AMC Theatres recorded the second busiest day of ticket sales for a single movie in the circuit’s 101-year history on Monday, November 29 with the pre-sale launch of Sony’s Spider-Man: No Way Home. The superhero sequel came within 1.5 percent of the all-time single day record for one title, set by Avengers: Endgame in 2019.
The circuit boosted interest for the title by partnering with Sony Pictures to offer an exclusive NFT to AMC Stubs and Investor Connect members who bought a ticket for the film’s opening day on December 16. The limited run of 86,000 NFTs was sold-out following Monday’s ticket sales.
Cinergy Entertainment Group has announced its 5th annual holiday toy drive. This year, the exhibitor will offer guests a choice of a $5 game card or a free popcorn in exchange for a toy valued at $5 or more (limit two offers per person). Guests can drop off toys at any Cinergy location between Wednesday, Dec. 3 and Monday, Dec. 20.
“The holidays can be an especially difficult time for families in need,” said Cinergy Vice President of Marketing Traci Hoey in a statement. “We are so happy to be able to bring toys to thousands of children in our communities.”
“This year we are excited to be partnering with Cinergy in the toy drive,” added Jennifer Virdell of Highland Lakes Christmas is for Kids, an organization based in southern Burnet County, Texas that spearheads an annual toy drive in the region. “We hope everyone will take advantage of this great way to help others in the community and get a free popcorn too!”
Over its previous four holiday toy drives, Cinergy has donated thousands of toys to needy children. The exhibitor operates seven luxury cinema and entertainment centers in Texas and Oklahoma that boast a total of 65 screens.
Cinemark sold more children’s tickets between Nov. 22 and Nov. 28 than during any other week of the pandemic to date, the exhibitor reported Monday (Nov. 29).
According to a press release, the Covid-era high was reached thanks to a solid lineup of popular family-friendly films at the multiplex, including Sony’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Disney’s Encanto and Paramount’s Clifford the Big Red Dog.
The announcement follows news that October was Cinemark’s highest-grossing month since Covid-19 forced the closure of movie theaters across North America in March 2020.
“Moviegoing is a decades-long treasured family pastime, and we are thrilled that families chose to spend their time together in Cinemark auditoriums watching great new movies on our larger-than-life screens with booming surround sound,” said Wanda Gierhart Fearing, Cinemark’s chief marketing and content officer. “There is truly nothing quite like sharing the awe of being transported into new worlds and captivated by an on-screen story with your loved ones. Congratulations to our studio partners for creating content that brought families into our cinemas to make lasting memories together.”
Cinemark operates a total of 521 theaters and 5,864 screens across its global circuit in the United States and Latin America. Domestically, the chain’s footprint encompasses 4,426 screens across 323 locations in 42 states.
One of the most tragic news stories of this turbulent year has been the plight of thousands of Afghans, now that the United States has withdrawn its forces after a 20-year presence in the quagmire known as Afghanistan. Those headlines have lent an unexpected timeliness to Flee, Neon’s acclaimed animated documentary about the odyssey of an Afghan boy in the 1980s and ’90s.
Filmmaker Jonas Poher Rasmussen first met Amin (a pseudonym) when both were teenagers. Amin had recently arrived in Rasmussen’s small town in Denmark, a shy refugee with a mysterious backstory. The two boys became lifelong friends; Amin went on to a distinguished career as an academic, while Rasmussen began his creative career in radio documentaries. For years, they talked about the possibility of exploring Amin’s refugee past in a film project.
Then, in 2013, Rasmussen attended the first Anidox, an annual workshop in Denmark that brings together animators and documentarians from across Europe. As the filmmaker recalls, “I saw quite immediately that this was a way I could tell Amin’s story, because he wanted to be anonymous, and with the animation he could be. But also, because the story takes place mostly in the past, and you could revive what his childhood home looked like and what Afghanistan in the ’80s looked like. But especially because it’s very much a story about memories of trauma, and the animation enabled us to be more expressive. It felt like we could be somewhat more honest to the story—when he starts talking about things that he can’t remember or has a hard time talking about, you can show the emotion more so than trying to be realistic. That was a wonderful tool to have.”
Rasmussen used a technique common in Danish radio documentaries, having the subject lie back as if in a therapist’s office and recount their story. His sessions with Amin are replicated in the film using both of their voices, and what they reveal is a harrowing tale of escape to Russia, years spent hiding in a tiny apartment, being betrayed by ruthless and amoral human smugglers, and finally the painful decision to have Amin separate from his family and make the trip to Denmark alone. The movie also explores Amin’s journey as a gay youth in an intolerant world, and his adult relationship with a loving partner.
Rasmussen met with Boxoffice Pro a few days after Flee received a standing ovation at the New York Film Festival.
I assume this is your first animated piece. What was the learning curve like for you?
It was quite steep. But I’ve been very lucky to have a wonderful team. Sun Creature Studio, the animation studio producing the animation, was wonderful about bringing me in. It was a long conversation—we spent a long time developing the visual style. I had two different art directors I worked with very closely in trying to find the right style for the film, finding visual artists, finding different types of animated short films, just trying to find out, OK, what’s the right way to do this. We did a small teaser quite early in the process when we got the first funding. The characters had big eyes and it was very clean. And we thought, this doesn’t work; it needs to feel authentic. We need the characters to feel real. So we did a new pass on it, new character designs where the characters are more flawed and the line isn’t always a straight line. It was a very long process.
And that helps integrate it with the more abstract portions of the film.
