Weekend Forecast: Hobbs & Shaw

The first weekend of August is upon us as summer’s last bona fide tentpole is set to debut in the form of Universal’s Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw.

The first spin-off from the popular franchise has a number of components in its favor this weekend as the studio expects a domestic start near $60 million. Our long range forecasts had considerably more bullish in recent weeks, with some industry tracking metrics measuring not far behind those of The Fate of the Furious (which debuted to $98.8 million on Easter weekend in 2017).

Still, as has been the case with multiple films this summer, our models have shifted lower to account for what’s become a trend of under-performing titles this summer — relative to tracking, not necessarily overall financial success.

Aside from the brand name and its associated fan base, the biggest advantage here is Dwayne Johnson’s teaming with Jason Statham and Idris Elba. Statham himself helped serve up one of last summer’s biggest surprise hits in The Meg ($45.4 million opening), which similarly provided a late summer, over-the-top, comedic-seasoned action flick.

Although Skyscraper‘s $24.9 million debut one year ago proved Johnson is only human, he’s become one of the most reliable star names in the industry when the right movie comes along. Given the popularity of his Hobbs character in the Fast franchise — which many credit for helping to elevate the series’ box office power starting with 2011’s Fast Five — it’s reasonable to believe much of that fan base will turn out this weekend.

The flip side of that coin, however, is that spin-offs are hit and miss at the box office. This summer’s Men In Black International (effectively a spin-off itself, despite being branded as a sequel) failed to attract much of the audience that made the previous films successful, while last year’s Solo: A Star Wars Story missed out on big expectations preceding it.

Still, those films featured new casts and the latter was a prequel, whereas Hobbs & Shaw technically moves forward the Fast universe’s storyline and brings two of its recently popular characters/actors to the forefront.

The X factors to consider here is how much will fans miss Vin Diesel and crew, and/or will the more intentionally comedic aspects elevate interest after the family drama-centric fare of the main films? Going one step further, will the somewhat-mixed fan reactions to Fate of the Furious two years ago have a splash effect on demand for this entry?

Another point pushing models closer to the conservative end before the weekend had been the lack of any critics’ reviews entering Wednesday morning. That’s not wholly unexpected for a summer popcorn film, but the franchise had a enjoyed a string of four straight fresh-rated sequels. That being said, a sample of 37 reviews was published just before this report’s writing, and the early 76 percent score is encouraging enough given this isn’t the type of film that needs a high critic approval to win over the target audience. In fact, it could prove to be a largely critic-proof movie.

On social media, the film has leveraged its franchise name and Johnson’s star power to solid effect. Hobbs & Shaw has charted in our weekly top five social footprints across Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook on a frequent basis this summer, indicating broad moviegoer appeal. The Fast & Furious franchise page itself has over 50 million Facebook followers.

Meanwhile, exhibitors seem very encouraged by the action-comedy’s potential with Showtimes Dashboard data indicating theaters have booked approximately 36 percent more shows than John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum ($56.8 million opening back in May) and 24 percent more than Mission: Impossible – Fallout ($61.2 million last July). Times are still being added, as well.

Premium large format screens will be a factor in projections as well since Disney’s The Lion King continues to dominate many of them, but theaters have just started adding IMAX shows in the eleventh hour this week. This is a later move than typical for a high profile release, making it a challenge to determine what kind of impact that will have on forecasting models.

Not to be forgotten, either will be any possible impact from Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood. That pic is attracting a predominately older male audience — likely crossing over with at least some fraction of Hobbs‘ target crowd.

Last, but certainly not least, the Fast franchise’s audience makeup could be crucial to indicating the potential upside of this spin-off with diverse appeal to not just action fans but also families and moviegoers of Hispanic origin. For example, The Fate of the Furious drew an even 50/50 split of audiences under and over the age of 25 on opening weekend, while 26 percent of its audience makeup identified as Latinx, 19 percent African-American, and 11 percent Asian (per Universal reports).

Ultimately, where expectations had long been for this to behave like a Fast & Furious sequel, it’s increasingly possible that a less front-loaded opening could be in store — particularly if walk-up business proves strong throughout the weekend, which has been seen with previous franchises like John Wick and Jurassic World.

With a lack of direct competition for the remainder of summer and a popcorn film that might turn out to be a crowd-pleaser, the runway for staying power certainly exists. All those elements are noted before even considering overseas play, which is expected to be strong given the franchise’s history and the international appeal of the film’s stars.

Hobbs & Shaw
Opening Weekend Range: $58 – 78 million

Top 10 vs. Last Year

Boxoffice projects this weekend’s top ten films will increase approximately 26 to 36 percent from the same frame last year. On that weekend, Christopher Robin, The Spy Who Dumped Me, and The Darkest Minds debuted as part of an overall $119.7 million top ten market.

Weekend Forecast

Film	Distributor	3-Day Weekend Forecast	Projected Domestic Total through Sunday, August 4	% Change from Last Wknd
Hobbs & Shaw	Universal	$70,000,000	$70,000,000	NEW
The Lion King (2019)	Disney	$38,900,000	$428,900,000	-49%
Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood	Sony / Columbia	$21,000,000	$81,000,000	-49%
Toy Story 4	Disney / Pixar	$7,600,000	$410,400,000	-27%
Spider-Man: Far From Home	Sony / Columbia	$7,500,000	$359,800,000	-40%

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Alex Edghill contributed to this report

Forecasts subject to change as location counts are finalized before Friday.

Contact us for information about subscribing to Boxoffice’s suite of forecasting and data services.

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ArcLight Presents “Prepare to Scare” Film Series Curated by It: Chapter Two Director Andy Muschietti

PRESS RELEASE

In anticipation of the upcoming release of New Line Cinema’s It Chapter Two, ArcLight Cinemas has partnered with director Andy Muschietti to curate a film series showcasing his favorite and most influential horror films.  “ArcLight Presents… PREPARE TO SCARE” will kick off on July 29 in all ArcLight theaters nationwide and will include six classic films handpicked by Muschietti: Poltergeist, The Fearless Vampire Killers, Fright Night, The Thing, An American Werewolf in London, and Omega Man.

Says Kevin Holloway, vice president, ArcLight Cinemas Film Marketing & Operations: “Andy Muschietti is a visionary filmmaker who has only just begun to terrify us. He dug deep inside our minds with It, helming what became the most successful horror film of all time. Now, we’re delving deep inside his mind, collaborating on this very special screening series. Andy has picked some of his favorites, which we are excited to showcase on the big screen for ArcLight audiences nationwide as we eagerly await the highly anticipated It: Chapter Two.”

It: Chapter Two opens nationwide on September 6. All screenings of the film will be followed by an exclusive “ArcLight Stories” interview with Muschietti.

For complete schedule and more information about the film series, please check here.

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The Lion King Set to Become Disney’s Fourth 2019 Release to Cross $1 Billion Worldwide on Tuesday

Disney announced this morning that their remake of The Lion King is poised to cross the $1 billion threshold after 19 days of release at the global box office. The film had earned $999 million through Monday, July 29.

The studio’s press release and current territory breakdowns:

With an estimated $999M worldwide through July 29, Disney’s The Lion King will cross the $1B mark today in just its 19^th day of release. Along with Aladdin, it’s the second release from Disney Live Action to reach the $1B threshold this year and the sixth ever to do so. It is The Walt Disney Studios’ fourth billion dollar release this year.

Preceded by a strong debut in China where it earned nearly $100M in its first week, The Lion King debuted day-and-date globally July 19 with $446.1M. Bolstered by an A CinemaScore, it opened with $191.8M domestically, the eighth biggest debut of all time, and continues to be #1 at the daily box office earning an estimated $361M to date. Internationally, it has brought in $638M with major markets Japan (Aug. 9) and Italy (Aug. 21) still to open.  The Lion King is the second highest release of 2019 in EMEA and is the highest grossing release from Disney Live Action in Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Colombia, Peru, Central America, Trinidad, Uruguay, and Paraguay.

