Tranny Tackles The Cinema: The Films of 6/16

[transformers2]

Just when it looked like the Transformers franchise was DOA, a savior emerged in the form of robot apes.

The Michael Bay-free, Anthony Ramos-and Dominique Fishback-led reboot Rise of the Beasts blew past its modest expectations and debuted atop the box office with a $61 mil opening. Since this franchise remains an international play-first at this stage of its life, any cash it can make domestically is just gravy and the now guaranteed $100+ mil finish Rise of the Beasts will post in the US/Canada has to have Paramount feeling good about where it stands before it expands into its final 3 territories in the coming weeks (Australia, New Zealand, Japan)-especially given the uh, ambitious future franchise plans they teased in the final moments.

Hot on Rise of the Beasts heels was Spider-Man: Across the Spider Verse-which eased a respectable 54% in weekend #2 and earned $55.5 mil. With this performance, it already managed to pass the entire run of its predecessor Into the Spider-Verse, which is a pretty strong illustration of just how beloved that movie became after its theatrical run. Given its current BO tally (approximately $241 mil after Tuesday) and trajectory, it should end up as one of, if not the highest grossing movie of the entire summer. Pretty incredible what happens when you pair beloved IP with a real artistic vision.

On the limited front, Past Lives continued to impress by banking just under $521k in its expansion to 26 theaters. $20+k PTA hauls after a movie leaves the NYC/LA cinephile bubble is practically unheard of these days and it's even more impressive when the film in question a slow-burning romantic drama with dialogue that is primarily in Korean. Kudos to A24 for taking their time to roll this one out (the wide expansion is set to occur next weekend) and allowing the buzz it picked up earlier in the year following its Sundance and Berlin debuts to continue to build.


Wide Releases:
Heading into the summer, I didn't think there was a single blockbuster on the slate that had a broader range of potential outcomes than The Flash (Warner Brothers). On one hand, it's tied to an era of DC that appears to be in the rearview as James Gunn and Peter Safran are set to usher in a new era for the comic giant's embattled film division following the release of Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom in December and lead Ezra Miller has committed crimes and/or been accused of engaging in disturbing, sometimes predatory behavior in roughly half of the US' 50 states since the film wrapped shooting in late 2021. On the other, it has a big nostalgic hook with Michael Keaton returning to play Batman after a 31-year hiatus (and if you've spent enough time on the bowels of the internet since the movie debuted at CinemaCon in late April, you know that's just the tip of the returning character iceberg...), WB has pushed the shit out of the movie as a result of how well it played with test audiences beginning with a Super Bowl Spot back in February that was the studios first in over a decade and the average person either isn't aware or doesn't give a shit about what Miller has been accused of doing when they're not playing Barry Allen.

Now that it's about 24 hours away from releasing, the only mystery that remains will just how high it can go. While DC diehards from several generations are undoubtedly going to rush out to see it tomorrow and Friday, Father's Day being on Sunday and the federal holiday of Juneteenth being on Monday should minimize how frontloaded it is-making a $100 mil+ 4-day take a realistic possibility. The real test however will come in how it holds and if the test screening reactions carry over to the general audience, this could put up one of the best multipliers we've ever seen out of the superhero genre. With Indiana Jones being the only blockbuster standing in its path until Mission-Impossible releases in mid-July, the path for an extended strong run is there. We'll see if audiences care enough about The Flash, Batman and the DC brand on the whole for it to be followed.
Predictions: $70-100 mil OW /6-10 PTA/12-16 Top 5/high 7 to low 8 IMDB/$135-205 mil BO($185-350 mil total BO)
Price: $26 ULT/$29 BO
Worth Putting on Your Slate?: While its ceiling remains unclear, it should provide solid value for its price as a 3-week play for this season.


Whether the Pixar brand holds the same weight as once it did is up for debate. The belief that there is a lot of pressure being put on Elemental (Disney) to succeed because of these perceived questions surrounding the current state of the company's reputation is not. Hell, you could probably make an argument that Disney has never needed an animated movie of theirs to succeed more than this one. The problem is that they don't appear to entering this pivotal battle with their strongest fighter.