Yes, both the more abstract portions, but also the archive [footage], because you have the archive intertwine with the animation. We wanted to bring things from the archive into the animation style, so it felt like they came from the same world. The archive is used to remind people that this is a real story, the reason why he is forced to flee is because of historical events that took place, and the things that happened to him throughout are real things. I thought all the way through that I wanted to use archive as well, and then we should be able to go pretty seamlessly from the archive to the animation.
Did you do any rotoscoping of the live footage you shot?
No, no rotoscoping. But I filmed almost everything. And when I didn’t film, I always made sure to take photos with my phone, so we had visual references all the time. The animation director had all the footage. So he could always go back if he just needed something, a little facial expression, or how he would kind of scratch his arm and stuff like that, just to give authenticity to the animation. He had access to all the shots, and then he could pass on information to his team of animators if he wanted a little personal touch.
I imagine this is probably the most collaborative project you’ve ever been involved with. Did it transcend your initial vision of what it was going to be?
It did big time. In the beginning, I thought it would be a short, animated documentary. Then when he started telling me the story, I could tell this is not a short. I transcribed the interviews I did and tried to organize the material like a script, and pretty soon I had a 100-page script. And then we had to figure out how can we do this, because animation is quite expensive to do. The project grew bigger and bigger. I have a background in documentary, and I’m used to doing most things by myself. Maybe I have a D.P., maybe I have an editor, but here all of a sudden I had a 50-people crew working on the film. Which was truly an amazing experience because these wonderful artists have so many creative ideas. It was very different, but it was a very rewarding experience.
One of the assets of the film is that Amin himself has a real sense of humor, which helps lighten the mood. Otherwise, it could have been a real slog to follow his story.
I totally agree. And I think a lot of that also comes from our friendship. You sense the way we talk to each other. I’ve known him for 25 years, so we have a certain way of talking. Even though things of course are serious, we are also just friends, so we also say silly things. I really wanted to have that in there as well, because, yes, he’s a refugee, but he’s also a lot more. I wanted to show the human aspect—being a refugee is something that was forced on him at a certain time in his life. Of course, it has affected him greatly, and still does. But he’s also a lot of other things. He’s also a friend, a husband, a young brother, a house owner and a cat owner, and all these things—I thought it was important to show that spectrum. And while he was on the run, while he was fleeing, because it was so long, it wasn’t all horrible. It was also tender moments, and exploring the sexuality growing inside of him, falling in love with a young boy in the back of a truck, all these things. There were also some beautiful things happening.
Courtesy of Neon
Obviously, you knew that there was a lot to reveal about him in going into this project. Did you have an inkling that you were going to uncover so much?
No, I knew very little about his story. And it really grew. There were so many different kinds of journeys within the bigger journey from Afghanistan to Denmark, so many things going on. And of course, there’s a lot more than there is in the film, because the film takes place over more than 30 years. So I had to pick and choose which parts should be in the film.
Were there things in your script that he insisted be changed?
There was one thing, but it was something I had taken out of the script. He said, “This was the worst thing I experienced on the journey from Afghanistan to Denmark, and to really understand my story it needs to be in there.” That was the six months he was in prison in Estonia. At some point, I had taken that out because there were so many different stories. And he said, but that was the worst. Being in a prison where you didn’t know if you were going to stay for the rest of your life or what was going to happen. He said I wouldn’t feel it was my story if that wasn’t there. So we had a long conversation about it, and then I decided to put it back in. Throughout the process, he read the scripts, just to make sure that everything was factually correct. But that was the only thing where he said this is crucial to understanding my story.
Have you spoken to him this week during the New York Film Festival?
Yes. I had a friend who was in the audience at Alice Tully Hall who took some photos of me and the audience applauding. She sent those photos to me, and I forwarded them to him. He was very touched by it.
I assume he wasn’t at Sundance [where the film won the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize] …
No, he’s not going to go to any festivals. He wants to keep his anonymity. But he snuck into a screening in Denmark with a friend and saw it with an audience, so he has had the experience of seeing it in a cinema.
What does it mean to you that people are able to see Flee in movie theaters?
It’s just amazing to have the opportunity to share Amin’s story with people in a way where they really spend time and sit down and try to understand the human side of a refugee story. At a screening here yesterday, two young men from the Dominican Republic came up and said they were very touched by it. They told me, “This is also our story—we also had to move away from our own country.” So I think a lot of people can relate to it. Even though maybe they’re not refugees or not gay, this thing about trying to find a place in the world where you can be who you are, with everything that entails, I think is pretty common for most people at some point in their lives. That people will spend the 84 minutes, put away their phones and just sit down and look at the story in the darkness, I really appreciate.
It’s sad to have to say this, but the film is timelier than ever because Afghanistan is on everybody’s mind. Obviously, you didn’t know that when you commenced this project.
No, not at all. It’s just heartbreaking. It’s heartbreaking to me, because I’ve been working on shots for the film for weeks and months from when he fled Afghanistan. And now, a couple of weeks ago, I saw the same shots in the news. It was exactly the same things going on. Which saddened me, but to Amin it’s really a tragedy. It’s been tough for him—it reminds him about everything that happened back then, and he now sees a whole new generation of young Afghans being pushed out of a country and who are going to be in the same limbo he was in for years and not having the opportunity to choose what to do with their lives. It’s just heartbreaking to see that it’s all starting over.
Two of your executive producers are well-known actors, Riz Ahmed and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau. What is their role in all this?
