The Fall Box Office Crisis: A Phase, a Fluke, or the Future?

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1:42Stop me if you've heard this before. It's been a pretty brutal couple months at the box office. September and October, grosses were down significantly from last year and about 40 % in pre-COVID times. Mostly because there weren't any big studio tentpoles. Disney's Tron flopped, Universal played it kind of small, and Warner Brothers doesn't even have any movies for the rest of the year after one battle after another in early October. Kind of amazing. But today, we're talking about these smaller movies, the independents, specialty movies, awards contenders, mid-budget stuff. But the news is arguably bleaker.

2:15The New York Times noted last week that there have been zero hits, meaning$50 million or more in ticket sales at the North American box office, of the 25 major comedy and drama releases in the past three months. And this month, one after another, star-driven indies and mid-budget movies like The Smashing Machine with The Rock, Christie with Sidney Sweeney, Die My Love with Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson, Begonia with Emma Stone, the Bruce Springsteen movie, all of them kind of flopped. Those movies opened wide, many of them, meaning on more than 2 ,000 screens, which makes the audience rejection hurt even more.

2:51After the Hunt with Julia Roberts cost more than$70 million to produce, grossed just$3 million domestic for Amazon. Kind of unbelievable. We've talked many times on the show about how the struggles of smaller movies in theaters post-COVID are impacting the overall box office, and particularly the theater business, shortening windows that have told audiences to wait and watch most titles at home. Yet the distributors are still trying to make these movies work in theaters. And stars are still embarking on elaborate press tours to promote them. So today is the crisis in smaller budget movie going.

3:25What are the actual problems here? And maybe, just maybe, how to fix them. From The Ringer and Puck, I'm Matt Bellany and this is The Town.

3:36Okay, we are here with Lucas Shaw from Bloomberg. Welcome back, Lucas. missed you at the Governor's Awards last night. You missed Tom Cruise pretending that he's a normal person and accepting his honorary Oscar. I have never been. I don't think I've ever been invited. I don't think I'm itching to go, but if you tell me I need to be there, I... You don't. It's fun because you get a sense of who is going for it in the Oscar campaigns. Like, who's showing up, who's shaking hands, who wants to win an Oscar badly, and they were all there. Like, even people who were completely fringe characters in this award season.

4:13Like Jennifer Lopez was there for the Kiss of the Spider Woman that is never getting nominated. She was there. Lots of people were there. It's a good like networking event. Yeah. I got a little taste of that at the Academy Museum Gala, which is like a month before and a similar, although you don't have as many. There was definitely no Jennifer Lopez at that one. It was just a big weekend for campaigning. We had our puck event. Sadly, the Marty Supreme blimp was grounded due to the rain. so the Marty Supreme blimp was not able to float above the Chalamet Sandler basketball stunt that they did on Saturday did you go to that I did not all the roundtables that the people do yes it's a big weekend for all that I get it and I saw Marty Supreme Friday that was my indulging with the Oscars did you like it as much as Craig did I really liked it yeah I don't know we Craig and I haven't talked about it so I don't know if I like it as much as Craig liked it more than I did I liked it, but Craig really liked it.

5:06I thought it was... People do not need my review of Marty Suprem. No, they do not. No one cares what we think. We do care, however, that Chalamet posted an 18-minute video of his marketing meeting with the A24 staff. But that was a stunt. I mean, unbelievable. It was a fake meeting, but it was really, really funny. It was really funny. The whole Schwab thing where he's talking about all of his great ideas and opening up the folders on his computer. Like, great idea number one. Great idea number two. He's like, paint the Eiffel Tower orange. He is really good at these campaigns. And I'm wondering at a certain point if it's going to feel like too much.

5:42But there's something about them that is very endearing. Well, that's the weird thing is like they want us to think that this is all kind of spontaneous and not a calculated awards campaign. And then they literally posted the meeting where they're strategizing about the awards campaign. Yeah, no, it obviously is. But I don't think the average person knows that. Probably not. But it's a good segue into our topic today on press tours and what is not working and why we just have a death march of independent and mid-budget movies at the box office. Our friend Brooks Barnes of the Times had a story last week, which is sort of put together what we've been talking about all fall, which is that out of 25 movies that were either comedies, dramas, mid and lower budget movies this fall, zero have passed the$50 million in ticket sales marker, which he says is the marker of a hit in the North American box office.