In an ironic twist, Peter Sohn- who was responsible for what was long pegged to be the most underwhelming and commercially unsuccessful Pixar film in The Good Dinosaur-directed Elemental. At least so far, Elemental is mirroring that film's resume every step of the way. Reviews have been passable, but not particularly enthusiastic, the marketing has been mostly nondescript and there's a comparative lack of buzz surrounding the project that would've been stunning for a Pixar movie as recently as 4 years ago.

On top of all that, family audiences that had been famished for nearly 2 months after the release of The Super Mario Bros. Movie have had The Little Mermaid and Across the Spider-Verse to feed their appetites and the film's tracking numbers ($35-40 mil) have been staggeringly low for an animated film of its size. The sheer visibility of the Disney marketing machine and strong likelihood of solid holds in the weeks to come should prevent it from completely tanking, but even a finish in the $125-$150 mil range would be another highly underwhelming result for a studio that previously had a consistent track record of massive success.
Predictions: $27-42 mil OW/3-7 PTA/7-12 Top 5/mid to high 6 IMDB/$70-115 BO ($95-150 mil total BO)
Price: $15 ULT/$18 BO
Worth Putting on Your Slate?: Completely depends on your belief in the Disney/Pixar brand right now and if another animated movie can co-exist with Spider-Verse.


In terms of bars to clear for success among this weekend's wide releases, The Blackening (Lionsgate) has the lowest by far. The satirical comedy from director Tim Story and writers Tracy Oliver and Dewayne Perkins-who also stars-that pokes fun at the stereotypes that black people have been given in slasher films for decades boasts a $7 mil budget and was picked up by Lionsgate following its debut at the Toronto Film Festival last fall-where it earned the Second Runne-Up Audience Award in the Midnight Madness section-for a release on Juneteenth weekend, which is exactly when the events of the film take place.

Despite a relatively low theater count of roughly 1,800, Lionsgate has done a good job of getting the word out to its prospective audience. They've been screening it all over the country for the past few months, the targeted ad's on social media have been abundant and it had TV spots regularly playing during the NBA playoffs (particularly in the earlier rounds). It received another boost today when the review embargo dropped and the initial wave of reviews proved to be pretty enthusiastic overall. While the track record of satire and horror comedy playing with a wide audience is sketchy at best, the sleeper potential for The Blackening is there and it wouldn't be a shock to me at all if it had a run that was comparable to what The Menu or Barbarian did last fall.

Price: $6 ULT/$5 BO
Predictions: $5-10 mil OW/0-1 PTA/0-1 Top 5/high 5 to low 6 IMDB/$10-25 mil ($15-40 mil total BO)
Worth Putting on Your Slate?: It's cheap enough in both formats where it's worth taking a chance on, but it could easily flame out.


Limited Release:
Still riding high off the success of Past Lives over the past 2 weekends, the arthouse sector will receive another huge shot of life this weekend with the launch of Asteroid City (Focus). Wes Anderson's latest could prove to be his most Wes Anderson-y movie as he drops a comically large ensemble of revered actors led by Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson and Tom Hanks into a brightly-colored 50's desert landscape where a group of kids, parents and scientists attending a Junior Stargazer Competition come into contact with an alien lifefrom.

Asteroid City should clean up in its 6-theater NYC/LA release this weekend and ride the strength of the Anderson brand to a solid performance when it breaks wide next week. Since The French Dispatch was able to bank $16 mil domestic in the fall of 2021 behind somewhat weaker reviews in a considerably more compromised theatrical marketplace, Asteroid City should be able to exceed that take without too much difficulty.
Price: $5 ULT/$4 BO
Predictions: $350-650k OW/7-10 PTA/0-3 Top 5/low to mid 7 IMDb/$10-17 mil BO ($20-35 mil total BO)
Worth Putting on Your Slate?: Yes.