They came on quite late in the process, just before we had our premiere in Sundance. And it was really our sales agent who came up with the idea to do an English-language version of the film. I was in doubt at the beginning, because I think the fact that it’s the real voice behind the animation is kind of key to the story. But what she said, and which I agree on, is that if we have some big-name actors on the English-language version, it will make sure that it reaches a broader audience—people who don’t necessarily want to see films with subtitles, and people who go to films with big-name actors in them. [Neon will release the original-language version in the United States.] This story is so important, so if we can have an even broader audience, we should do that. Riz was our top priority from the beginning to have as the voice of Amin. It took a while, but when we reached him and he saw the film, he was keen on doing it. Also, representation is a big deal for him—he fights for that, and having this kind of story out there is important to him.
AMC Stubs Premiere, A-List, and Investor Connect members will have access to a limited run of Spider-Man NFTs with their advance purchase of opening day tickets for Sony’s Spider-Man: No Way Home at any U.S. AMC Theatres location, while supplies last.
Advance tickets for Spider-Man: No Way Home go on sale on November 29. The movie will open exclusively in cinemas on December 16.
Only 86,000 NFTs will be made available for opening day advance ticket buyers, with redemption codes delivered to recipients via email on December 2021 and must be redeemed by March 1. The total production of the NFTs in this partnership between Sony and AMC Theatres is expected to be limited to an overall quantity of 90,000.
Over 100 NFT designs will be available, specially designed by Cub Studios. The NFT giveaway will be valid only for tickets purchased or reserved for December 16 showtimes in all formats at all AMC theaters in the United States, while supplies last. To qualify to receive the NFT, tickets must be purchased or reserved by members of AMC Stubs A-List, Premiere or Investor Connect on AMCTheatres.com or on the AMC mobile app. Those members must have their AMC Stubs account number associated with the transaction, and the movie ticket must be scanned at the theatre when the guest arrives for the movie. If the ticket purchase is refunded or the ticket goes unused, or is not scanned, the NFT code will not be delivered.
The Spider-Man NFT will be available to be redeemed at a dedicated site operated by WAX, an energy efficient, ultra-low carbon footprint blockchain and the first certified carbon neutral. WAX is the most utilized blockchain in the world processing 15 million transactions daily.
Adam Aron, Chairman of the Board and CEO of AMC, commented: “Our AMC Theatres guests and our AMC Entertainment shareholders have been calling for AMC to get into the world of NFTs, and we couldn’t imagine a more perfect way to start doing so than with our good friends at Sony Pictures. This is especially the case in that Spider-Man: No Way Home is one of if not the most anticipated movie of 2021, and the incredibly talented artists at Cub Studios are creating more than 100 unique NFTs giving appropriate respect to this most recent incarnation of the timeless and ever so popular Spider-Man franchise. For those members of our AMC Stubs A-List, AMC Stubs Premiere and AMC Investor Connect program who are among the first to purchase or reserve their ticket to opening day at AMC, this unprecedented Spider-Man NFT is truly a ticket-purchase gift like nothing we’ve ever offered before. But with just 86,000 available, they’re going to go very fast. So, my advice is to get your Spider-Man tickets as quickly as you can.”
Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast led the specialty box office this weekend with a $970k 3-day and $1.3 million 5-day tally from its wide expansion over its third frame in the domestic market. The historical drama played at 1,128 locations in North America for a three-day per-screen average of $860 and currently sits at $4.9 million from its domestic run. The title landed in 11th place just outside the top ten over the Thanksgiving holiday led by its performance in DMAs like New York (10.7%), Boston (5%), Philadelphia (4.7%), Los Angeles (4.5%), and Chicago (4%). Four of the film’s highest-earnings locations on Friday and Saturday were in New York City, led by AMC Lincoln Square.
Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch, released domestically by Searchlight Pictures, only dropped 38% over its fifth weekend in North America. The title finished 12th on the domestic chart with a $622k 3-day and $853k 5-day Thanksgiving weekend from 450 locations. The film has grossed $14.48 million domestically and $21.5 million from 34 overseas markets, led by the UK ($5.2M), France ($3.3M), Italy ($2.1M), and Germany ($2M).
Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza, released domestically by UA/MGM, posted the best per-screen average of the pandemic to date with a fantastic $83,852k per screen, for a total of $335k in its first weekend of release from just four 70MM theaters in New York and Los Angeles. Nearly three-quarters of its opening weekend audience (72%) across those four locations were between the ages of 18 and 34.
Mike Mills’ C’mon C’mon (A24) expanded to over 100 locations this weekend, earning a $293k 3-day and $378k 5-day frame in 14th place in North America. The film has grossed a total of $528k in its first two weeks domestically.
Freestyle Releasing rolled out crime drama For the Love of Money to 519 locations in its opening weekend, earning a $232k 3-day and $310k 5-day bow.
Pablo Larrain’s Spener (Neon) became the second-highest grossing title of 2021 released in under 1,300 screens over the Thanksgiving weekend. The film brought in $211k in its 3-day frame, its fourth on the market, to reach a $6.64 million domestic come.
Sony Pictures Classics’ culinary documentary Julia expanded to 288 screens this weekend and brought in $95k to bring its domestic total up to $197k in its third week in release.
Hindi title Sooryavanshi (Reliance) earned $80k from 59 screens in its fourth frame in North America this weekend, netting a solid $1,364 per-screen average. The film has now grossed a total of $3.54 million in the US/Canada market.
Bleecker Street’s India Sweets and Spices took in $33k from 121 screens in its sophomore frame, taking its domestic cume to $247k.
