After months of sleep deprivation for the large circuit of movie theaters due to the coronavirus, Hollywood has woken up in speculation about how soon people will return to the cinema. They got their first nod this weekend via an unlikely test case – a hyper-violent mid-budget thriller starring Russell Crowe.
“Unhinged,” starring the Oscar winner as a maniacal motorist, debuted in about 1,800 theaters and grew to about $ 4 million in the U.S. and Canada from Friday through Sunday, according to studio estimates. The launch marks the first major wide-ranging release in American theaters since March, when virtually the entire sector was abruptly halted amid the escalating public health crisis.
The question now is of course what do the figures actually mean?
“Unhinged,” a $ 33 million R-rated thriller with rave reviews, would never become a blockbuster, and it had almost no competition. In some of the largest movie-going states, including California, New York and New Jersey, indoor theaters remain closed despite the efforts of the cinema lobby, the National Assn. of Theater owners, to convince public officials that cinemas are safe.
Solstice Studios, the new LA-based distributor who gambled on releasing the film during a pandemic, said the weekend numbers marked a strong result and that the film would likely reach $ 8 million on Thursday. Early numbers indicate the film is on track to eventually reach its $ 30 million goal in North American ticket sales, the studio said. Solstice expects the film’s domestic footprint to reach 2,300 theaters next weekend. Including last week’s Canadian gross, ‘Unhinged’ has raised $ 5 million so far.
“We are breathing a sigh of relief,” Mark Gill, president and CEO of Solstice Studios, said by telephone Sunday morning.
Indeed, some in the business will surely take heart from the fact that people are ready to go all the way to the multiplex. In addition, someone had to be the first to test the waters, and theaters were desperate for new movies to watch weeks of small except oldies and low-budget horror movies.
New movies are not expected to post big opening numbers for a while. Instead, analysts and executives say new films are likely to open with relatively low grosses and make ground in the coming weeks as patrons become more comfortable venturing into their local cineplex. That has been the pattern in other countries where theaters are already open, Gill said.
While movies normally make up the bulk of their gross in the first few weeks, followed by a steep drop in business, new movies now have to play significantly longer in the coronavirus era, Gill added.
“This is just like the rest of the world, where slowly and steadily the race is winning,” he said.
Riding theaters in theater have performed too much for “Unhinged,” especially in California, where locations remain closed. The film’s three theaters that grew rapidly were nationwide in California drive-ins in Paramount, Concord and Sacramento, where competition was zero. The films that performed best in the film were the Dallas-Fort Worth area, Houston and Detroit. Theaters in Texas were one of the first in the nation to open their doors.
Shari Hardison, head of Solstice Studios of the U.S. division, said part of the film’s marketing challenge was to make sure the public knew that cinemas were open to businesses in their area.
“It’s mostly about knowing that your theater is open, and that’s where we collaborate with exhibitors like never before,” she said. “The theaters that were open longer saw more pre-sales.”
David A. Gross, head of film consulting at Franchise Entertainment Research, speculated that if the market had been fully open, “Unhinged” would have performed “average shots for an independently distributed thriller.” Continued fears about the spread of the coronavirus were balanced by rising demand for new theatrical films after a long drought, he said.
“For the handful of movies in theaters, the combined effects of the pandemic are currently neutral to slightly positive,” Gross said in an email. “The comparison will change as more and larger movies hit the market.”
A few indie films also test the appetite of the audience. YA adaptation “Becoming on Bathroom Walls,” from LD Entertainment and Roadside Attractions had a $ 462,050 weekend on 925 U.S. screens. IFC Films launched historic biopsy “Tesla,” starring Ethan Hawke with the famous inventor, in 108 theaters for up to $ 42,000 in sales. This weekend, 2,051 North American theaters were open, including 1,661 in the U.S., or about a quarter of existing U.S. locations, according to Comscore.
The bigger test will arrive in the coming weeks as films like Walt Disney Co.’s The New Mutants’ theaters hit August 28, followed by Christopher Nolan’s “Tenet” next week, which is Labor Day weekend. Disney inherited ‘The New Mutants’ through its acquisition of 21st Century Fox last year, and the release was seen as independent of COVID-19. Warner Bros. “Tenet” is widely regarded as the first blockbuster movie. Disney originally intended to release ‘Mulan’ in US theaters this month, but recently bought it instead instead of offering it as a $ 30 premium video-on-demand release via Disney +.
Theaters want to show them that they are ready for business. The Theater Owners Association held a webinar last week with executives from the nation’s largest exhibition companies – AMC, Regal, Cinemark, Marcus and Imax – to explain their national protections for health and safety, called “CinemaSafe.” The measures include limited auditorium capacity, improved cleaning, improved ventilation (whenever possible, in any case) and mandatory masks, although maintaining that latter policy can be challenging in a dark theater.
The Washington-based group said more than 300 companies, including about 2,600 individual theaters that earn 30,000 screens in the U.S., have signed up to the voluntary protocols. Theater owners have taken pains to claim that watching a movie is at least as safe as eating in a restaurant, taking a short plane ride, or going to church.
Most indoor theaters already have strict limits on auditorium capacity, although restrictions vary widely from state to state. Big chains promote sales and encourage social distance by automatically blocking adjacent seats when people buy tickets online. The lack of available seats has not boosted sales points for movies like “Unhinged,” analyst Gross said.
Although the early releases show that there are signs of life at the box office, it will take nine to 18 months for attendance to fully recover, he said.
“This weekend is the first step,” Gross said. “The next few weeks we will see a lot more.”