The Lion King estimated results for Monday Jul 29
Dom:	$9.1M (12% of weekend)
Int’l:	$21.8M (15% of weekend)
GLOBAL:	$30.9M (14% of weekend)
The Lion King cumulative performance to date:
Dom GBO:	$360.9M
Int’l GBO:	$638.5M
GLOBAL GBO:	$999.4M
International cume to date by territory

 

	Cume to Date
China	$115.8M
UK	$48.0M
Brazil	$44.2M
France	$42.2M
Mexico	$38.4M
Russia	$33.2M
Australia	$29.2M
Korea	$29.2M
Germany	$24.1M
Spain	$22.0M
India	$20.1M
Netherlands	$13.2M
Argentina	$9.4M
Philippines	$8.5M
Indonesia	$8.0M
Other	$153.0M
Total	$638.5M

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Fantasia Gets a Southern Gothic Standout in Blood on Her Name

“Ozark” star Bethany Anne Lind turns in one of the standout performances at this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival in Blood on Her Name, helmed by debut feature director Matthew Pope and written by Pope and David Thompson. Blood On Her Name tracks the consequences of small town garage owner Leigh’s (Lind) killing—in self-defense—of an attacker who, in the way of things, is connected to some rather dangerous people in Leigh’s community. What follows is not a pulse-pounding bloodbath but a tense, Southern Gothic-tinged crime drama. Following the film’s world premier at Fantasia, Blood on Her Name has earned rightful comparisons to Jeremy Saulnier’s Blue Ruin in how it takes a concept right out of genre cinema and instead plays it out with a real-life protagonists—with all the flaws and difficult decisions that implies.

Blood on Her Name has the same basic concept as a lot of revenge movies, but it’s lacking the high-energy action that a lot of those movies would have. It feels very real-life. Did you set out to subvert typical crime drama conventions?

Matthew Pope: I don’t know if we were trying to subvert anything. We were trying to tell a story that would resonate with us. But, in particular, we love films that have a mix of genre and character elements. It’s been incredibly humbling to see Blue Ruin referenced in response to the film. We’ve called our projects “character pieces wrapped in genre film,” and [Blue Ruin is] a brilliant example of a film that did that. But I don’t know that we were trying to subvert, specifically.

Don Thompson: It’s along the edge of that. We were trying to take some of the fiction out of the genre. “What would this be in real life?” And chase that down and add in the layers of moral questioning and guilt and what builds these choices. For us, that’s more interesting than somebody slinging a gun. I love a good gun-slinging film. We just wanted to do something different.

I enjoyed that she made decisions in the film that—they may have seemed like bad decisions, but they weren’t wrong decisions, if that makes sense. They fit her character.

MP: She made decisions that were the right decisions for her top priority, which factored in things that sometimes characters in movies don’t factor in, like their conscience and what they can live with.

A lot of times it’s just, “Character makes X decision because we need Y to happen in the next scene.”

DT: We tried to stay away from that sort of stuff like the plague, because nothing will break the illusion of reality quicker than the writers’ heavy hand guiding the plot forward. All of the plot things that happened we tried to base out of her character and things she’s struggling with.

There’s a lot of backstory to what Leigh’s going through, but the script is still very spare—you’re not out there putting everything on the page in the first 15 minutes. Is that something you had to work on throughout the scriptwriting process, winnowing away all that extra stuff?

MP: Yeah, for sure. You don’t want to be boring. You’re trying to find that line where it’s grounded and human and yet still a movie. It’s still a story that an audience can be engaged with and has a reason to care about. We were always navigating that balance.

In particular, once we got past the script stage, there was a constant amount of navigating that had to occur with each new collaborator that we’d bring onto the project, because it was really easy for people to make their own assumptions about what kind of movie it was. How genre, how gun-slinging. And so there were regularly conversations with people, where it’s like, “No, let’s make sure we’ve making the same kind of movie.”

That’s one of the things that was great about working with Don. Because from day one we developed the story together and then wrote together, I knew that there was always someone else there who knew exactly what the movie was supposed to be. And I knew that we were trying to make the same movie. You want, as a director, to take notes from wherever they come. A good note can come from anywhere. But you especially pay attention when you know the note is from somebody who sees the same movie in their head that you see in your head. And that was one of the things that was really great about having that collaboration.

DT: I would add that, even in the scripting stage, we knew that we were casting Bethany. So it was easier. We had a good sense—especially Matt—of the kind of empathy she’s capable of, just as a human being, and what she can get out there on screen. So we felt really comfortable making those choices and getting those things into the script. Whereas I don’t know if we would have been so focused on that if we didn’t already have that piece.

You knew she could pull it off.

DT: We knew she could pull it off, and we knew what we knew that the film would be great with her doing it that way. So it took a little bit less winnowing and less wandering than we might otherwise have had.

Often the film that the writers initially conceive of is wildly different from what ends up on the screen. But it sounds like that wasn’t the case here.

DT: That was actually one of the really cool things. We had an absolutely brutal production. We shot in Atlanta, basically in thunderstorm season. So there were constant setbacks. During one of the setbacks, we were all sitting and waiting out the rain, and Matt did a little documentary along the way, asking, “How is this different than the movie you thought we were going to make?” And everyone said, “This is the movie we thought we were going to make.” It was hard, but I don’t think it ever deviated from what we wanted it to be.

“The thunderstorms—I could have done with a little less of that.”

MP: I think it rained on 18 out of our 23 days of principal shooting. There’s a lot of rain in the movie.

It’s very atmospheric.

MP: But none of it is real rain! We knew that we needed a lot of rain, but in the South rain comes with lightning. So we would be standing on a forced break for lightning, for safety purposes, thinking “Man, this would look beautiful if we could just shoot right now.”

In Blue Ruin, the movie is commenting on the character’s perceived masculinity, or lack thereof. It very much tackles idea of what it “means” to be a man. In Blood on Her Name, Leigh is mother, and so much of character is rooted in trying to protect her son. Was that always a part of the story you wanted to tell?

MP: We really tried to prioritize having every character acting out of their interests in protecting the people that they loved. And in this case it was typically all family members, parents and children. All the characters come from a little bit of a different perspective. Some of them have things that they are willing to do that others wouldn’t do or things they wouldn’t do until certain times. But they’re all coming from a similar motivation of, “I will do what I have to do to protect the people that I care about.” Family dynamics make that kind of story really interesting. For whatever reason, good or bad, people have a different standard for what lines they’ll cross when they think they’re protecting their family. And that is definitely part of what made it compelling.

You get a small town Southern feel from the clannishness of it, almost. Everything is rooted in the family and the community.

MP: When you’re in smaller towns, you don’t have as many options for community connections. This was set in one of those places where we saw it as following the trajectory of a lot of smaller towns that have seen those ties break down. And the things that connected people before, whether it was you civic organizations, religious organizations, etc.—when those start to go away, you don’t have much left besides family a lot of times.

DT: It’s the final support system, and in this film it’s absolutely frayed.

I’ve heard, here at the fest, that male critics and female critics are approaching this film differently. Obviously, men and women can and do like it, but what I’ve been told is that maybe it’s resonating more powerfully with female critics?

MP: Could be. I don’t begrudge anyone their opinion on a film. There are films that everybody loves, and I’ll look at it like, “Eh. I don’t get it. I don’t see it.”

We felt like there was something that would be interesting about having the kind of story that’s often told with a male protagonist seen from a different point of view. This could’ve been a father and son kind of story. But the mother/son dynamic felt really compelling. It was fun to explore that. These are characters who aren’t intending to end up in this situation. None of them want to be in this situation. There’s not really a classic antagonist. But they all find themselves there, doing what they have to do.

That’s one of the things I was wondering: Did this always have a female protagonist?

MP: In the early conversational stages, we were looking at it from all angles. But there was a component where we suspected, because of our relationship with Bethany, that this was something that she might be interested in. Whatever other options were out there, it was hard to avoid thinking, “Bethany in this role would be so much fun. She would do such a great job with it.” That kind of shed the other options for us. So it’s not that we ever really made a decision, “Do we want a male protagonist or a female protagonist?” We wanted to work with Bethany.

Sometimes people are more comfortable with a female protagonist if she’s kicking ass.

DT: And I think that’s cool. I think those movies are great. That’s not the story we wanted to tell. We wanted to dimensionalize the role and give something super meaty for Bethany to bite into. And she did. And I think, to your point, Bethany’s a mom. So some of those scenes were just brutal on her trying to get through. She brings such empathy to the role. The connection between her and Jared Ivers, who plays [her character’s son] Ryan, echoes through her thoughts about her own children. She brought a whole different layer of humanity that we really wanted to see.

MP: I like movies where there’s guys kicking ass and girls kicking ass. But I also don’t know why a movie that’s more complicated and has a character who makes all manner of choices—some good choices and bad choices, some right choices, some wrong choices. It’s fun to see men and women in those roles as well.

I know distribution is still up in the air for this one—but would you like to get it picked up for the big screen?