Janus films opened Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car in two New York City locations this holiday weekend. Film Forum and Film at Lincoln Center combined for an impressive $14k 3-day and $20k 5-day domestic debut for the latest film from the Japanese auteur. The 3-day per-screen average came in at $7,465, while the 5-day PSA finished at $10.175. The film’s three-hour runtime limited its available showtimes over the weekend to around three screenings per day. Drive My Car expands to Los Angeles next weekend, with an exclusive run at Landmark’s Nuart Theatre, and will reach art house theaters in San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, Washington DC, Chicago, and Dallas beginning on December 10. A further domestic expansion is scheduled through the rest of December and January.
Listen to Insights from some of the top specialty and art house exhibitors in the United States in this week’s episode of The Boxoffice Podcast or watch a full video replay of our State of the Art House 2021 webinar below.
Disney’s Encanto – the first non-Pixar Walt Disney Studios original animated film to debut exclusively in theaters since Frozen II in November 2019 –won the top spot at the domestic box office over the Thanksgiving frame, grossing an estimated $27 million over the three-day weekend and $40.3 million over the five-day span beginning Wednesday from 3,980 locations. The adult-skewing House of Gucci, meanwhile, enjoyed a solid debut while the horror reboot/prequel Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City launched quietly further down the chart.
Despite winning the weekend and boasting the highest domestic theatrical debut of any fully-animated film since the start of the pandemic, Encanto’s opening haul came in at the low end of expectations. The reason for this may partly come down to timing; while kids 5-11 became eligible to receive the Covid-19 vaccine earlier this month, even those who received their first shot as soon as they became available won’t be fully vaccinated until sometime in December. In short: While concerned parents can rest easier knowing their young children are eligible for the vaccine, many are likely waiting for their kids to be fully inoculated before returning to the multiplex.
Nonetheless, Encanto has a good shot of holding up well in subsequent weekends. particularly given the movie’s stellar reviews (92% on Rotten Tomatoes) and strong word-of-mouth indicators (“A” Cinemascore, 93% Audience Score on Rotten Tomatoes). The landscape looks particularly good for Encanto given that its next major competitor —Universal’s Sing 2 —doesn’t land until December 22, giving the Disney title a solid month of play before attention shifts to the newer, shinier object.
Encanto pulled in positive numbers overseas, tallying a $29.3 million three-day frame from 47 markets, and scoring the second-biggest opening weekend of all-time for an animated title in Colombia ($2.6M, behind Toy Story 4). The title earned the biggest opening weekend for an animated title during the pandemic across several markets. Top international performers include France ($3.5M), Colombia ($2.6M), UK ($2.4M), South Korea ($2.2M), and Italy ($2.1M). The animated title finishes its global opening weekend at $69.6 million.
Holding well in second place was last weekend’s champ Ghostbusters: Afterlife, which dropped 44% to an estimated $24.5 million in its sophomore frame over the three-day period and $35.25 million over the five-day. That’s a great hold for the reboot/sequel, which is performing well with both older and younger audiences and also retained a solid portion of its PLF and IMAX screen footprint this weekend. The Sony release has $ M so far, with plenty of wind left in its sails.
MGM/UA’s House of Gucci – which debuted exclusively in theaters – performed well in third place with an estimated $14.23 million over the three-day frame and $21.83 million over the five-day from 3,441 locations in its opening frame, marking it as one of the rare adult-skewing dramas to connect with viewers in the pandemic era. While the cast is comprised of an A-list lineup including Adam Driver, Jared Leto and Al Pacino, buzz around the Ridley Scott-directed crime pic has largely been centered around Lady Gaga, whose high-wattage star power has been a boon for the film’s robust marketing campaign and likely helped draw a wider cross-section of the moviegoing audience than it otherwise might have.
Gaga and Gucci drove in $12.8 million from 40 overseas markets, bringing the film’s global opening weekend to $34 million. The title beat out Disney’s Encanto for the top spot in the UK with a $3.4 million bow from 687 screens. Other top international performers include France (#3 with $1.85M from 401 screens), Mexico (#3 with $975k from 710 screens), and Spain (#2 with $795k from 408 screens). The film will expand overseas throughout the coming months, including Germany and Russia on December 2, Australia on January 1, South Korea on January 12, and Japan on January 14.
Reviews have been mixed for House of Gucci, which has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 61% as of this writing. Audiences have received it more favorably, however. On Rotten Tomatoes, its Audience Score stands at 85%, while the Cinemascore is a very good B+. The film has a pretty clear corridor next weekend, with no major new studio releases in the pipeline, giving Gucci a chance to maintain a strong presence at the box office in its sophomore frame before West Side Story cuts into its hold on the over-35 crowd when the Steven Spielberg-directed musical debuts in theaters on December 10.
Fourth place this weekend went to Disney/Marvel’s Eternals, only dropping 29% in its fourth frame with an estimated $7.9 million three-day/$11.4 million five-day. The superhero title has $150.6 million to date in North America, putting it considerably behind both Shang-Chi and Black Widow at the same point in their respective runs. Overseas, Eternals currently stands at $217.8 million from 48 markets for a $368.4 million global total. Top international performers include South Korea ($26.4M), the UK ($18.7M), France ($14.9M), Mexico ($14.3M), Brazil ($11.1M), and Australia ($10.3M).
