stats this year.

Over the weekend, North American ticket sales were an estimated $13.2 million, according to data from Comscore. For comparison, the U.S. and Canadian box offices hauled in $125.4 million during the same weekend last year thanks to the openings of “Downton Abbey,” “Ad Astra” and “Rambo: Last Blood.”

Movie theater stocks tank after another disappointing box office tally

We remember seeing the movies quoted above a year ago. Rambo: Last Blood was our first 4DX movie ever seen at the Red Rock Regal Cinema in Las Vegas. That theater is reopened and running, but we don’t live in Vegas. We haven’t been back to Vegas since March. We’re planning on going there again after the first of the year. Probably January, Feb or March, but it all depends on what’s going on in the world.

In the meantime, we’re adding our revenue to box office stats. We’re seeing all new wide release movies being released, which is a total of 7 movies since the theater opened south of us.

On a more positive note, Regal brought back FREE refills on large popcorn and soda (see: When Regal Cinemas Reopen “Temporarily” No FREE Refills for Large Popcorn and Soda)

YIKES – Disney Postpones Black Widow, West Side Story, Death On The Nile … more

Originally May 2020, now 2021, a bloody red x so fitting

2020 is proving to be disastrous on many levels and, somehow, it’s even worse for movie theaters.

Disney must not have liked the results of their own Mulan premium VOD experiment and/or what they saw with the business Tenet was doing domestically and has thrown a grenade into the schedule, triggering a cascade of titles being postponed.

They’ve pulled the lone remaining Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) title for 2020: Black Widow, which was set to be released November 6. Also gone is Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story and Death On The Nile which was coming in October. The full list of changes is detailed after the jump.

The results are bad news for the exhibition industry, which is facing fierce headwinds after closing for months due to coronavirus. The studio has kept the late November release date of Pixar’s “Soul,” surprising some in the industry who had expected the animated family film to either move to a later perch or get released on Disney Plus. The moves set off a cascade of distribution shifts that will upend the theatrical landscape for months. Other Marvel releases, such as “Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” and “Eternals” will all debut deeper into 2021. Disney’s release date shifts all but guarantee that box office revenues this year will reach a nadir — analysts have already projected that domestic grosses would decline between 70% to 80% due to the pandemic.

‘Black Widow,’ ‘West Side Story,’ ‘Shang-Chi’ Postpone Release – Variety

Have to put these changes in bullet list, because there are numerous to share. All the more reasons we’ve not posted the 2021 list of movies coming soon yet (had it draft status and been making changes for several months now — it just keeps changing and changing and changing…).

• Death on the Nile (delayed, moved from Oct 9 to Oct 23, move #2 to Dec 18, 2020)
• The Empty Man (moved UP from Dec 4, 2020 to Oct 23, 2020) – this is taking Death On The Nile’s slot
• Black Widow – FIRST LOOK (delayed, moved from May 1 to Nov 6, move #2 to May 7, 2021)
• Deep Water (delayed, moved from Nov 13, 2020 to August 13, 2021)
• West Side Story (delayed, moved from Dec 18, 2020 to Dec 10, 2021)
• Eternals (delayed, already moved from 2020 to Feb 21, 2021, move #2 to Nov 5, 2021)
• Shang-Chi (delayed, moved from May 7, 2021 to July 9, 2021)
• The King’s Man (moved UP from Feb 26, 2020 to Feb 12, 2021) NOTE: this movie has moved around many times already

Keep in mind that the house of mouse was responsible for some 33%+ of domestic box office sales in 2019 (source). But, and hesitate to show unrealistic optimism, there are new movies still coming in 2020. Don’t give up on 2020 fellow movie theater fans.

Yes, a decent number of new movies remain on the schedule for October (6), November (7) and December (8) 2020. By our count as of this writing: 21 total new wide release remain left for 2020 including several notable titles: Ammonite, Soul, No Time To Die, Free Guy, Coming 2 America, Wonder Woman and Dune.

The news is fresh from earlier today, so we’ll see what other changes follow as time marches on.

To end on a positive movie-oriented note, just watched Enola Holmes ⭐️⭐️⭐️½ – on Netflix that came out today. Good stuff! Didn’t think I’d like anything Holmes related without Watson, but his sister is entertaining fare. Recommended.

Tenet opens internationally with $53 million box office, advance launch in US starts 8/31

There’s only one lone Regal Cinema open in our state, located near the state capital in Lacey, Washington, a suburb of Olympia and both IMAX 2D screenings of Tenet on 8/31 are sold out (see grayed out image above).

The first 2D showing is also sold to social distancing capacity (less than 50% available seating capacity), but the other four 2D showing have tickets remaining as of 1pm PT on 8/30.

Internationally, Tenet opened this weekend and made $54 million at the box office.

The sci-fi epic, long pegged as the film that would restart moviegoing after prolonged cinema closures, had the strongest start in the United Kingdom, where it made $7.1 million. “Tenet” launched in 41 international markets this weekend, including France ($6.7 million), Korea ($5.1 million) and Germany ($4.2 million). Next weekend, the Warner Bros. film will touch down in the U.S., Russia and China.

Box Office: Christopher Nolan’s ‘Tenet’ Enjoys Strong Debut Overseas – Variety

I will probably reserve my ticket in advance, but my schedule for tomorrow is still a bit undecided. Also, don’t know if Kara will want to go or not yet. If so, we’re probably eyeing the later showings at 7:45pm or 9pm, if they don’t sell out first. Would like to catch this in IMAX, of course, but that probably won’t be possible schedule-wise and with ticket availability.