MP: Obviously, a lot of that is out out of our control. We understand that the nature of the world right now makes it increasingly difficult to justify theatrical releases for independent films. And I wish that wasn’t the case. That said, if these two screenings of have reinforced anything for me, it’s that movies play differently in that environment. It’s a different experience. The nature in a film like this of sitting on the edge of your seat, feeling the tension of the crowd, is not something that you can replicate when you’ve got your laptop playing while you do your taxes. Like I said, that’s outside of our control to a certain extent. But I certainly would love for people to be able to experience what we’ve experienced.

DT: To your point, with the communal aspect of it, there’s the watching of the film that’s a totally communal aspect, where you’re feeling the tension on all the people around you, which is amazing. But there’s also the walking out of the theater thing. We intended to craft, from the very beginning, a film that left you thinking and left you kind of in a tough emotional space. Having the ability to talk to people after that in a natural way is really cool. You don’t get that when you just stream it and sit by yourself in a room watching it on your computer.

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In the Arena: NAC Salutes Lexington Center’s Brian McMillin with Mickey Warner Award

Anyone who works in the movie exhibition business knows that today’s operational challenges are greater than ever, especially with so many complexes offering more than a dozen screens, a selection of VIP, large-format, and 4D auditoriums, event cinema programming, and tempting dine-in menus.

But consider the challenges at an operation like the Lexington Center in Lexington, Kentucky, whose venues include the Rupp Arena, the Lexington Convention Center, and the Lexington Opera House. Attractions there run the gamut from concerts by Paul McCartney and Garth Brooks to productions of West Side Story and An American in Paris to University of Kentucky Men’s Basketball to the Kentucky Reptile Expo and “The Price Is Right Live.”

An essential member of the executive team is Brian McMillin, concessions manager since 1997. McMillin will be honored with the National Association of Concessionaires’ 2019 Mickey Warner Award, which is presented each year at the NAC Concession & Hospitality Expo to an outstanding leader in the non-theater concessions industry. Named after the late Mickey Warner, father of the NAC Concession Manager Certification Program, the honor for McMillin is especially appropriate, since he currently serves as treasurer of NAC and is a past regional vice president. He earned NAC’s concession manager certification in 1996, and completed his executive concession manager certification in 2007. He has been with the Lexington Center since 1990, when he was hired as assistant manager.

For McMillin, the most intense service demands are at the Rupp Arena. “We do more bar and snack stuff at our performing-arts venue, and for our exhibit halls we are a little more laid back—flea markets, trade shows, things like that. But in the arena you’ll get 23,000-plus people for U.K. basketball and 15 to 18,000 for some really big concerts. It’s very time sensitive. At a U.K. game, you’ve got 23,000 people lined up at concession stands all over the facility with like five minutes before tip-off, and you’re wondering how are you going to get through all these folks. And 10 minutes later, everyone is inside watching the game. And then at intermission you’ve got 20 minutes. Same thing. You’ve got a ton of people out and, again, they’re lined up as far as the eye can see. And then, shortly after the second half commences, nobody.

“One of our big challenges here has been that, back when the building was designed, nobody thought freshmen at a college basketball game was a big thing. It was more about watching the games. We’ve seen that turn to facilities having bigger, more expanded menus. We have never gotten into any type of fire-suppression exhaust system—we are very much ‘heat and eat here’ across the board. About 20 years ago, you started seeing more upscale concessions, especially in buildings with basketball or hockey at the major league level. And you see that starting to creep into colleges as well when they’re building newer facilities. And that has also crept into the theater end of things with your Alamo Drafthouses and Movie Taverns. There’s a large contingent of smaller regional and independent folks that may have a hard time competing. They just got done moving to digital, and now to compete with some of these guys, you’ve got to have something a little more than just popcorn and soft drinks. But there’s a lot of heat-and-eat stuff out there. It doesn’t require huge capital investments.”

McMillin recalls, “I was assistant manager, and then I took over when the manager retired a little over 20 years ago. We’ve gone through one major renovation where we increased our points of sale by about 20 percent. That requires more personnel to supervise, manage, hire, and find, and bigger, more complex points of sale. Then, in an effort to expand what we were able to offer, we started partnering with folks like Chick-fil-A, some barbecue places, Gold Star Chili, and a few others to get higher-perceived-quality name-brand items. They had a level of expertise that we don’t possess. We do 60 to 80 arena events a year, and that makes it really hard to find people if that’s all you’re doing. It’s very hard to find people that actually do food service, because we are a small college town. I mean, it’s not that small anymore, but the big high point has always been U.K. basketball or events in the Rupp Arena that drive people into the city. While there are a ton of restaurants, bars, and other establishments in the area that are utilizing all the really good waitstaff in that particular industry, they can’t take 40, 50 nights off from their real gig and come here, because they’ll lose that slot. So we rely on a lot of people for whom this is their second or first part-time job to go with their full-time, 40-hour job. We have schoolteachers, we’ve got people in the hospital industry and other office environments who come down here for U.K. basketball for four or five hours in the evening or rock concerts, and it’s quite the challenge.”

Unlike movie theaters, where so many teenagers get their first professional work experience, “my median employee age is in the 50s,” McMillin notes. “We have a lot of folks who are retired or empty nesters who are picking up money for their kids’ college or added insurance when they start driving. And it’s a big social thing for a lot of the folks—they meet people here. They’ll be retired from their regular gig and still come down here and work events. So it skews older, which makes it challenging to hire younger folks. Our younger folks are about 20 and up, because we serve alcohol. Legally, we can hire [younger] people, but it really pigeonholes them into what they can do. And what we find with some of the younger kids is they don’t hang out very long, because it’s so hit or miss.”

Food service at an arena requires a certain temperament, McMillan observes. “There’s a lot of hurry up and wait, because you’re setting everything up for this huge, intense rush in traffic and then it dies for an hour and you’re kind of reloading. It’s very hard to keep people constantly engaged during that stage of the game. During University of Kentucky basketball, people go, Hey, I must go and check out some of the game. And if it’s enthralling enough, you might not see them again!” he says, laughing. “At movie theaters you have all these repeat showings and it’s probably a little easier for somebody to sneak in and watch. But here it’s a little challenging. We tell folks when they come here that at least they’re going to get to be a part of it, they’ll get to hear the concert, or they’ll be able to say they were at Rupp Arena when the University of Kentucky won and went on to win the national championship.”

Unlike many other entertainment destinations, the Lexington Center faces some practical limitations, McMillan readily admits. “We’re a 45-year-old building, and our concession stands are very fixed and there’s not much we can do to add. It’s an old concourse design, so the bigger the event, the fewer portables we can actually put out because of the travel space and exiting capability. We don’t have any dining areas—it’s all stuff you have to be able to take in and basically put on your lap. We have to bear that in mind. We can’t get too complex with food, because the way our seating is set up, if somebody’s sitting in the middle, everybody’s got to stand up to let him through. So it’s very challenging. I really applaud what theaters are doing—plenty of aisle space you can walk through.”

But change is coming to the Lexington Center with the construction of a new convention center. It will partially open toward the end of the year and be completed in fall 2021. “It’s going to include three clubs for the University of Kentucky and us to utilize,” McMillian notes. “They’ll all have a finer dining type thing where you come in a couple of hours before the game and get more restaurant-quality food, a little deeper menu. And that may actually help us out a little bit, because then we may be able to reduce some of our reliance on trying to cater to as many people with hamburgers and barbecue chicken.” McMillan estimates the new clubs will take several thousand people off that crowded concourse.

Asked about his most memorable arena events, McMillan responds, “The Paul McCartney concert probably takes the cake. That was not too shabby. We did a two-day run of Garth Brooks shows, two shows each, which were nearly sold out, which created a huge infrastructure problem in the city of Lexington because you’re going to park 18,000 people for a six o’clock show, and then park another equal-size number three hours later and flip the building in between. And Mr. Brooks likes to do the encores, so everybody’s kind of sweating. But we were able to pull it off. And the first University of Kentucky basketball games, although that was 29 years ago, still stick out in my mind. When you get 23,000 people teeming into downtown Lexington into this little block and into the arena, it’s pretty memorable.”

He also cites an annual show called “Winter Jam.” “It’s a non-ticketed event, a Christian rock music show. The kids get here at six in the morning and stand in line because it’s all general admission, and we’ll have 12 to 15,000 by about three o’clock in the afternoon. We line them up from the front door out into our back parking lot, and they take up about a third of the lot. And since they’ve stood in line all day, they come to eat!”