The final new wide release of the weekend, Sony’s Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, opened at the very low end of expectations with an estimated $5.27 million over the three-day frame and $8.8 million over the five-day. Keeping the pandemic in mind, that’s the lowest opening ever for a Resident Evil installment. Fans of the original franchise (Raccoon City is a prequel) may have been turned off by the absence of the old cast—most importantly original star Milla Jovovich—who provided continuity in the earlier entries. That said, the series had already been losing steam domestically—though not overseas—long before the pandemic, with 2016’s The Final Chapter taking in just $26.83M in North America (versus a whopping $285.41M internationally). Raccoon City garnered poor reviews, but that’s nothing new for a franchise that became a billion-dollar-plus franchise despite receiving little love from critics.
Paramount’s Clifford the Big Red Dog, which has been pulling in healthy business since it debuted earlier this month, landed in sixth place with an estimated $4.87 million over the three-day weekend and $6.9 million over the five-day. The family comedy has $42.88 million after three weeks of release.
SPECIALTY BOX OFFICE
Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast led the specialty box office this weekend with a $970k 3-day and $1.3 million 5-day tally from its wide expansion over its third frame in the domestic market. The historical drama played at 1,128 locations in North America for a three-day per-screen average of $860 and currently sits at $4.9 million from its domestic run. The title landed in 11th place just outside the top ten over the Thanksgiving holiday led by its performance in DMAs like New York (10.7%), Boston (5%), Philadelphia (4.7%), Los Angeles (4.5%), and Chicago (4%). Four of the film’s highest-earnings locations on Friday and Saturday were in New York City, led by AMC Lincoln Square.
Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch, released domestically by Searchlight Pictures, only dropped 38% over its fifth weekend in North America. The title finished 12th on the domestic chart with a $622k 3-day and $853k 5-day Thanksgiving weekend from 450 locations. The film has grossed $14.48 million domestically and $21.5 million from 34 overseas markets, led by the UK ($5.2M), France ($3.3M), Italy ($2.1M), and Germany ($2M).
Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza, released domestically by UA/MGM, posted the best per-screen average of the pandemic to date with a fantastic $83,852k per screen, for a total of $335k in its first weekend of release from just four 70MM theaters in New York and Los Angeles. Nearly three-quarters of its opening weekend audience (72%) across those four locations were between the ages of 18 and 34.
Mike Mills’ C’mon C’mon (A24) expanded to over 100 locations this weekend, earning a $293k 3-day and $378k 5-day frame in 14th place in North America. The film has grossed a total of $528k in its first two weeks domestically.
Freestyle Releasing rolled out crime drama For the Love of Money to 519 locations in its opening weekend, earning a $232k 3-day and $310k 5-day bow.
Pablo Larrain’s Spener (Neon) became the second-highest grossing title of 2021 released in under 1,300 screens over the Thanksgiving weekend. The film brought in $211k in its 3-day frame, its fourth on the market, to reach a $6.64 million domestic come.
Sony Pictures Classics’ culinary documentary Julia expanded to 288 screens this weekend and brought in $95k to bring its domestic total up to $197k in its third week in release.
Hindi title Sooryavanshi (Reliance) earned $80k from 59 screens in its fourth frame in North America this weekend, netting a solid $1,364 per-screen average. The film has now grossed a total of $3.54 million in the US/Canada market.
Bleecker Street’s India Sweets and Spices took in $33k from 121 screens in its sophomore frame, taking its domestic cume to $247k.
Janus films opened Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car in two New York City locations this holiday weekend. Film Forum and Film at Lincoln Center combined for an impressive $14k 3-day and $20k 5-day domestic debut for the latest film from the Japanese auteur. The 3-day per-screen average came in at $7,465, while the 5-day PSA finished at $10.175. The film’s three-hour runtime limited its available showtimes over the weekend to around three screenings per day. Drive My Car expands to Los Angeles next weekend, with an exclusive run at Landmark’s Nuart Theatre, and will reach art house theaters in San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, Washington DC, Chicago, and Dallas beginning on December 10. A further domestic expansion is scheduled through the rest of December and January.
Listen to Insights from some of the top specialty and art house exhibitors in the United States in this week’s episode of The Boxoffice Podcast or watch a full video replay of our State of the Art House 2021 webinar below.
Sunday’s Studio 3-Day Weekend Estimates: November 26-28, 2021
In a November LIVE session webinar, Boxoffice Pro partnered with cinema advertising company Spotlight Cinema Networks to launch a discussion on the current state of the art house market. A panel of experts from the art house and specialty space provided candid insights into the impact that Covid-19 has had on the way the indie sphere operates, from shifting relationships with streamers to attempts to bring in younger demographics. Below, we share a condensed version of that very important conversation.
Listen to this week’s episode below and subscribe to The Boxoffice Podcast on any major podcast platform.
Paul Serwitz, President and COO, Landmark Theatres
Tori Baker, Salt Lake Film Society, President & CEO
Dylan Skolnick, Cinema Arts Centre, Co-Director
Barbara Twist, Director of Partnerships, Vidiots Foundation
Barak Epstein, Aviation Cinemas / Texas Theatre, President
There’s a narrative outside the industry that the theatrical experience is in danger of going away, and that the art house / specialty scene in particular is in a precarious place. What do you have to say to that? And what is some of the programming that has performed well recently for you?
Barak Epstein: I think art house theaters are the ones that are being the most innovative during this, because they’ve done so many things to figure out how to engage their audiences in these past couple of years. At the Texas Theatre, we did a big renovation while we were closed. We built another theater, so we could show more movies. Most of what we do at the Texas Theater, we call it “event-based cinema.” When we say event-based cinema, it’s not just playing the Nick Cave movie—which we like to play—but we have something live happening. A live performance, a live speech, somebody from the movie. What’s been really popular for us recently is, with a lot of these people who are coming around touring with their films, often with appearances at conventions and whatnot, we get those people to come to the Texas Theatre and show a movie. Just recently, we had Malcolm McDowell here for a 50th-anniversary screening of A Clockwork Orange. 700 people came to that. Just two days ago, we showed Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. We had Sheryl Lee, Sherilyn Fenn, and Harry Goaz. Sold-out crowd for that. When we bring in people to see the films that they want to see with people [from the film] talking after them, that’s our signature thing.