Am not sure with only being one theater and a little over an hour or so drive from Seattle, that Tenet shouldn’t be sold out much more than it is. This could signal a lack of interest in moviegoers returning in our state to a tentpole movie, perhaps because King County is where the virus first appeared. Might be less people in our area that are interested in returning to the theater period.

We’ve been to see five movies since the theater reopened, including an opening night showing of The New Mutants. Theaters have been at pre-pandemic matinee-level or less attendance. Very few people and certainly nowhere near half-capacity. Despite the ability to return, not many are doing so. Could be the movie selection, which is largely classics — but some good ones (see: Regal Cinemas Announces Classic Movie Screenings Starting July 10 (IF they reopen): Rocky, Jaws, The Empire Strikes Back, The Dark Knight, Jurassic Park and more)

The Regal Cinemas that were projected to open on August 28 that we normally attend in our home area never reopened. Now, there is no date on Regal’s website and it just shows “TBD”

Dolittle tops China first weekend box office since pandemic reopening, followed by Bloodshot

Dolittle ⭐️⭐️⭐️

In their first weekend return to the box office, China moviegoers chose to see Robert Downey Jr’s Dolittle the most.

“Dolittle,” from Universal, was the top title this weekend with a $4.71 million three-day debut, according to Chinese data provider Ent Group. Vin Diesel-starring “Bloodshot,” backed by China’s Bona Film Group, trailed in second place, bowing to the tune of $2.61 million.

China Box Office Returns After Coronavirus Led by Hollywood Films – Variety

This adds to the total box office gross for both films, making Dolittle inch closer to the #3 spot currently held by Sonic. It’s no wonder that the Oscars pushed back their date. I was listening to a podcast earlier today that claimed to have an inside source that the academy is talking about canceling the Oscars until 2022. Purely heresy, but we can all see that there have been pretty much zero new theatrical releases since mid March. There might not be enough movies to have a credible awards ceremony in 2021.

As for Bloodshot ⭐️⭐️½ starring Vin Diesel? Caught that just before the theaters closed down (see: 20+ Bloodshot Reviews – Watch the first 9 minutes FREE, Thanks Sony). Not rooting for that one quite as much to climb the charts, probably because it wasn’t as disliked as Dolittle. Guess I like to root for the underdog films sometimes.

Lowest Week 11 Domestic Box Office since 1995

From 2003-2020 domestic box office, courtesy of Box Office Mojo

The last five years week #11 box office sales domestically have exceeded $115 million. This week? $50 million. Last time the sales were like that? 25 years ago in 1995. We have to go back to 1998 to see less releases than the 44 this month.

Onward picks up the top slot, followed by: I Still Believe, Bloodshot, The Invisible Man and then The Hunt rounds out the top five. With no wide releases next week, I’ll be watching the two wide releases we haven’t seen over the next week or two. Trolls World Tour is next, see: Trolls World Tour next wide release a month from now, while My Spy and other films missing wide release opportunity.

I’m heading out on a plane tonight to Las Vegas, where I’ll be renting a car this time around so we can get out and do some sightseeting. Also will be checking out any/all movie and TV slots.

Got to play Mad Max Road: Fury Road at the Las Vegas airport

And then there was American Gods.

Actually won $58 on this one at the airport.

See how many I can find out there and where they’re at. Seems like this scavenger hunt might be fun.

The airline is showing recent movies in theater in-flight. I caught Western Stars on there on the flight home.

Welcome to #2 of 4 Worst Weekends for Theater Attendance

Apparently, this coming week historically is one of the four worst weekends for movie theater attendance. There is only one wide release planned, Birds of Prey.

Every year, distributors must navigate four dead-zone weekends: post-New Years, Super Bowl Sunday, Labor Day, and the first in December. Historically, these are the periods with the lowest theater attendance, although studios now have their strategies; some slots have become a good time for horror titles, for example. But early December still resists tactics, with a graveyard of films that braved the date.

With Playmobil Only Wide Release, Welcome to the Box Office Dead Zone | IndieWire

Week #1 of 2020 featured The Grudge⭐️⭐️ and this week should go much better. And next week there are a bunch of new films coming out to celebrate Valentine’s Day which must be one of the better weekends, at least for couples.

Some people complain that going to movies is becoming too expensive. They would rather stay home. The streaming markets are growing and taking down the traditional TV model, which is great to see. It gives movie and TV fans a wide variety of choices at more affordable prices.

But creating movie and TV for streaming isn’t an inexpensive proposition for the streaming channels. Take HBO Max which launches in May 2020, and plans to have 31 original TV shows by the end of 2020:

On top of its Max Originals, AT&T is stepping up the budget for HBO. The content budget will rise to $2.5 billion in 2020, up about $500 million from 2018 and 2019. It’s not clear whether management includes that number in its definition of incremental investments, but considering everything available on HBO will also be on HBO Max, and its plans to get all of its legacy HBO subscribers onto HBO Max, it very well should count.

HBO Max Has Already Cost AT&T $1.2 Billion

Am sure we’ll be checking out HBO Max when it launches. In the meantime, we’re going to keep enjoying the unlimited movie theater plan and existing streaming choices. It’s a great time to be a movie and TV lover!