McMillin has been active at NAC from the beginning, and he has high praise for the organization and its annual Expo. “The NAC has been just been fantastic. I started attending as an assistant manager and I learned pretty quickly about the educational programs, the networking, the trade show. I could justify going because I could always pick up a new method of doing something or a new product, so that it would easily pay for itself. There was always a return on the investment in it. I took their certified concessions manager course. It helped me to be able to train my assistants. After that, I got the executive concessions management certificate. And that was great because I learned a little bit more about what goes on beyond my little world. They always have great speakers and great programming at the convention. And the networking is fantastic because you can meet with a bunch of people that are as crazy as you are and share a common experience, and you realize you’re not the only guy in the world that’s got these issues. It could be some theater folks or parks-and-recreation folks with similar types of needs and problems or experiences.”

He adds, “Being from the convention side, I know what it takes to put on one of those shows. It’s interesting to see how everything comes off so seamlessly for everyone in attendance at the NAC Expo.”

McMillin says he regularly attends films at his local Regal and Malco theaters and enjoys the experience. “The larger chains are doing a really great job with how they’re presenting everything. I think it’s fantastic. But they just need to keep pushing it. I think for even the smaller guys, they need to take a look at upping their game in the food end of things. If you can get somebody to buy pizza or a new item, it’ll pick you up a little bit of extra money. It provides a little more incentive for somebody to not have to make a second stop during the moviegoing experience. But nothing beats getting to see a movie on the big screen—there’s always that. As long as there’s a great presentation of it, it’s fantastic. I love going—it’s a much more special event now than it used to be.”

So what does this veteran concessions executive snack on when he’s at the movies? “Popcorn, without a doubt. That’s how I measure a good movie theater. My popcorn plant for the arena is just across the hall from my office—I make a run and get a bowl all day. And when I go to a movie theater, my wife and I will get the popcorn and two-drink special and it’s great to be able to say, ‘Well, gee, this tastes like it was popped yesterday—or that’s popped fresh.’ That, and my other big one is Twizzlers. I get them because it’s a nice sized pack and it’s not something I’ll go through really quick. I did the Reese’s Pieces and the M&Ms, and they’re gone before the pre-show is finished.”

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Bad Boys: Claudio Giovannesi’s Piranhas Goes inside the Teenage Crime Gang that Ruled Naples

It’s shocking but true: In central Naples, recent crime activities—extortion, drug-dealing, blood vendettas—have been ruled not by veteran mafiosi but by an ambitious band of teenage boys. That brazen young gang’s rise inspired Piranhas, the first novel by Roberto Saviano, author of Gomorrah, the acclaimed nonfiction exposé of Naples’s criminal underworld that became an equally celebrated 2008 film by Matteo Garrone.

Now, Piranhas has become a feature film directed by Claudio Giovannesi, scheduled for U.S. release by Music Box Films on August 2. The movie made its world premiere at the 2019 Berlin Film Festival, where Giovannesi, Saviano, and Maurizio Braucci shared the Silver Bear for Best Screenplay. The cast is made up of nonprofessionals, headed by charismatic discovery Francesco di Napoli as the calculating yet naïve leader of the scruffy crew. In subtle increments, these boys evolve from wide-eyed strivers looking to make enough money to impress girls and afford bottle service at the local nightclub to amoral hotheads embracing a life of corruption and violence.

We met with Giovannesi the day after Piranhas screened as the opening-night attraction of Film at Lincoln Center’s annual Open Roads series of new Italian films. Our thanks to his adept translator, Lilia Pina Blouin.

How did you find your actors?

The casting was the most important part of the film, because we actually saw 4,000 kids in order to select eight. What we were after were three things in particular. On the one hand, we wanted kids that were very familiar with the neighborhood, who had firsthand knowledge of the issues that the film was about. And then we wanted kids with acting talent, because it wasn’t about just memorizing lines and spitting them out—they needed to be kids that didn’t perceive the presence of the camera. And then we needed innocent faces, because the film is about the loss of innocence. We wanted that to be at the forefront.

I understand they never saw the complete screenplay. Would you give them just the day’s scenes?

Yes. Because they didn’t need to act the scenes, that needed to live them. Day by day they would discover what would happen. The structure is a very simple one, a rise-and-fall story, so they experienced the rise part with the euphoria, the ambition, the joy of success and the birth of friendships, and then the fall part. Meanwhile, they were becoming friends in real life. So when they discovered what was happening, they would say, “Oh no, really?” The friendship was real, the love was real, and they only found out how the movie was ending when it ended.

The performances in the film are so natural. Can you talk about working with these young nonprofessionals and how you’ve coaxed these performances out of them?

The objective of each scene is for it to come off as authentic. And there are techniques for that. The first thing I taught them is not to feel the presence of the camera, to forget the camera. It is important for us to stick to the authenticity of the feelings, not the words as such. The words, if we don’t use them, it’s even better. It’s better for the feelings to be at the forefront and to come across. And in order to do that, we do many, many takes. Also, it was very helpful for them to shoot in chronological order.

So Roberto Saviano was OK with that process of not sticking strictly to the script?

Well, we did stick to the script. It’s just there was more freedom in terms of the dialogue. But, having said that, we wrote the dialogue with them [to capture] the way they speak, their language. And actually, in Italy it was released in a subtitled version because they speak in the Neapolitan dialect. Roberto, when we moved on with the project, became a co-screenwriter, and he had a lot of respect for my choices.

So at least in terms of the dialogue, it was a fluid thing that changed day to day …

Yes, they were by all means fluid, they could change [the words]. What couldn’t change were the objectives of the scene, the conflicts that the characters were going through. As far as the dialogues were concerned, more than changing them I tried to cut them, because what mattered to me was not the words as such but the looks, the gazes, the relationships of the characters.

Do you have a personal connection to this material?

No, not at all, because I live in Rome. I had to get to know that area of Naples, so I got a place there and I lived there for two years. I had to get to know those kids, because that is a place where, for a lot of kids of that age, that life is the only option. When I was 14 years old, my issue was that I needed to choose what high school to go to, whereas they have to go to work in a place where there are no real jobs, and therefore their option is to make a lot more money with a criminal career. And this is not just in Naples; it happens in a lot of places in the Western world.

Did you know Roberto Saviano beforehand?

Yes, because I had directed two episodes of the “Gomorrah” TV series. That’s when I met him. However, that’s a very different kind of product. It’s a genre TV series, a noir crime story. But back then, he offered me his book and we decided that I would work in a different way, focusing on the fragility and the feelings part of these kids’ experience. He welcomed that approach and that’s how we moved forward.

So is that highlighted more in the film than it is in the novel?

Yes, that is the main shift between the book and the movie. The film is about fragility, it’s about the characters’ feelings, whereas the book was more about the rise to power, the power struggle. We wanted to work on feelings and emotions and place that at the center.

What do you hope audiences will take away from this film?

This film puts human beings at the center. Empathy with the characters for me is the main goal. I didn’t want to make a movie about criminals, but about kids, about teenagers. And so it places empathy with the kids’ feelings at the forefront—these characters can be anyone’s kids or brothers. When the viewer walks out with that kind of empathy in them, it means that I’ve conveyed what I wanted to convey.

There are only three films in the Open Roads series that have U.S. distributors. What does it mean to you that American audiences are going to see this film in theaters?

It’s a great satisfaction for me. I’m really into American independent films. I admire filmmakers such as Scorsese and Cassavetes—they were fundamental to my upbringing. And therefore, being part of that is a great honor. This can be considered a European product because it’s a co-production with France, and you don’t get enough European cinema in this country, so it’s great. 

Can you talk a little bit about the climate in Italy for filmmakers? How difficult is it?

The problem in Italy is that we have issues with culture as such. We’ve had 20 years of a government, the Berlusconi government, that saw culture as an enemy. When people are not educated and culture isn’t held in high regard, people become easier to control. Our big problem is that the value of culture is not recognized and it is not supported by institutions. Therefore, cinema has been deeply affected in a negative way by this attitude—only comedies were seen as something that could be shown, because only entertainment mattered. We need to get out of this frame of mind, and it is vital for us to create cinema that can be relevant, not just for Italy, but for Europe and in this case for the rest of the world as well.

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Arts Alliance Media Enhances Screenwriter TMS with Eco-Friendly Automation and Brand New Features

PRESS RELEASE —

London, July 30, 2019 – Arts Alliance Media (AAM) today announces the release of new features and integrations to the world’s most widely used Theatre Management System (TMS), Screenwriter. The latest version of the state-of-the-art TMS provides AAM’s exhibitor customers with advanced automation options and support for the newest projectors and technology in digital cinema.

“AAM actively develop and improve Screenwriter to ensure it continues to streamline essential operational services for cinemas, while also providing them with a platform for further innovation.” noted Mark Kamiyama, Head of Global Sales at AAM parent company Luxin-Rio International. “We are proud to provide a robust, user-friendly system that allows our customers all around the world to continually drive efficiency and innovation.”