6:39You can parse that as you want. But it shows that we are in a pretty bad place for movies right now. Although at least a couple of them probably will. You think so? Yeah, like Regretting You is probably... Regretting You is going to hit 50 million. That means you're excluding Predator and Black Phone 2, both of which are modest hits. Those are IP. Well, Black Phone 2 is only IP because the first one worked. Sure, but that's a sequel. And so we're also not including One Battle After Another, which did hit$50 million? Yeah, but that movie, it cost$140 million. Right, I got it. So it's... Okay. So, yeah, he's very clear.

7:18He excludes action films with comedy elements. Very specific rubric. Okay. Yes. But are you prepared to make the argument that everything's fine at the box office? No. We've just decided that there's like a certain type of movie that should break out and I don't know that it should. But no, things are not fine at the box office. It's been a terrible fall. even one battle after another, like the numbers are good until you know how much it costs, or like Predator had a good opening weekend and then tailed off. We certainly haven't had a big fall breakout in the way that we are used to having at least one or two.

7:52And that gets to the question of, is this the new normal? Are we headed for a time where there will be summer box office events and there will be holiday box office events like Wicked, Zootopia, and then there will be this fallow time from September, October through mid-November where it's just no man's land. No, that's not the reason. No, you don't think so. If we want to talk about sort of what is happening in the movie business and this being the new, what is the new normal, I'm happy to go there. But in terms of just like the fall being a dead zone, no, I just think that is like the quirk of the schedule this year or things that didn't work.

8:30Usually there is a Joker or a Black Panther 2 or something that comes out. We've had horror movies that are like really massive, like a few years ago. Sure. But that was pre-pandemic. But yes, I don't want to focus on the box office being bad. I want to focus on potential solutions. And to get there, we sort of have to identify what the problems are. Like, is this just a windowing problem that for these movies that are not automatic events, the audience now is primed to wait. They've been told too many times that this movie that is being promoted by X-Star is going to be on streaming in three weeks.

9:13So there is literally no reason to see it in a theater. I would put that as my number two reason. What is the number one in your mind? Well, most of the movies haven't been commercial or very good. Okay, so you're putting the movies are bad as number one. Yes. Now, keep in mind, traditionally, that hasn't been the major factor in box office over the years. Yeah, good movies do better generally. But Hollywood has had a very good track record of making, marketing, releasing, and cashing in on mediocre to bad movies. But if you look at some of the movies that maybe you would have hoped to break out, and I don't know, I'm not necessarily following the Brooks rubric.

9:50I'm just going to talk about some movies, right? Okay. So you had the Bruce Springsteen movie. We're less than a year away from a Timmy G. Chalamet, Bob Dylan movie that broke out and was successful and got nominated for a bunch of stuff. You know the difference between that movie and the Bruce Springsteen movie? That movie was good and this movie wasn't. Well, no, it wasn't. Let's not go good and bad. Let's go what the content was. That movie had the music. This movie didn't. That movie had a style. It captured a time. This movie was mostly two hours of someone being depressed. It was not a commercial fun time.

10:24I get that. And you could say the same for Christie, which is sort of a dour boxing movie where Sidney Sweeney doesn't look great. You could say the same for Die My Love, which Jennifer Lawrence, Robert Pattinson, big stars. That's Lynn Ramsey, right? Lynn Ramsey has never made a big commercial movie, to my knowledge. Am I forgetting something? She is not, no. And, you know, but there's a Yorgos Lanthimos movie, Begonia, that is struggling to hit$15-20 million in this country. His last movie was Kinds of Kindness, which did not do any business. But before that, it was Poor Things and the Favorite, which did over$100 million.

10:57His movie is Feast or Famine, and I would not describe them as they're not overtly commercial. And I know that this doesn't fit into the smaller movie rubric, but like last year, one of the big movies of fall was the Beetlejuice sequel, right? Beloved IP, rebooted, felt fresh. This year, you have a sequel to Tron, a sequel nobody asked for, right? The one before was already a reboot did like, okay, this one took forever to make. It's like you just, sometimes it's just the movies. Okay, so you're saying it's the movies as number one. I am saying that we have reached a point in windowing where if it's not an event, good luck to you.

