Bradley Cooper and Cate Blanchett are in a movie.
Searchlight Pictures.
It is unfortunate that so many people spend so much of their moviegoing dollar on a smaller portion of tentpole movies. The Bradley Cooper/Cate Blanchett/Rooney Mara period piece film noir melodrama earned just over $1 million yesterday, setting the stage for a $1 million opening weekend. The Last Duel and Last Night in Soho are close to the launch of Lisa Joy's Reminiscence. These are the kind of studio programmers that Hollywood never makes, they are big-budget, adult-skewing, star-driven, non-franchise studio programmers.
It is hard to blame Hollywood if they stop trying because they have been a problem for the last few years. You can argue that Disney doesn't prioritize their non-Fox flicks, but you could also argue that they should have released West Side Story over Christmas and opened The King's Man in December. It is more difficult for marketing to reach people who don't see non-franchise films in theaters and don't like network television. At some point, we have to acknowledge that audiences are choosing to see the tentpoles in theaters and ignore everything else.
The West Side Story features Tony and Rachel Zegler.
The photo was taken by Niko Tavernise.
West Side Story got kneecapped in weekend two. Steven Spielberg's re-adaption of the 1957 Broadway play, which was adapted in 1961 into an Oscar-winning theatrical smash, earned just $1.063 million on its second Friday, giving it a new $15.629 million eight-day domestic gross. We can expect a weekend of $3.5 million and a ten-day gross of $18 million. This isn't getting the same legs as the great showman, for a number of reasons, including a known quantity, no stars, longer, less family-friendly, no stars, post-release competition, a downer ending, etc. The Rachel Zegler/Ansel Elgort musical romance deserved better, but as Clint Eastwood said in Unforgiven, it deserves nothing to do with it.
Encanto earned $1.651 million on its fourth Friday for a likely $6.8 million weekend and $81.8 million total. It will need a Christmas miracle to get past $100 million domestically, and it is still a disappointing performance for a terrific toon. Ghostbusters: Afterlife earned $930,000 on Friday for a sixth-weekend gross of $3.63 million and a domestic gross of $117.5 million. Spider-Man: No Way Home just topped that total in a single day. They are both Sony movies, but by tonight or tomorrow they will be past Venom: Let There Be Carnage. Without casting moral judgment, Sony would be the hero of Hollywood for late-2021 if they hadn't unloaded so many good-to-great movies to streamers.
Lady Gaga and Adam Driver are in a movie.
The MGM.
MGM's House of Gucci earned another $579,358 on Friday for a likely weekend of $1.81 million and a total of $44.8 million. The Last Duel is the season's most depressing box office disaster and the only commercially viable Oscar movie, and it was directed by Ridley Scott. The Lady Gaga/Adam Driver flick has an advantage in the Oscar race because regular audiences are seeing it and because it is an easy pick for voters hoping to entertain their friends over the next two weeks. Dune will make $235,000 in just 300 theaters for a $107 million domestic total.
Eternals earned $337,000 on Friday for a likely weekend of over a million dollars. It is a good news/bad news weekend for the company because there is no chance of catching Incredible Hulk in terms of tickets sold. The Big Red Dog will have $48.6 million in domestic sales tomorrow, while Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City will have $16.7 million after 24 days. No Time to Die will pass Die Another Day in the US over the weekend, while Licorice Pizza won't expand past four theaters. Christmas With the Chosen will drop 89% in weekend three for a $135,000 weekend in 500 theaters for a still impressive $14.1 million 19-day gross.