Screenwriter is the most powerful, flexible, and widely deployed TMS in the world, and manages millions of screenings per year on over 45,000 cinema screens. It enables cinema staff to schedule features, trailers, and advertisements, monitor screens, and control playback all from one intuitive interface. Additional features and functionality available from the latest release include:

Eco-friendly automated show stop mode

Screenwriter can now automatically shut off the projector lamp for shows where no tickets have been sold. Through Screenwriter’s existing integrations with all major Point of Sale (POS) systems, it can access a feed of real-time ticket sales, and send instructions to the projector at a preconfigured time to shut the lamp off if no tickets have been sold. This represents a significant energy saving for exhibitors, as projectors can be run for hundreds of hours to empty auditoriums every year.

Show trimming

The latest version of Screenwriter benefits from intelligent automations that keep shows running on schedule, and help cinemas provide their audiences with great experiences at every screen. The TMS can now dynamically remove content from the beginning of the pre-show in order to prevent any scheduled shows from overlapping, and minimise disruption to audiences.

Dual KDM ready

Screenwriter has added support for dual KDM (Key Delivery Message) ingestion, which is sometimes necessary for premium screenings. Certain object based audio formats, for example, are encrypted separately from the DCP (Digital Cinema Package) and require a second KDM to unlock the audio on an Outboard Media Block (OMB) for use.

Projector and server integrations

To afford exhibitors with the greatest flexibility when making hardware decisions, AAM maintain Screenwriter’s compatibility with all the latest cinema hardware, and have recently added support for:

– Barco Series 4 projectors. Read more about the integration.
– GDC SR1000 server

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Fox Theatres Founder Richard A. Fox Dies at Age 90

Richard A. Fox, founder of Reading, Pa.-based Fox Theatres and onetime president of the National Association of Theatre Owners, passed away on July 24 at the age of 90. 

Fox launched Fox Theatres in 1957 with the opening of the Sinking Spring Drive-In, billed as “the world’s largest Cinemascope screen.” Over the next 33 years he grew the regional circuit to 25 locations with over 100 screens and more than 1,000 employees.  At its peak, Fox Theatres was one of the largest independently owned movie theater companies in the United States. Fox brought modern movie theaters to suburban markets throughout Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and Florida. 

Fox was elected president of the National Association of Theatre Owners in 1984, and tackled issues ranging from contentious trade practices to competition from new technologies. He was the last volunteer president of NATO.

Born in Buffalo, NY, Fox attended the University of Buffalo and served in the U.S. Army as a staff sergeant. He was a former board member of the Jewish Federation of Reading, B’nai B’rith, Variety Club, and the Will Rogers Motion Picture Pioneers Foundation.

A resident of Boca Raton, Florida, Fox is survived by his wife of 32 years, Marcia Spokane Fox, son Donald Fox, daughter Sheryl Fox Myerson, son Herrick “Rick” Fox, sister Lee Redstone, and his former wife, Helen Fox. He is also survived by seven grandchildren, three stepchildren, and seven step-grandchildren. He was predeceased by his son Howard in 1978.

In lieu of flowers, contributions can be made to the Howard Fox Memorial Law Scholarship Fund at the Berks County Community Foundation, bccf.org.

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Beyond the Façade: Julius Onah’s Luce Explores the Inner Turmoil of a Model Immigrant Student

Star athlete and brilliant debate-team captain at his Virginia high school, 17-year-old Luce is accomplished by any measure. His American success story is particularly amazing, however, because he’s a former child soldier from Eritrea, whose life took a positive path when he was adopted by white couple Amy and Peter Edgar. But there’s more to Luce than that wholesome picture. A troubling complication is revealed when his teacher reads an essay he’s written that seems to condone violence, and she subsequently finds fireworks stored in his locker.

Adapted from J.C. Lee’s 2013 stage play by Lee and director Julius Onah, Luce is a gripping drama about race, perception, and identity that, like its lead character, keeps you continually off-balance and uncertain where your allegiances lie from scene to scene. For Onah, the project is particularly personal, since he was born in Nigeria, the son of a diplomat, and traveled the world before settling in Arlington, Virginia, at age 10, where he lived with his mother and siblings after his father returned to Africa.

“I grappled with identity in many different ways, on a number of different levels,” Onah says of his youthful experience as a new arrival in America. “What did it mean to be an African? What did it mean to be an African American? What did it mean to be an immigrant? Because of the conditions I grew up in, there were certain moments of my time when I had privilege, and there were certain moments when I didn’t have privilege. Yet, in my interactions with people, one label or another would be the one that they chose to apply. So, as we continue to grapple with identity in this country in ways that are becoming much more complex, it requires a conversation that is much more nuanced. And that is not something that I think as a country at large we’re quite used to yet. We’ve had these traditional notions of what lane everybody’s supposed to be in.”

Onah continues, “When I first read the play, I was struck by the sophistication it had and the intelligence with which it was grappling with identity and this notion that we all live on a spectrum and are more than one thing beyond what I just see. So is everybody in this room. And as we come to grips with that, there are truths we’re going to find, there are things we’re going to learn about each other that make living in the community and the idea of what America’s supposed to represent something much more achievable. But we’re at a moment where, regardless of what your politics are, I don’t think that the idea of the spectrum that we live on and the multiplicity of identities that one person can contain is one that anybody has quite come to terms with yet. There are entrenched and internalized and now outdated ideas that we still haven’t unearthed. It was exciting, just on a social and political level, to explore those ideas, but also to use those ideas as the engine of a thriller that can leave the audience on the edge of their seats. But not in the typical way. There’s no blood, there’s no guts, there’s no war—none of the things that are typical staples of a thriller. Luce is this kid who comes from a background of violence, growing up in a conflict zone and witnessing death and brutality and all these things that are not typical for a child, yet he moves from one war zone to another one. And that’s the psychological war zone of identity in America.”

And here’s where race and status come into play. “Though we all are dealing with the multitudes that we can tame, there are some of us who have more privileges and more power in how we get to define ourselves, how we get to wield our identities, versus those who haven’t. That’s another part of the big conversation we’re having in this moment: How do we create the kind of environment where no matter who you are, you get to have that complex and complicated and messy inner life and not necessarily be punished for it? Regardless of what everyone’s politics are, there are those who get to lead a complicated, messy lifestyle and maybe one day become president, and there are those who don’t. And that’s just objective truth. That’s not political slant.”

Aside from Luce, played brilliantly by the charismatic Kelvin Harrison, Jr. (It Comes at Night), “complicated” also describes the other main characters in the film: Amy (Naomi Watts), the compassionate adoptive mother who is torn apart by the accusations against her son; Peter (Tim Roth), the father who harbors a surprising amount of regret and bitterness; and Harriet Wilson (Oscar winner Octavia Spencer), the teacher whose views on race and responsibility clash with Luce’s. 

“All these actors had to have a really complex understanding of who they were and use that as a foundation,” Onah notes, “so that even though different sides of them were revealed in different scenes, it still felt like it was coming from a consistent core. You have to have this macro-level view of your character but also be in touch with some of the contradictions of that character when you make a turn and do something unexpected or surprising. It was a lot of work, and we spent about a week and a half, which is unusual for a movie this small, but it speaks to the commitment of the actors, who all came in early. We went through the script and we talked through the characters and their relationships and their perspectives and their politics, and really tried to have a firm grasp of where they were coming from.”

Luce has the potential to turn Harrison into a star. “Kelvin is incredible,” says Onah. “I always tell people, you’re doing a movie like this and you have the roles of Amy and Peter and Harriet, and there are lists you can think of, amazing people. And luckily I got the people at the top of the list for each one of these roles: Naomi and Octavia were people I imagined while I was writing. Tim, a brilliant, brilliant, legendary actor. But with the Luce role, there’s no list of, well, who’s going to pull off being a 17-year-old former child of violence in Eritrea? And not just do it, but do it convincingly across the board in terms of, what do they look like? Can they handle the degree of language and text and the shifts and the nuance? And Kelvin just blew me away when I saw his audition. The process of working with him was quite intensive. I was a debater in high school, I ran on the track team, so there were elements of myself I gave to the character. Kelvin comes from an arts family, a jazz family in New Orleans. He is not a natural athlete, so he did a tremendous amount of work. He took running lessons. He took basketball lessons. We got him a dialect coach who helped him create the speaking patterns for the character, which was based on a real Nigerian American author. He also had to do a lot of reading and writing to be at that intellectual level that the character exists on. The paper he writes in the movie references Franz Fanon, so he read several Franz Fanon books, Wretched of the Earth, Black Skin, White Masks, and he actually wrote the paper in the movie. And Octavia Spencer, in character, actually graded the paper.”

