..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Kim Voynar
..Michael Wilmington

Mid-Season Box Office Special

Week after week, you are witnessing history… and you probably aren’t even noticing.

It’s been brewing in my head for a while now.  Huge opening after huge opening, week after week.  But isn’t that the story every summer?  The bar goes a little higher.  Records get broken.  Life is good.  Yet I have had this aching feeling, last year too, that there was something not so great about all this success.  Then, Len Klady’s Gross Behavior column of last week gave me the perspective push I really needed.

Len puts the glass ceiling for box office weekends at $200 million overall.  But, as it turns out, we’ve never gotten there on a 3-day weekend, even with the advantage of a holiday Monday.  As far as I can tell, the biggest three-day in history is the $176,894,731 scored on November 24-26, 2000.  The weekend was led not by Harry Potter, who didn’t turn up until 2001, but by the second weekend of The Grinch, the opening of Unbreakable and 102 Dalmatians and holiday holds for Rugrats In Paris and Charlie’s Angels, putting five titles over the $10 million mark in one weekend, a feat that has yet to be duplicated in this record-breaking summer of 2003.

Following that record holder, there is last weekend’s Finding Nemo driven $175 million take;  Nov 15-17, 2002’s Harry Potter 2 driven $173 million weekend;  August 3-5, 2001’s Rush Hour 2 and Princess-Diaries-surprise-opening driven $172 million weekend;  and last summer’s Spider-Man/Attack of the Clones $171 million May 17-19 pull. 

So if only one of these top five weekends took place this summer, why am I concerned?  Because the six-week start of Summer 2003 is the highest grossing six weeks in the history of the film business. 

Why is that bad?

Well, I’m not 100% sure that it is.  But it’s different.  Every change is a double-edged sword.  Many of this year’s changes are likely to change again next year simply because of the quality of the films involved… or are they?

Last year at this time, there were only two films over the $100 million mark, with one more already opened and on the way to 9 figures.  (I’m leaving the Big Fat Greek Wedding anomaly out of this for many good reasons.)  This year, there are four summer films already over $100 million, with at least two, maybe three more on the way.   Last year, the top two summer releases owned 78 percent of the total summer gross at this point.  This year, that figure is only 51%.  But make that number the top four and 2002’s films had 92 percent of the dollars while this year’s top four has 87 percent. 

In other words, the top releases, less than one per week, still own the vast majority of the market. 

And then you get the first really tough question.  Does the number of highly competitive titles cause cannibalization? 

X2 opened by taking 56% of the dollars in the marketplace.  As the kickoff to the summer, that was not surprising, though it was impressive.

In its second weekend, X2 faced only one major release, Daddy Day Care, which took “only” 24% of the dollars out there.  X2 got its 36% of the market.  But the opportunity for Daddy Day Care to do more business, unlike the other five weekends of the summer, was clearly there.  This was the smallest grossing weekend of Summer 2003 by $41 million.  So there was definitely some money left on the table.

Since that second summer weekend, each week has seen a newcomer eat at least a third of the overall dollars going into the marketplace.  Reloaded took 57%.  Bruce Almighty took roughly 44%.  Finding Nemo took 40%.  This weekend, 2 Fast 2 Furious took just about 33%. 

The thing is, at the numbers we are now experiencing, the total market does not have a lot of room to expand.  There is a chance that July 4-6 could push the $200 million mark, though there will be some holiday fatigue, with the holiday weekend release date of choice being July 2.  But we are near saturation.

That brings up the second really tough question.  Can studio counter-programming work in this atmosphere?

Of course, there is work and there is work.  The Italian Job and Daddy Day Care are both some degree of counter-programming and both are working.  On the other hand, one has to wonder whether The Italian Job, which plays like gangbusters with audiences whether critics like it or not, will hit $100 million?  Would Daddy Day Care be closer to the $150 million range in a less heated atmosphere? 

More modest successes are also out there, like Holes and The Lizzie Maguire Movie?  The Rookie did $75 million domestic last March/April/May in near silence.  Is there 20 or 30 million out there for Holes and Lizzie that was left on the table with all the distractions out there? 

And the failures?  Did Down With Love really ever have a chance?  Was there another $5 million - $10 million out there for The In-Laws opening weekend?  Another $5 million for Wrong Turn? 

Is there really any point in putting out a movie that is after anything more than $50 million unless you are going for the $50 million opening? 

2003 is an abstraction in one way… for all of the commercially minded product, very little of it has stunk.  Yeah, yeah, yeah… I know some of you hate some of everything.  But try looking at it like you're a regular person.  Daddy Day Care delivers kid laughs certainly as well as, if not better than, something like Inspector Gadget.  Bruce Almighty is loaded with a mugging, PG-13 Jim Carrey.  And The Italian Job is sleek and simple and fun, light summer fluff.

This year, there really hasn’t been a weekend without a movie.  But can the stakes go even higher next year?  And what happens when the possibility is out there and the films are not as commercially viable?

THE REST OF THE WAY

Next weekend, the summer will have its second worst 3 days to date, with no film likely to open any better than the mid-teens.  So there will be a small break… a very small break. 

And then we have to face what comes next. 

The Hulk will take the June 20 weekend back up into the $150 million range, raging to at least 48% of the green.  Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle seems sure to take at least 40% of  its weekend, leaving around 25% to The Hulk. 

And then, how will this work?  The Top Five over the holiday are T3, Legally Blonde 2, Charlie’s Angels 2, Sinbad and The Hulk.  Surely, this group of five will each draw over $10 million, like the record holding weekend of November 24-26, 2000.  But even if the weekend breaks all records, will there be enough dollars out there for everyone?  How can there be?

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