11:36Because everybody has been trained to wait. So I think that's a totally valid reason. But you know what makes people leave, even if they know they're going to get it at home? If the movie is a moment, if it's compelling, if people want to go see it. Like last year, remember, the biggest kids movie, I think, of the fall was Wild Robot. Now, not a huge, huge success, but there was a whole controversy because it got released at home. It was the 17-day window with Universal. And even available at home, it still... That was Peabod. It was not on Peacock, but yes. Right. But it still did well in theaters because people knew it was great and they wanted to go see it.

12:11Okay. Yeah. And this fall, there was no kids movie. Trust me. I've been waiting. How do you have months without a kids movie? It makes no sense. It makes no sense. Like, come on. It's malpractice. Like, we are dying for something. It was a freaking rainy weekend here in L.A. scanning the AMC, and it's like there's nothing to take the kids to. Yeah. I get that, like, okay, school is back, and that maybe works for, like, the first two or three weeks of September. But once you get through that, how has Hollywood not figured out that there should be a kids movie at a minimum every month? I know. I don't get it.

12:44What about the release strategy issue? Because all of these movies, not all, but a lot of these movies like Christie and Die, My Love and the Julia Roberts movie After the Hunt, also a tough subject. Yeah. And for some reason, cost$70 million. Like, Jesus Christ, what are we doing? I know it's Luca Guadagnino. I know it's Julia Roberts. But like, come on. They go wide with these movies. Why are these distributors going wide with these very niche movies? I have no idea. Well, I think I know. I think there are a couple factors. First of all, they thought that these press tours would generate enough interest or awareness of the movie where they could get a number.

13:27I think that the platform release doesn't make as much sense when people are expecting the movie to go to streaming very quickly. And you can't build and build and build over weeks and weeks and weeks if the streaming window is coming up pretty quickly. and I think there was a confluence of them over the Veterans Day weekend. I think they thought that without a big studio movie to suck up all the oxygen like a Black Panther or something like Joker, that they would have four days of movie going with the holiday and they could get higher numbers. I think that's what's going on. Do you think we're having this conversation if there were one or two more big studio movies?

14:09Because isn't one of the problems is that there just aren't as many of them for one reason or another. Some of it might even be like Residue of the Strikes a couple years ago. I don't know what it is, but there's just not a lot. Even Christmas, it's like you've got basically two, three, or let's say Thanksgiving to Christmas, which is a huge movie window. You've got like three big titles. Yeah. Avatar, Zootopia, Wicked. What else is coming out that's like guaranteed? No, Warners doesn't even have a movie. Warner's just like took the holidays off. Yeah, I guess you've got the Five Night at Freddy's sequel.

14:44Like that'll do well. But, you know, that's not a huge, huge movie. Yeah, I know. I mean, there's other movies. There's smaller stuff. But you're right. There's nothing on that level. And God, everyone's open avatar is amazing. And I think it probably will be. But like beyond that, like maybe Wicked will make more. You got two of those movies in the box office draft. You need Zootopia and Wicked to do great. Correct. Would it matter as much that some of these smaller movies aren't breaking out? Yes and no. We probably wouldn't be having the conversation because the overall numbers would be fine.

15:16But if there was a billion dollar grocer between September and mid-November, that doesn't solve the endemic problem we have now, which is that small movies are not finding audiences in theaters. And that is a big problem because you know what the studios are just going to do? It's going to get worse. they're not going to see this and say, you know what, we need to strengthen our windows and insist on 45 days. They're going to say, oh, we should just put more of these movies on streaming faster because there we can get some value out of these press tours and out of our campaigns quicker. Well, or they'll say we just shouldn't make these movies.

15:54Yeah, maybe that's true too. Is there one of these movies that looking at it, you feel like that most surprised you that it didn't work. Like, After the Hunt feels like a movie that in another year or in another era might have broken through, right? You've got a stylish director and a movie star that people still kind of care about and some good young talent, but it's almost like a little too intellectual to be a real breakout movie. And it's polarizing. It makes you angry. Yeah. Like, his previous movie, the tennis movie, the name of which I'm blanking on it. I guess he had two movies last year.

16:34Challengers. Yeah, he had Challengers, but then he also didn't he also have the other one? And like one of them worked really, Challengers worked really well and the other didn't because Challengers feels like a commercial movie. Yeah, and it's got Zendaya in it and she's a big star. He had Queer with Daniel Craig. Yeah, but that was never going to do well.