The tense standoff between Luce and Spencer’s Harriet, both black, is one of the most fascinating aspects of this provocative film. “We wanted to be as honest as possible about how power works, or at least in our experience how power works. I’m an immigrant, I’m black. J.C., who wrote the play that it’s based on, is also a person of color. So we come from backgrounds where we’ve been subject to power in ways that at times have been aligned with a character like Harriet. It’s not to say that this happens all the time, but in this set of circumstances if she had singled out a different kid—DeShaun [a far less privileged, harder-edged black student], he’s not from a position of privilege and power that allows him to bring his parents into a situation where they can speak up for him. Despite who she thinks Luce is, she also forgets what kind of family Luce is a part of. And that is a big part of where she ends up in the story.”

Yet another topical element in the film is its subplot about Stephanie Kim (Andrea Bang), a student whose response to a gang sexual assault may startle audiences. “We saw it as an honest reflection yet again of power, and the messiness and the complexity of how a human being can behave. There are going to be people who want a story to conform to their ideas of how the world works. But if we want to truthfully grapple with these really difficult issues, we also have to contend with the fact that there is no one-size-fits-all truth to the way people behave. You can have an individual who goes through an authentic, real trauma react in a way that is complex and messy—and that does not diminish the truth of their trauma.

“One of the most telling moments for me was when we were screening the movie and a woman who worked with teenage abuse victims stood up and said, ‘This is one of the few times I’ve watched a movie that reflected honestly the way some young women I counsel behave.’ There’s a tendency in these types of stories to sanitize behavior. … But we also have to be willing to deal with people who might do things that we don’t like.”

Onah says he’s been “a massive fan” of Naomi Watts since Mulholland Drive. “What was so great was the degree of preparation she brings. She asked: Where are the white papers on adoptions from Eritrea? Luckily, I was able to provide those to her, because we really tried to do our homework. Part of what is so appealing about the story for me, aside from all these other issues we’re talking about, is the element of parenting and the notion that you never know the entirety of who your child might become, what your child might be doing when they leave the house. But as a parent, your love for them still has to stay unconditional. How far would you go to protect somebody you love? What would you do in the face of somebody who is threatening everything you’ve built? Naomi came with a keen understanding of that. I’m not a parent myself and neither is J.C., so we can write what feels emotionally true, but to live it on-screen has to come from somebody who either has incredible empathy and understanding or has lived a version of it themselves. And with Naomi we were lucky to have both.”

As for Spencer, “I’d always been really impressed with Octavia. And then I saw her do something that was like, wow, OK, there’s so much to this woman. It was in Bong Joon-ho’s film Snowpiercer. You’ve seen some of the roles she’s done in Hollywood films, and then you see her do a complete 180 in that and you’re just like: What?! OK, I’ve got to work with this person. It takes real bravery to not just walk in one lane and say: All right, I’ve won an Oscar. She’s making such incredibly brave choices.”

Rising specialty distributor Neon opens Luce in theaters on August 2, and Onah is hoping people go out of their way to see his film in a cinema. “For me, there’s no greater community than when people come to watch a movie in a movie theater. That’s my ultimate sense of community. I love all kinds of things. I love music, I love going to an art exhibit, but the theater for me is everything—probably even more so than church, even though I was raised Catholic. Because you never know who’s going to walk into that room, and there’s an egalitarian environment that’s created there that is different from just about any other art form, because it is still a popular art. It was very important for me that this was a story that people could experience in a theater and as they walk out of it wonder: Well, what did the person next to me think? What did the person next to me feel? How am I looking at the person next to me? Hopefully a little bit differently and not jumping to the same conclusions about who I think they are or where I think they may be coming from.”

Luce is Onah’s third feature, following The Girl Is in Trouble (2015) and The Cloverfield Paradox (2018). How does he feel he’s fared as that rarity, a Nigerian American director? “Look, it’s hard for every filmmaker. Obviously, as a filmmaker of color, there are fewer doors historically that have been open. There are still fewer doors that are open now. But we are clearly in a moment where I think people are seeking new voices. The challenge for me has always been authenticity. I moved to America when I was 10 years old. I grew up on four different continents. My American experience was being raised by Nigerian parents who were not American. So there’s a specificity to my point of view and where I come from. And to try to bring that into storytelling, it also doesn’t conform to boxes that people want to put you in or the lane you’re supposed to travel. Luce has been a really gratifying and in many ways beautiful moment for me, because it’s the first film I’ve gotten the opportunity to make that allowed me to bring my experiences, my ideas, in a way that was uncompromised to the storytelling. I can only hope I get a chance to tell more stories like this.

“I was lucky to go to film school at NYU. There are people from China, there are people who are also from Nigeria. There are people who are from parts of Europe. And I think a lot of us who are young voices, who want to tell stories left of center, are all trying to find a way to get those stories out there and hopefully provide an alternative from the status quo, which at times can be fun and exciting. But I really do think to move the conversation culturally forward, we have to have things beyond just the most recognizable, easily digestible brand or franchise that we’ve already seen.”

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Studio Weekend Estimates: The Lion King Repeats at No. 1 w/ $75.5M; Once Upon a Time in Hollywood Sizzles w/ $40.3M in 2nd Place

As anticipated, Disney’s The Lion King easily regained the No. 1 spot at the box office this weekend, bringing in an estimated $75.5 million in its sophomore frame for a hefty $350.8 million to date. However, Quentin Tarantino also scored a big win with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which showed some counter-programming muscle in second place.

Down 60% from last weekend’s record $191.7 million haul, The Lion King’s sophomore drop was a bit steeper than expected—which isn’t a big deal considering that it’s already surpassed Aladdin ($343.9 million) to become the third highest-grossing of Disney’s recent crop of cinematic reimaginings after just ten days of release (it will also surpass The Jungle Book‘s $364 million later this week). The champ for now remains Beauty & the Beast, which dipped just 48% in its second weekend on its way to a lifetime total of $504 million.

Speaking of champs, Sony’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood cut through the deluge of PG and PG-13 family releases currently dominating the summer box office to debut with an impressive $40.3 million in second place. Launching on 3,659 screens—Tarantino’s widest opening ever—Once Upon a Time managed to top Inglourious Basterds’ $38 million opening to become the director’s largest debut of all time (in fairness, Basterds also opened on around 500 fewer screens).

Once Upon a Time benefitted from strong reviews (it’s currently at 85% on Rotten Tomatoes) and hype surrounding the movie’s bold-faced cast—among them the powerhouse trio of Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie, who were heavily featured in Sony’s marketing campaign. But Tarantino was also undeniably a major factor in the film opening as high as it did. Over the last two-and-a-half decades the director has become a brand name unto himself, and he holds particularly strong appeal with young males, who dominated pre-sales for the film. 

In third place, Spider-Man: Far From Home brought in an estimated $12.2 million in its fourth weekend of release, bringing the total for the latest Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) installment to $344.4 million domestically and $1.03 billion worldwide. The sequel has now surpassed both Spider-Man: Homecoming ($334.2 million) and Spider-Man 3 ($336.5 million) to become the third highest-grossing Spider-Man release to date not adjusting for inflation. With its leapfrog over Homecoming, it’s now also the tenth highest-grossing MCU title of all time.

Toy Story 4 finished in fourth with an estimated $9.8 million in its sixth weekend of release, bringing the Pixar blockbuster to $395.6 million to date. The latest installment in the long-running animated franchise, which is currently the third highest-grossing title of 2019 domestically, is quickly creeping up on previous entry Toy Story 3, which brought in $415 million in 2010. 

Paramount’s Crawl came in fifth in its third weekend with an estimated $4 million, giving the alligator-horror film $31.4 million to date. That’s a decent result for the $13.5 million-budgeted title, which will finish its run a bit lower than the shark thriller 47 Meters Down ($44.3 million) from the summer of 2017.

In sixth place, the Beatles-driven musical rom-com Yesterday grossed $3 million in its fifth weekend of release, bringing the total for the leggy Universal title to $63.3 million. 

Aladdin, which just crossed the $1 billion mark worldwide, came in seventh with an estimated $2.7 million, giving the Disney remake $345.9 million through the end of its tenth weekend.

In eighth, Stuber continued to fade off quickly with an estimated $1.67 million in its third weekend, bringing the total for the Fox title (released by Disney) to just $20.1 million.

Ninth place went to Warner Bros.’ Annabelle Comes Home, which brought in an estimated $1.56 million to bring its total to $69.7 million through the end of its fifth weekend.

