It was another week of modest improvement for the New Theatrical landscape (it doesn’t take much to overcome the pandemic disaster of 2020-2022) with the latest arrivals now indicating a full-year output of new features films above the 500 level. 63 of those are forecast to be in the top two boxes (box office receipts of $100 million plus; $25 to $100 million).
While 63 is still well below the pre-pandemic annual output (averaging 94), it is, nevertheless, a dramatic improvement over the 46 films delivered last year.
As for this past week’s action, Paramount’s Scream VI easily opened above the $25 million mark with first week numbers standing at $44.4 million, the directing team of Jon Erwin and Brent McCorkle’s Jesus Revolution grew revenues to the $39.4 million mark, and Creed III now stands at $101.4 million. All good news.
There were three transitional announcements this past week — Knock at the Cabin, 80 for Brady, and, in something of a surprise, Lionsgate Home Entertainment announced that Jesus Revolution would zip to the home entertainment package media marketplace in just 60 days with an Apr. 25 street-date for both DVD and Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack editions.
On the piracy front — driven by pristine masters provided by the multitude of streaming platforms — both Cocaine Bear and Knock at the Cabin saw early release activity (non-sanctioned) on Blu-ray this past week.
Before moving on, here’s one for you.
What is it about Hallmark and Lifetime movies that tend to drive people crazy? Come on, you know the answer, and it doesn’t have anything to do with the sappy content. The endless commercial breaks … an 84-minute cookie-cutter romance is easily stretched into a two-hour time slot.
Make no mistake, there is a huge following for these movies. With that in mind, one enterprising “vendor” (using the Etsy platform — an unchecked flea market circus of piracy these days) stuck their toe in the water last October by taking the most recent Hallmark movie broadcast and editing out all of the commercials and then offering it within hours as a DVD release.
OK. A couple of weeks slipped by and then this source (which we suspect is a long-time player operating under other names out of Las Vegas) offered a second one in mid-November. Two more at the end of that month. Five in December. Twenty-six in January (do you see where this going?). Lifetime was added to the mix and a whopping 75 films from these two television sources (and other random movies in the same category) hit the illicit marketplace during the month of February.
We are only two street-date Tuesdays into the month of March and already 91 new selections have been shipped to eager RomCom fans. Including, for the first time, a Netflix release, writer/director Aline Brosh McKenna’s Your Place or Mine, starring Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher (which began streaming on Feb. 10 and has already been pirated by multiple sources).
While the focus of this area each week is trends in the New Theatrical marketplace, it is worthy to take note of what else is going on out there with similar extracurricular release patterns.
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