September bigger than the summer Box Office
Thanks to IT and more, year-round blockbusters are now official
The narrative that the Summer 2017 box office was an utter disaster just got a new twist; September is coming up roses. The clouds of despair are parting now that theater owners (and their stock owners) can breathe a sigh of relief as blockbusters like IT, Kingsman 2, and Lego Ninjago are bringing audiences back to the theaters.
The relief is felt strongly given just how much August capped summer in a whimper. There wasn’t a single film that debuted in August which made over $100m at the domestic box office. Forget a movie that debuts to over $100m in a weekend, not a single movie could cross that bar. In a day or so, Annabelle 2 will go the distance, but that’s only with a lot of September play to suck up crumbs.
The total for August 2017 is a modest $404m, lower even than January, the graveyard for theatergoing. It’s the lowest August total since 1998. Of course, adjusted for inflation, the $386m total in 1998 would be well over $404m. Make no mistake, this August was a stinker.
On the whole, the summer was pretty tame. It was down about $500m for recent trends and the lowest in over ten years.
There are a lot of reasons for the downturn. First and foremost, traditional money-making franchises like Pirates of the Caribbean and Transformers stumbled. Five installments sounds like saturation to me, but I’m no exec. Audiences also weren’t on board with powerhouse animated sequels. Pixar, the lord and savior of American animation, flopped with Cars 3. Pixar! Well, at least the Minions made another billion…
In addition, movie stars like Dwayne Johnson, Scarlett Johansson, and Will Ferrell also tanked at the helm of comedies, which is especially surprising given the general durability of that genre. I’m less critical of the people who signed off on those films (Although the $69m budget for Johnson’s Baywatch was too high. With 170m worldwide, it would have been a hit could they have wrangled it down to $50m).
The hits — Girls Trip, Baby Driver, The Big Sick — were modest or so big they drowned out all competition (Wonder Woman, Guardians of the Galaxy, Spider-Man Homecoming).
I don’t believe that Rotten Tomatoes scores had too much to do with these failures. Nobody wanted to see The Mummy with Tom Cruise or Valerian with Dane DeHaan. Period. A Best Picture Nomination wouldn’t have swayed the average moviegoer. There just weren’t enough movies this summer that had the ability to hit all four quadrants and bring in the cash.
Which brings us to September. The month started with weak general appeal. One weekend saw no new major releases, which is a remarkable feat. So many overcrowded weekends and studios just left a free one open?
But then IT happened. The $123m opening shattered record upon record. Then, despite school and work days, it kept strong weekday totals and scooped up another $60m for its second weekend.
Luckily, September has even more going for it. Kingsman 2 is tracking for a solid $40m. I also have strong hopes that Lego Ninjago will capitalize on the dearth of family-oriented films in the last two months to do good business. There hasn’t been a real family film since The Emoji Movie or maybe Despicable Me 3 (I’m not sure if Leap! counts).
I don’t predict much success for Flatliners, but I am impressed just how big the marketing campaign has been. As a PG-13 horror film, it has been able to run the trailer in front of a wide variety of movies. Almost everyone who saw IT got a look, so who knows…
Finally, Tom Cruise gets a shot at redemption with American Made. No matter what, the film is doing decently overseas. Lest we forget, the domestic box office is not the only revenue maker for a film studio. It’s true that we want theater owners in the US to thrive or the ecosystem will fail. But if studios can weather tepid turnout with overseas cash that can help keep the movie industry afloat.
In total, these films will push September well over the $404m total of August. It’ll put September in such a position that if the two months flipped, it would have changed the whole narrative of the summer. All of this because September has movies with more anticipation than the likes of Logan Lucky or Kidnap. When a film really flops, like Book of Henry, some times all you can do is admit the truth that it was unwanted. When a movie simply does OK, it’s usually not a mystery either. August’s failure was not a mystery.
None of the success in September comes as a surprise either. We already had Split in January, Get Out in February, Logan and Beauty and the Beast in March, Fast and the Furious 8 in April all proving just how spread out blockbuster season has become. Movies that get hype, get seen.
A blockbuster is a film that a lot people would like to see despite the many temptations of home-viewing. It’s not a film that has a stellar score on Rotten Tomatoes (Logan Lucky), is based on a well-known IP (Captain Underpants), or has a rabid fanbase (The Dark Tower).
A blockbuster is a film that’s more appealing than Netflix. I’m not declaring that Kingsman 2 is going to shatter records. The tracking could collapse or the film could have no legs after opening weekend. But I’m happy that Fox A) conceived of a movie people might want to watch and B) put it in a month where it could flourish. These movie-by-movie choices are more important than maintaining the arbitrary idea that summer should make all the money. Kingsman 2 made sense to greenlight; Kingsman 5 might not be a good choice given recent history. Who cares whether it makes money in August or September as long as it makes money?
In a few years, the summer movie season won’t exist as we know it. There will just be bigger weekends and smaller weekends. Well, assuming we still have a film industry by then. As always, we’ll see…