A24’s critically-acclaimed The Farewell expanded to 135 screens this weekend and crept into tenth place with an estimated $1.55 million, giving the Lulu Wang-directed dramedy a very good per-screen average of $11,510. The film goes wide next Friday.

Overseas Update:

The Lion King brought in an estimated $142.8 million overseas this weekend, bringing its international total to a fantastic $611.9 million and its worldwide cume to a massive $962.7 million, making it the fifth-highest-grossing title globally this year. Country totals include $114.8 million in China, $45.1 million in the U.K. and $42.1 million in Brazil. The Disney release is set to cross the $1 billion mark this week.

As previously mentioned, Spider-Man: Far From Home crossed the $1 billion mark this weekend after banking another estimated $21 million overseas. The film is currently Sony’s second-highest-grossing release of all time worldwide, having now surpassed 2017’s Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle ($963.2 million). International totals include $204.7 million in China, $58 million in South Korea and $38.2 million in the U.K.

With an estimated $19.4 million internationally this weekend, Toy Story 4‘s overseas tally now stands at $522.3 million while its global cume is an outstanding $917.9 million.

Having crossed the $1 billion mark on Friday, Aladdin finished the weekend with an estimated $7.2 million internationally, bringing its overseas total to $663.8 million and its worldwide tally to $1.0097 billion. That total includes an impressive $101.3 million in Japan, the top overseas market for the Disney release.

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Regal Launches ‘Unlimited’ Cinema Subscription Plan

Another major U.S. exhibitor has entered the subscription race. Regal, the country’s second-largest movie theater chain, is the latest to launch its own in-house subscription program with the release of its Unlimited offering.

Despite sharing the same name as its European corporate parent’s Cineworld Unlimited subscription scheme, Regal’s solution has been specifically modified for the U.S. market. The plan is available in three tiers: Unlimited, priced at $18/month and available at 200 locations; Unlimited Plus at $21/month and available at 400 locations; and Unlimited All Access at $23.50/month which unlocks over 550 locations nationwide.

Consumers looking to access a location not included in their plan will be charged a surcharge between $1.50 and $3 on top of their monthly fee, with additional surcharges applying to premium auditoriums like RPX (Regal’s private-label PLF), IMAX, 4DX immersive seating, and ScreenX panoramic screens. There is no cap to the number of standard-format movies consumers can attend each month, nor blackout dates for new releases. A 10% discount on all concessions and non-alcoholic beverages is included in the plan.

Analysts had been expecting Regal’s entry into subscription since Cineworld announced plans to acquire the company in late 2017. Weeks before news of the acquisition broke, former Regal CEO Amy Miles mentioned plans to launch dynamic pricing through their digital ticketing partner, Atom Tickets, during a conference call with investors. Dynamic pricing was never mentioned again as speculation mounted that new corporate parent Cineworld would export its popular subscription scheme to the U.S. circuit. Regal and Atom Tickets ended their partnership earlier this month.

Anticipation for Regal’s subscription plan mounted after details of the plan leaked on Reddit and were reported by Deadline earlier this summer. Regal didn’t provide details of their plan to the press, opting instead to quietly announce the program’s launch on their website.

Although the concept has proved popular in European markets for more than a decade, cinema subscriptions only took off in the United States after third party players like MoviePass and Sinemia connected with consumers in 2017. The busines model behind those third-party plans proved unsustainable; Sinemia folded its straight-to-consumer subscription division days before the debut of Avengers: Endgame, while MoviePass went offline for a suspiciously-timed “maintenance” period ahead of the busy July 4th holiday weekend.

Consumer focus has since shifted to embracing exhibitor-driven subscription plans. Several of the country’s Top 50 exhibition circuits have launched their own in-house offerings, including AMC, Cinemark, Showcase, Studio Movie Grill, Megaplex, Alamo Drafthouse, and Studio C by Celebration! Cinema.

Digital ticketing players Atom Tickets and Influx announced plans to offer bespoke subscription solutions for exhibitors on the eve of CinemaCon 2019. Sinemia signaled it would also be pivoting its business to a B2B focus at the event, hosting a gala to announce the launch of their own white-label subscription division.

AMC’s Stubs A-List subscription plan is currently the most popular program among U.S. consumers, with more than 860 thousand members since late June.

RELATED STORY: From our CinemaCon 2019 Issue, Boxoffice Looks at the Recent History of Cinema Subscription Plans

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Cinépolis Acquires Texas’s Moviehouse & Eatery Dine-in Theaters

Mexico-based theater chain Cinépolis is acquiring Moviehouse & Eatery, a dine-in cinema circuit in Texas with five locations and one under construction.

Cinépolis currently operates 5,941 screens across 738 cinemas in 17 countries, welcoming over 338 million patrons annually. Once the transaction is completed, Cinépolis will operate 258 screens at 26 locations in seven states in the United States.

Alejandro Ramírez Magaña, chief executive officer of Cinépolis, said, “We are fully committed to bring our global expertise to the U.S. market. This is a strategic transaction that will help us to expand and strengthen our best-in-class luxury offer in this market and around the world.”

Arturo López Martín, chief investment officer of Cinépolis, stated, “Cinépolis is the premier luxury player in the United States and across the globe. We are truly excited about the prospects of this transaction, as we continue to bet on the potential of differentiated moviegoing experiences.”

Moviehouse & Eatery co-founder Leslie Sloan noted, “Cinépolis shares the same high standards that we maintain at Moviehouse & Eatery and it is the perfect company to take Moviehouse to the next level. We are excited that Cinépolis will expand the Moviehouse experience to people all across the country.” Co-founder Rodney Speaks added, “Cinépolis provides our Moviehouse & Eatery employees the opportunity to grow with a global exhibitor.”

Speaks and Sloan, originally real estate developers before venturing into the dine-in theater business, intend to continue working with Cinépolis to develop new theater sites in the United States.

Since the opening of its first theater in 2012, Moviehouse & Eatery has grown to five theatres and 47 screens in the Austin and Dallas metropolitan areas. Each location offers scratch-made food and recliner seating, as well as full bars and dine-in service using call-button technology. Moviehouse & Eatery also offers a premium large format auditorium, “Bighouse,” in three locations. The circuit’s sixth theater is under construction in the Woodlands suburb of Houston and is expected to open in November 2019.

Cinépolis USA has no immediate plans to make any operational or guest-facing changes to the Moviehouse & Eatery brand. Moviehouse & Eatery will continue to operate independently until further notice and retain all existing employees, programs, and scheduled events.

Dechert LLP is serving as legal counsel to Cinépolis. PJ Solomon is serving as financial advisor and Hightower and Associates is serving as legal counsel to Moviehouse & Eatery.

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Regal to Add Seven New 4DX, ScreenX Locations Through End of July

LOS ANGELES, CA (July 26, 2019) — CJ 4DPLEX and Regal announced today the latest round in openings of three new 4DX screens and four new ScreenX screens set to open across multiple markets in the U.S by the end of July. With the openings, the current count of Regal 4DX and ScreenX auditoriums will reach 21 and 20, respectively.

The locations include:

4DX

●        Edwards Irvine Spectrum 4DX, SCREENX, IMAX, RPX & VIP (Irvine, Calif.)

●        Regal Natomas 4DX, SCREENX & RPX (Sacramento, Calif.)

●        Regal UA Denver Pavilions 4DX (Denver, Colo.)

ScreenX

●        Regal Dole Cannery SCREENX, IMAX & RPX (Honolulu, Hawaii)

●        Regal Natomas SCREENX & RPX (Sacramento, Calif.)

●        Regal Jewel SCREENX (Waco, Texas)

●        Regal Kingstowne SCREENX (Alexandria, Va.)

“We are thrilled in the expansion of 4DX and ScreenX across the U.S with Regal who have been a great partner to us in sharing common goals for innovation,” said JongRyul Kim, CEO of CJ 4DPLEX. “As we grow across the U.S., we look forward to bringing more of these unparalleled cinematic experiences to new cities and audiences.”

“We are truly excited to be expanding our partnership with CJ 4DPLEX in bringing more 4DX and ScreenX locations across the U.S,” said Ken Thewes, CMO at Regal. “The feedback we are receiving from moviegoers has been enormously positive and as the only major exhibition partner where movie fans can enjoy these immersive experiences, we look forward to rapidly growing the number of 4DX and ScreenX locations at Regal in the years to come.”

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Long Range Forecast: Ad Astra and Rambo: Last Blood

This week’s report welcomes two new additions to our Long Range Forecast covering wide openers slated for Friday, September 20. Excluded is Focus Features’ Downton Abbey film, which we’re withholding forecasts on until its release strategy is more clearly detailed.