Now that we have the second screen, we do that in conjunction with playing mainstream films, which we used to not be able to do because we couldn’t do runs of them. The one that’s done the best for us has been The Green Knight, as a regular first-run movie. Filmmaker David Lowery lives in Dallas, so even though it wasn’t shot here, people wanted to see it around here. People wanted to see it everywhere. But [the local connection] did help us.
Paul Serwitz: I’ll second what Barak said. We’ve tried to tap into Q&As and personal appearances and introductions as much as possible. That’s been a big driver to get a lot of people back into theaters. It’s helped smaller movies that otherwise didn’t have a great theatrical life. Those kinds of special events and personal appearances really do help drive audiences back, because it’s something out of the ordinary. You can’t get it at home, and you can’t get it in general at movie theaters. So that’s been a big piece for us. We continue to pursue that as much as we can to be part of that restart of the business.
For us, [Landmark Theatres is] a hybrid circuit, although we lean heavily to the specialty side. It’s been sort of like two windows: The commercial mainstream side really started to bounce back in April, and certainly with Memorial Day and through the summer. [But it wasn’t] the most fertile ground for specialty in the summer quarter. It was a struggle on that side, and the core art houses really struggled for a while. Even though there was volume of content, so much of it was playing day-and-date. That certainly undermined their theatrical runs. But there’s been a slow, incremental increase. Obviously, of late, The French Dispatch has been the big breakthrough title. It’s exactly what we needed and hoped it would be to sort of break the ice for the specialty side and those audiences, much the way Godzilla vs. Kong did [for mainstream moviegoers] seven months ago.
Some of the [highest-earning] titles for us—admittedly, the bar has been low. It’s taken a longer period of time for the older adult, specialty audience to really start coming back in any significant numbers. But pictures like The Green Knight, like Barak mentioned, [bring in audiences]. Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain was certainly the high point of the summer for us. That was the indie release that had the most traction. Pig was pretty good. We had titles like Zola, Summer of Soul, that were better than most, for sure, but not nearly what we’d hoped they’d be. The Card Counter was one of the better titles we’ve had. But all of it, in comparison to The French Dispatch or some of the other pictures coming out, now that we see audiences starting to come back and some momentum building, have been pretty small. We’re certainly headed in the right direction.
Tori Baker: We’re still in the early days of telling [what films are bringing audiences back], because we opened on October 22 at the Broadway [Centre Cinemas], and we’re still renovating the Tower [Theatre]. We had hoped to open both, but renovations and supply chain demands, which everybody is dealing with right now, are slowing things down. So we’re learning right now. We made a conscious decision to open later, rather than earlier. We talked about it with the board early in the year and chose the October date. It felt very shocking to some of our patrons and people that are engaging with us. But we knew we needed an on-ramp. We knew we needed time. And the summer movies were looking like the bigger studio films, and less of the specialty films were coming through. So we felt like we had the time to build the on-ramp and especially take care of the staff. Because when you’re doing events at the cinema, the manpower that it takes and the energy that it takes to pivot back to that from doing our big @homeArts [virtual cinema] project, that was a real consideration for us as well.
Barbara Twist: [Regarding what you said about] the narrative always being pushed about art houses dying. I want to add to that I think community spaces are often positioned as dying or not doing well. And that’s what art houses are. For me, I think it’s more that we are, in some ways, fearful of community spaces doing well, because they’re out of the box, because they’re run by the people. They’re not corporatized. They don’t have clean lines around them. There’s not an obvious profit motivator center. And that’s something that’s really brilliant about the art house space. And I actually think that when art houses get too boxed in, too clean, too easy to categorize and identify—“Oh, this is who goes there, this is what they show”—that’s when they don’t do so well. For a long time, I got really pissed off that everyone was like, “Art houses are dying.” And now I’m like, “Fine, whatever, man.” You think we’re dead? We’re constantly being reborn. We are a Phoenix every day.
There’s been a lot of discussion surrounding day-and-date and the shrinking of the theatrical exhibition window—but most of that conversation centers around how it affects major chains. How does the shortened theatrical window affect specialty theaters? And how has your relationship with streaming outfits changed over the course of the pandemic, as they move more films into the theatrical space?
Paul Serwitz: I don’t think it would have ever been any exhibitor’s choice, big or small, to see windows getting shortened, much less day-and-date availability. It has compromised theatrical business, there’s no question about it. However, the reality is, it’s here to stay. Streaming is the 800-pound gorilla, and Covid just amplified that exponentially. At-home consumption has become a much bigger thing, and even post-Covid it remains that way. The volume and quality of the content that’s available at home is a real challenge.
At Landmark, we felt like it had to be embraced in order to meet that challenge and work with it as best we could and hope, really, that distributors—certainly beyond the streamers themselves—see that, ultimately, a theatrical window is the most valuable pathway for a film’s lifeline. We’ve seen examples of that over the last six months, both on the mainstream side and on the specialty side. Where it goes from here, I don’t know. But we’ve certainly embraced the streamers and the day-and-date situation to an extent. There’s too much good content not to play [it] theatrically and try to tap into that audience that will still get out of the home and go see a movie in a theater instead of in their living room.
