SUPERGIRL pre-sales are keeping a surprising good pace after a better-than-expected start last week.
It’s now on track for a $60M-$77M opening weekend.
New update next Monday.
Paul Rudd says being on the set of #AvengersDoomsday made him feel like a kid. "When I look around and see all those actors in their superhero suits, there's something about that that's just cool". Via: @Variety.
Mattel took the wrong lesson from Barbie and just spent nearly $200 million proving it.
Barbie did $1.44 billion, so Mattel raided the toy closet and greenlit films for Polly Pocket, Barney, Uno, Hot Wheels, and Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots. The thesis was simple: own the IP, print the franchise. Masters of the Universe was the first real swing at it. Nearly $200M to produce, plus a marketing budget that on a film this size usually adds $100M+ on top.
It opened to $29.3M domestic, $54.3M worldwide. A movie at this budget needs around $425M globally just to break even, so He-Man has to nearly 8x his opening weekend across the entire run. And theaters keep about half the gross, so the studio actually pocketed roughly $15M of that debut.
The gross is bad. The audience breakdown is worse. Only 5% of opening weekend was under 12. Only 6% was 13 to 17. The single biggest block, 29%, was aged 45 to 54. The people who bought tickets are the people who played with the toy in 1985.
That one data point is the whole problem with the strategy. Mattel sells toys to children. The movie built to mint a new generation of He-Man fans instead drew a reunion of the old one. Nostalgia converts once. Then those buyers age out and there's nobody standing behind them.
Barbie worked because Greta Gerwig made a movie about what the doll means, and it hit a cultural moment no release slate can manufacture on command. Mattel read that result as "the toy is the asset." The toy was never the asset.
This is also the second time He-Man has died on screen. The 1987 version grossed $17.3M on a $22M budget. Four decades and an extra $180 million later, the result rhymes.
SHAMONE!!!
KING OF POP #MichaelJackson’s music biopic #MICHAEL nears 900M mark, ready to beat #BohemianRhapsody next WED as highest grossing music biopic of ALL TIME at Global #BoxOffice!
STRONG 18.8M* overseas on 7th weekend (15.4M from Uni markets, 3.4M from Russia), a -28% drop (vs #BohemianRhapsody’s 20M, -31.5%, #Oppenheimer’s 49.7M, +63.5%), after a $4.5M debut in Russia, for a 543.7M intl. cume over 83 markets, with #Japan on JUN 12 yet to join.
Allied to its 354.3M cume in the U.S., the biopic with a 200M production price tag not including marketing hits a 898M global cume (vs #BohemianRhapsody’s 635M, #Oppenheimer’s 851.3M at same point)
Next THU, it will beat #BohemianRhapsody’s 903.7M Global run as BIGGEST music biopic of ALL TIME & #2 highest grossing biopic overall!
950M+ locked!🔒
1B+ reliant on #Russia & #Japan.
Eyeing a 950M-1B run until we see how how comparable to #BohemianRhapsody’s its performance in #Japan (where BohRhap grossed 115.7M) end up being and how digital release affects legs from next week onwards, if at all.
Get ready for "jaw-dropping action sequences" (Chris Tilly, Dexerto) 🔥 Experience #MastersOfTheUniverse on the big screen, only in cinemas now! Book tickets: https://t.co/UBxYoAPNi4
Play nice, or prepare for a very disappointed look from Grogu.
Get your tickets to Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu. NOW in cinemas and IMAX. https://t.co/zBH2wEtuUz
#ScaryMovie brought in $55M to win the domestic weekend box office, with #MastersOfTheUniverse holding down 2nd place at $29.3M.
What did you watch on the big screen this weekend?
The magic of Masters of the Universe is that for 2 hours, it makes you feel like a kid again. It’s not nostalgic in its lense, but rather nostalgic in its approach. It dares to be a movie that’s earnest and unabashed in an era cynicism.
Andrew Stanton says the main reason he wanted to do ‘TOY STORY 5’ was to explore Jessie in a central role.
“I think a lot of us felt it was kind of overdue… she has the most backstory of any of them.”