Weekend Predictions:
1.The Flash $80 mil
2.Elemental $37 mil
3.Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse $30 mil
4.Transformers: Rise of the Beasts $19 mil
5.The Little Mermaid $16 mil

-The Blackening $7 mil

PTA: Asteroid City, The Flash, Past Lives, Elemental, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

I'll be back next week to discuss Jennifer Lawrence's first foray into the world of broad comedy and a French drama that is finally making its way to the shores of the USA.

[transformers2]

Also a note to the pricing panel: I'll be sending out the schemes for next season sometime on Monday.

[transformers2]

Preview totals:
The Flash $9.8 mil
Elemental $2.4 mil
The Blackening $900k

[Buscemi2]

Cinemascores:

Elemental: A
The Blackening: B+
The Flash: B

[transformers2]

Weekend Estimates:
The Flash $55.1 mil
Elemental $29.5 mil
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse $27.8 mil
Transformers: Rise of the Beasts $20 mil
The Little Mermaid $11.6 mil
The Blackening $6 mil
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3 $5 mil
The Boogeyman $3.8 mil
Fast X/Adipurush $2 mil

-Asteroid City $790k

PTA:
Asteroid City $131.6 k(!!!)
The Flash $13k
Past Lives $8.9k
Elemental $7.3k
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse $7.1k

[numbersix]

Never doubt the Andersons.

Besides Paul W Anderson

[Buscemi2]

The trailer was inescapable.

Speaking of marketing, The Blackening probably could have done $10 million had it gotten a better campaign and more theatres. I seriously thought it would play like a mini-Get Out.

[Chienfantome]

What a disappointing score for The Flash and Elemental.
Wes, phenomenal in PTA, once more.

[Buscemi2]

I was expecting The Flash to go under $50 million until the Thursday night numbers came in. With the weak Cinemascore and it being frontloaded, it could struggle to clear $120 million total.

As for Elemental, when I saw it on Friday, it had already been dumped into a small auditorium while The Flash, Transformers, and Spider-Man occupied the bigger houses. The Cannes response, combined with recent Pixar backlash on the Internet, killed this one. Elio needs to be twice the movie this and Lightyear were to win the audiences back to Pixar.

[BanksIsDaFuture]

Wow wow wow, never thought I'd see The Flash open worse than Black Adam. It wasn't good, but it was at least better than The Adventures of Middle Eastern The Rock.

The DCEU ends with a whimper I guess, good riddance

[Buscemi2]

They shouldn't have let Snydercut take over the studio.

[numbersix]

They also shouldn't have remade the past 2 spiderman films, which also dealt with multiverses, changing the past, and enlisting previous incarnations to cash in on nostalgia.

It's derivative and repetitive and I'm hoping it's not just the end of DCEU but also Marvel, who seems somewhat aimless too

[Buscemi2]

Spider-Man's still making bank though. It's not like Marvel trying build an entire phase around a semi-remembered villain previously on a TV show played by an actor with well-known legal issues.

Warner Bros.' issues have all been self-inflicted. From getting into massive debt loads to trusting the wrong people from top to bottom to shelving projects that had a shot of taking off for tax purposes while gambling on higher-budgeted projects that had less audience appeal. It's going to be interesting to see how much The Flash will end up losing the studio because it amazes me that they expected so much from it when the buzz just wasn't there. The DCEU was pretty much done when they agreed to spend $70 million to rework Justice League when that money could have been used to release Batgirl or do new restorations of classic titles or anything other than appealing to a vocal minority that can't take no for an answer.

[transformers2]

Weekend Actuals:
1.The Flash $55 mil
2.Elemental $29.6 mil
3.Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse $27 mil
4.Transformers: Rise of the Beasts $20.7 mil
5.The Little Mermaid $11.1 mil
6.The Blackening $6 mil
7.Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3 $5.3 mil
8.The Boogeyman $3.6 mil
9.Fast X $2.1 mil
10.Adipurush $2 mil

-Asteroid City $845k

PTA:
1.Asteroid City $140,857 (highest since La La Land in December 2017)
2.The Flash $13,000
3.Past Lives $8,951
4.Elemental $7,336
5.Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse $6,972

-The Blackening $3,388