Dylan Skolnick: The same as what Paul was saying: This has been going on somewhat for a while. Art houses were earlier [than mainstream theaters] in booking films that were VOD or streaming, taking some Netflix titles, long before the pandemic. So this is something we’ve been wrestling with and dealing with for a while. Clearly, it is not good for us when it’s day-and-date. It would be great if we could have long windows back again. But that’s gone. So it’s just a matter of picking and choosing which [streaming titles] work for us and which don’t, and being really selective about that.
It’s important to remember that some of these streaming releases are so minimal that they barely qualify as an actual theatrical release. I work with a number of theaters around the country, including several in Oklahoma, and [there were] a number of titles where the streamers just decided that Oklahoma was not part of a theatrical release in the United States. That’s because they’re trying to have a theatrical release at the tiniest possible level, probably just to say that they got it [in theaters] and partly to assuage the egos of whatever filmmaker was involved. One of those films that didn’t play in Oklahoma, for example, was CODA. [Apple TV Plus acquired CODA out of the 2021 edition of the Sundance Film Festival for a record-breaking $25 million.] We certainly asked for it. I forgot the exact term they used. It wasn’t an “essential market” or something like that.
Barak Epstein: I don’t think CODA played in Dallas, either. Or if it did, it played in a four-wall in the suburbs. It wasn’t really released.
Paul Serwitz: Apple had a very limited outlook on what they wanted to get done theatrically on CODA. And they’ve been less proactive, theatrically, than Amazon and Netflix. The fact of the matter is, you’ve got several titles over the next couple of months that have lofty award aspirations from those key streamers, Netflix and Amazon. High-quality films that will have a very short, truncated window. They want to have some kind of theatrical presence. It helps their publicity, it helps press, it helps deals with the filmmakers. But the fact of the matter is, Netflix and Amazon, as examples, are attracting top-shelf incredible filmmakers, including notoriously strong specialty filmmakers like Jane Campion, with Power of the Dog from Netflix. Netflix also has Don’t Look Up from Adam McKay, and Amazon’s got Tender Bar from George Clooney, and Aaron Sorkin with Being the Ricardos. These are all major movies, high-quality films that have big award aspirations.
Tori Baker: When it comes to this topic, I really think that what’s important, and what’s definitely different about the art houses, is that it’s about the value proposition and what we’re providing as an art house. I really find the vernacular interesting, because “streaming” is such a great visual to what is really happening with what people like to say is “content” out in the world. I really dislike using the word “content” surrounding films and movies. Content is anything from my daughter’s five-second Tik Tok video, all the way up through YouTube videos to a movie, now. It’s really incumbent upon us in the art house industry to differentiate what is worthy of time. Why I think that’s such an interesting visual is because it really is this rapid stream. I’m from the mountains. You see spring streams come down, and they’re just rolling. You can dip your hands in, and you may or may not get something that’s worthy of your time. And then there’s the rare things that maybe rise to the top. But that’s happening less and less. There’s not really a zeitgeist happening around one particular film. And that doesn’t mean the industry can’t try and find their avenue for their award or whatnot. But the reality is, Netflix, even when they’re trying to get an award, they still just want to promote the next [film] and the next and the next and the next. It’s about quantity, not quality.
Where art houses can differentiate themselves in that universe in the future, whether it’s a digital screen or a bricks-and-mortar screen, is that we’re the curators. We know what the artists are making. We’re bringing the artists to talk to you about this art form. About the movies. About film. About storytelling that happens within that two-hour time frame, not some sort of extended thing where I can turn it on, turn it off. I think that that’s the real important value proposition that we offer, regardless of the title. The more that we curate, the more people trust us. Everybody wants to get off the couch at some point, right? So at the point that they want to get off the couch, you need to be a viable option for them to see something that is worthy of the quality to make that effort.
Like you say, streamers release so many movies. And even if they get good reviews, it feels like they disappear in a few days. But if an art house is screening it, that means something to the audiences that are a part of your community.
Tori Baker: Even if they watch it online. That’s a value proposition, where they’ll continue to be a donor, for example, but they might still only go to 10 or 12 movies a year on average, right? But if they see that Melancholia is playing in your cinema, you’re validating that in a way that gives them that curation. It’s starting to tell them the story about what, in cinema, is worthy of my time. Because the stream is just too rapid. It’s too big. There are too many options.
Barbara Twist: Something that I’m sure we’ll never be able to quantify, but I’m quite certain has a significant impact, is the inherent marketing that an art house does for a title. We talk about the long tail and the economic impact of shortening a theatrical window. The amount of marketing— newsletters, social media, etc., etc.—that an arthouse cinema does … As Tori was saying, even if that person doesn’t end up buying the ticket to see that film at [an art house], later on down the road when it’s on Netflix, or when it’s on Comcast, Spectrum, whatever, and they buy it, part of the reason they’re doing it is because of that art house. And that is both the power of establishing a curatorial trust with your community and the impact of a movie theater.
There’s no question that the marketing surrounding a theatrical release is always going to surpass the marketing surrounding a streaming drop. It doesn’t matter how many billboards you buy. The number of people that the art house community is connected to—like, my aunt is talking to all of her friends about what they should see. And maybe my aunt’s the one person on the mailing list for the cinema, but she’s telling everyone else. I so desperately wish there was a way that we could quantify that, because that is what the studios are giving up. When they trade for money next quarter for their shareholders, they’re trading the possibility of way more money down the line, and more importantly, a stronger relationship with an audience that is going to return to see more of their films because of the work being done by the art house.