Ad Astra
Opening Weekend Range: $15 – 25 million

PROS:

• Brad Pitt and a solid ensemble cast could turn out to be significant draws among adult audiences, particularly with Pitt coming back to the cinema forefront in this summer’s Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood.

• The film’s PLF and IMAX footprint should boost initial earnings with premium ticket prices in tow. The film’s release window could also be a strength with modest competition for adults and a decent gap between It: Chapter Two earlier in September and October’s Joker.

CONS:

• The film’s release delays aren’t the most encouraging of signs, and it remains to be seen how strongly Disney markets the title after having inherited it in the Fox acquisition. We’re also cautious given last fall’s muted run by the acclaimed First Man.

• Social media growth at this stage of tracking hasn’t stood out in a significant way considering it’s a novel adaptation, but there’s plenty of time for that to change once summer wraps up.

Rambo: Last Blood
Opening Weekend Range: $10 – 20 million

PROS:

• Sylvester Stallone’s fan base should be a strength here as older male audiences have turned out to support several of his recent releases, most notably the Expendables franchise.

CONS:

• It’s questionable whether or not this can repeat the kind of success 2008’s Rambo revival did given the recent saturation of similar nostalgic action franchises (which haven’t always met box office expectations).

8-Week Forecast

Release Date	Title	3-Day Wide Release Tracking	% Chg from Last Week	Domestic Total Forecast	% Chg from Last Week	Estimated Location Count	Distributor
8/2/2019	Hobbs & Shaw	$89,000,000		$218,000,000		4,200	Universal
8/9/2019	The Art of Racing In the Rain	$8,500,000		$32,000,000		3,000	Fox
8/9/2019	Brian Banks	n/a		n/a		n/a	Bleecker Street
8/9/2019	Dora and the Lost City of Gold	$28,000,000		$85,000,000		3,500	Paramount
8/9/2019	The Kitchen (2019)	$11,500,000		$34,500,000		2,700	Warner Bros. / New Line
8/9/2019	Scary Stories to Tell In the Dark	$11,000,000	10%	$29,000,000	9%	2,400	Lionsgate / CBS Films
8/14/2019	The Angry Birds Movie 2	$19,000,000		$70,000,000			Sony / Columbia
8/16/2019	47 Meters Down: Uncaged	$15,000,000		$39,000,000			Entertainment Studios
8/16/2019	Blinded By the Light	n/a		n/a			Warner Bros.
8/16/2019	Good Boys	$15,000,000		$43,000,000			Universal
8/16/2019	Where’d You Go, Bernadette	$11,000,000		$45,000,000			United Artists Releasing
8/23/2019	Angel Has Fallen	$17,000,000		$49,000,000			Lionsgate
8/23/2019	Overcomer	$6,500,000		$24,000,000			Sony / AFFIRM Films
8/23/2019	Ready or Not	n/a		n/a			Fox Searchlight
8/30/2019	Las Píldoras De Mi Novio (My Boyfriend’s Meds)	n/a		n/a			Lionsgate
8/30/2019	PLAYMOBIL: The Movie	$4,000,000		$10,000,000			STX
9/6/2019	It: Chapter 2	$136,000,000		$305,000,000			Warner Bros. / New Line
9/13/2019	The Goldfinch	$10,000,000		$33,000,000			Warner Bros.
9/13/2019	Hustlers	$13,000,000		$39,000,000			STX
9/20/2019	Ad Astra	$20,000,000	NEW	$65,000,000	NEW		Fox
9/20/2019	Downton Abbey	n/a		n/a			Universal
9/20/2019	Rambo: Last Blood	$14,500,000	NEW	$35,000,000	NEW		Lionsgate

Contact us for information about subscribing to Boxoffice’s suite of forecasting and data services.

Alex Edghill & Jesse Rifkin contributed to this report

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UNIC, GCF Call for Venice Film Festival Selections to Receive Full Theatrical Run

Tensions continue to mount between European exhibitors and the continent’s biggest festivals.

European exhibition trade body UNIC released a public call for participating titles at the Venice Film Festival to receive a full theatrical run following the festival’s inclusion of Netflix titles The Laundromat and Marriage Story.

UNIC, which represents exhibition circuits across 38 European territories, released the statement below on the matter:

Thanks to their global prestige, leading film festivals and awards competitions have both the honour and the responsibility of bringing high quality and diverse films to the attention of audiences around the world.
 
For that reason, cinema operators expect both to consider only those titles intended to receive a full theatrical release and – where release strategies for films selected for inclusion are not yet confirmed – to make every effort to encourage the distributors of these titles to observe established industry norms.
 
The inclusion of films in official selections that are within the reach of everyone – and not only that of streaming platform subscribers – benefits the audience as a whole. Where films are available solely on these platforms, or receive only a limited “technical” release in cinemas, festival/award selection becomes in truth only a marketing tool whereby most of the potential audience is denied access to a wealth of great content.
 
Cinemas offer their audiences an unparalleled cultural and social experience, which through state of the art technologies allow each film truly to do justice to the creative vision of its director. Not only do they represent the gold standard for film viewing, but in general theatrical releases also provide the opportunity for the widest possible audience to discover and enjoy as broad a range of film content as possible, employing a fair and transparent business model of longstanding and proven benefit to audiences as well as to the wider film and cinema sector.
 
In short, cinema operators – who are themselves long-standing and strong partners and supporters of film festivals and awards competitions – strongly believe that those organising such events around the World should celebrate and support the social, cultural and economic relevance of cinemas, taking responsibility for the diversity and accessibility of the films they include. 

The Global Cinema Federation (GCF), a worldwide grouping representing cinema exhibition’s global interests, supported UNIC’s stance on the matter.

“The Executive Committee of the Global Cinema Federation strongly supports the statement of UNIC on film festivals and awards, and adds its voice to that statement,” said a representative via email. “From its inception two years ago, the GCF has made theatrical exclusivity a primary focus of the federation’s work. We believe that UNIC’s position published today constitutes an important step forward,.”

The Venice Film Festival will run from August 28 to September 7.

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Flix Brewhouse Named 2019 Indiana Brewery of the Year and 2019 Grand Champion Brewery of the Year

PRESS RELEASE

After vying in a statewide competition among Indiana’s professional brewers, Flix Brewhouse in Carmel walked away with the top recognition. A dine-in cinema where craft beer is brewed onsite, Flix Brewhouse was award both the 2019 Indiana Brewery of the Year and the 2019 Grand Champion Brewery of the Year distinctions by the Indiana State Fair. On the way to the number one spot, the brewhouse landed on the Brewers’ Cup podium in several individual lager, bock, hybrid beer, ale and IPA categories. 

Announced on July 13, 2019 at the Indiana Farmer’s Coliseum, the results of the craft beer competition came after a weekend of intense beer tasting and judging. The occasion marked the 21^stannual running of the Brewer’s Cup. According to a press release issued by the Indiana State Fair, “the Indiana Brewers’ Cup has solidified its place as one of the nation’s largest competitions to feature home and professional brewers. Professional brewers had 33 possible divisions to enter.” 

Among those divisions, Flix Brewhouse placed first in the European amber lager and the Scottish and Irish ale categories and finished second in the bock, light hybrid beer, American IPA, and Belgian and French ale. America’s Cinema Brewery®, as the company is known, also took a third-place finish in the Belgian and French ale division.

“Given how prestigious the Indiana Brewers’ Cup is and how fierce our competition was, we are extremely proud to have landed in the coveted top spot,” explains Greg Johnson, Director of Sales & Marketing at Flix Brewhouse. The event not only attracts brewers from across the state of Indiana but also draws in competitors from across the country.

The Indiana State Fair & Events Center’s Programming and Events manager, Haley Lamp, describes the Grand Champion Brewery of the Year competition as bringing the “brewing community together in one location. We host this Brewers’ Cup to show our appreciation of the brewing community and to share the winning beer with the fairgoers.”

These are sentiments Flix Brewhouse echoes in its own mission. “Flix Brewhouse is all about bringing family and friends together to enjoy a great movie, a chef-inspired meal or snack and/or – now – a state championship craft beer brewed directly onsite.” Guests at the Carmel location of Flix Brewhouse can actually see the brewery from outside of Flix and from inside the pub.

Craft brew lovers who want to want to taste what sets Flix Brewhouse apart from the Indiana State Fair competition and to discover what has earned it the 2019 Indiana Brewery of the Year and 2019 Grand Champion Brewery of the Year titles can learn more about the company online at www.FlixBrewhouse.com

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