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19:22Severe side effects may include inflamed pancreas or gallbladder problems. Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes before scheduled procedures with anesthesia, if you're nursing, pregnant, plan to be, or taking birth control pills. Taking ZepBound with a sulfonylurea or insulin may cause low blood sugar. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsen kidney problems. Talk to your doctor. Call 1-800-545-5979 or visit zepbounce.lily.com. I'm not surprised Running Man didn't do better. I've said it on the show. I love Glenn Powell. I think he's a great media personality, but I don't think he's a movie star that carries a movie.

20:05And that was old IP that didn't really mean anything to anyone. And it wasn't executed very well. People who saw it, it's fine, but it's not special. It's sort of in that no man's land of $100,$130 million movie that isn't spectacular enough to become an event and also isn't small enough to where you can make your money back. But it brings up the question of press tours, which I do want to talk about because I wrote a piece of my newsletter a week ago about the challenges of these big press tours because I think that they are almost self-defeating at this point. If there is not the right market product fit for the movie, if you are Sidney Sweeney and you're selling a difficult boxing drama and you are everywhere all the time at conferences and events and doing the stunt shows and just being ubiquitous online, it almost works against your movie because people get their fill of you in their feeds and they're not translating that to going to the movies.

21:10And it just raises the question of, are we overdoing these press tours? I don't think that the press tour is to blame. You don't? No. I don't think people are going, okay, I got my fill of Sidney Sweeney. I watch Glenn Powell on Hot Ones. I don't need to see him in The Running Man. I think done right, it should feed into the movie. Yeah, but that's my point, is that it's not done right. There's no connection being made. But again, I think that brings it back. Like the problem is the movie, not the press tour. But what if the press tour could be altered? What if less is more? You know, we'll see with Chalamet.

21:48Chalamet seems to be going full court press for Marty Supreme, and he's very good at this. So maybe it will translate into getting people to see a smaller movie. But I just, you know, Jennifer Lawrence is charming when she's doing these videos online, and it's just not translating into the movie. I think the difference between what Chalamet's doing and what Pattinson and Jennifer Lawrence are doing is that everything Timothy Chalamet's doing, I mean, he's probably the biggest young star right now, but everything he's doing is about Marty Supreme. Like he's decked out in Marty Supreme. He keeps talking about Marty Supreme.

22:19It's all about the movie. Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson are just like doing a lie detector test or doing hot ones. It's more self-promotion and more about them and their chemistry, but it's not about the movie. And that works if the movie is fundamentally about that. Like when Jennifer Lawrence did No Hard Feelings, I think that type of press tour would work better because you're basically going to No Hard Feelings, like have fun with Jennifer Lawrence. It's also hard to talk about a movie about postpartum depression in all of your press. So I understand Timmy has an easier job with Marty Supreme, which is a fun 50s ping pong movie.

22:52But I do think that is a factor. Yeah. And remember, he performed on SNL as Bob Dylan. Who is the audience for some of these titles? for Christie, Sidney Sweeney, tough boxing movie, supposed to be an awards fan. It's like, it's a good movie, but not a great movie featuring an actress that people like for something totally different. Like, I think if she's doing a press tour for a movie that fits what people want to see her in, it does fine. But this is clearly just not the movie people want to see her in. Then that leads to my question, why do it? Because you have to. You have to. I know, that's why they pay you.

23:25They don't pay you to act, they pay you to promote. You have to try to get people to see it. That's one of the big reasons you hire Sidney Sweeney is you think people are interested in her. And Teddy Schwartzman was on this show talking about that. And I think one of the reasons they went wide with that movie was because they realized how much press they could get with Sidney Sweeney. It just doesn't work automatically. The Glenn Powell press tour fits a little more with the movie because it should be like a big commercial movie. But to your point, people probably aren't going just to see Glenn Powell.

23:5516 and change this weekend. Like, not great. But still probably more than some of the other movies we described will make in their entire run. True. But that's a bigger movie. But, you know, I talked to one studio executive who's behind a lot of these marketing campaigns. And he was saying, like, we're essentially paying for these stars to promote themselves and their personal brands. And they are not necessarily making that connection to the movie. Like, this press tour was great for Sidney Sweeney. Whatever endorsement deal she does next, her profile is much higher. and it's interesting it's an interesting question it's like who is the press tour for then is it for the star and there are other businesses that they get out of being bigger and more famous or is it for the movie because the studio is the one paying for it well i'm trying to think prior to chalamet with marty supreme like what was the best star press tour of the year that actually drove people to the movie yeah materialist with dakota johnson and her bizarre comments and like there are people who are good at this.