Do you get the impression that the streamers are on that same page about the positive role that an art house can play in the life of their film?
Dylan Skolnick: The people working at the streamers are very nice. We have great relationships with almost all of them. But I think they don’t think what we do is really an important part of what they do. Which is OK. What we do is so incredibly different. [Tori] was likening streaming to like a mountain stream, but it’s more like a fire hose spewing out a torrent of water of mixed quality. Some great stuff, some polluted stuff. Whereas what we do, it’s more like a mountain spring. It’s coming out, and it’s not that much, but it’s really pure. We try to make it the best we possibly can.
One of the advantages we have in working with a Netflix or an Amazon, because they, at a certain level, don’t care, is that there are very few restrictions. Sometimes you play a film for one week, and they go, “Oh, thanks!” You take out a show for a special event, and you don’t get a temper tantrum. All these things have made playing their films much, much easier. A theater I work with is open only four days a week at the moment. “Sure, you can open our film right on the break, no problem!” There is greater flexibility, and I want to give credit for that.
Paul Serwitz: There is. The streamers have an array of purpose around theatrical releases, the least of which, really, is generating box office revenue. It serves a lot of other purposes: the relationships with the filmmakers, attracting other filmmakers, keeping filmmakers, using the exposure as a marketing tool. It’s not really about the box office. They’d like to see box office, but they’re not marketing their films in such a way—nor are they providing enough of a window for a theatrical release—to really generate revenue. [Even when they put effort into a theatrical release], it’s still not the same as what Neon or Searchlight or A24 do with their theatrical releases. I think there’s a cap on what they’re willing to spend, which is ironic because they’ve got resources that never end [when it comes to acquiring the films].
Barak Epstein: During the pandemic we, like lots of people, moved to showing movies in our parking lot or outdoors. We ran a digital cinema in our parking lot on an inflatable screen. We wheeled a small Christie [projector] out there and ran power. And what that let us do, because we were doing DCP, was I started talking to studios that I’d never talked to before, like Universal and Focus. I’d never booked a Universal or Focus movie, non-repertory, before. Ever. And because they were releasing movies—with windows, but whatever, they had a lot of movies that came out last year—I looked at them, and I started talking to them. I pretty much played all the Universal and Focus movies in our parking lot. Dylan was talking about flexibility on the break—we [booked] Promising Young Woman for just one show. They’re like, “Good!” And then we kept playing it, because we kept selling out. So we ended up making five grand on it on just a handful of shows, which wasn’t bad during the world ending. But then, once we opened inside, we started playing more Universal and Focus movies inside. So that basically started a whole new relationship for our theater with those kinds of movies. We played Halloween, we played Candyman, we played The Card Counter, we played Last Night in Soho.
It’s like what Barbara was saying—an art house doesn’t have to be just one thing. There’s flexibility in what you can program.
Tori Baker: I don’t think there’s even more flexibility. I think it’s a demand from our patrons for us to meet their needs in this new technological environment where they do have too many offerings, and they don’t know what’s quality, and they don’t know what to spend their time on.
Perhaps we need to start thinking about the younger audiences and their trust of this art form. Because how many times have they shut off a really crappy streamed title—10 minutes in is really breaking the trust for the art form and that experience. The eventizing of these films can really help with that. You’ll always get quality when you see something in person. You’ll always get the extra, or that vaudeville effect, whether it’s the people talking or a pre-show that’s creative. And that will engage audiences and keep them coming back to an art house cinema, whether they continue to go back to a larger 20-plex or not.
To that point: The art house demographic tends to be on the older side, and we’ve seen that older moviegoers are taking longer to come back to the cinema. What’s been your experience with trying to get younger groups of people—and more diverse groups of people—to come to art houses?
Barbara Twist: Our core audience is more of a Gen X crowd. Those are folks who were going to [Vidiots’ original location] in the ’90s, 2000s and sort of evolved with us as we grew. In [L.A.’s] Eagle Rock [where the new Vidiots is opening], there’s a real mix. There are families. We have a college. There’s a lot of younger people, millennial-aged folks moving farther east due to housing prices. That’s something we’re really taking into consideration as we build out our curation team.
Something that’s very important for us is to ensure that our curatorial team and what we’re showing on screen is reflective of the community that we’re in, not just reflective of the community that we’ve previously engaged with. That is, I think, something that art houses are constantly grappling with. It’s very challenging to figure out how to retain the audience that you have. How do you develop new audiences? To Tori’s point about how younger folks are watching really terrible films on streaming, and that may be the limit of their engagement with long-form [content], anything longer than an hour, if their experience of the long form is not great, why would they leave their house to come to a space that, in their minds, is for people who are over the age of 60 and mostly white? What’s going to get them there?
Vidiots, especially as we open and as we look to bring in younger audiences, [are going to] show [older, nostalgic] titles that younger people know that they like. You bring them into the space, you work with them that way. And then, similarly, our programming team is going to be not one person, but a rotating collection of curators so that we are making sure we’re not sticking with one thing all the time. We’re trying to create some sort of synergy between all the programming, curatorial spaces that we occupy.
Every community in the United States is even slightly different. We have a Jewish film tour. Here in Salt Lake City; our Jewish community says, “We are not interested in exhibiting films from the Holocaust. It’s something that we feel like we’re boxed in about.” But there are other communities where their Jewish communities do want to see Holocaust films. Every individual community that you work with is also regional and different, depending on where you live and the experiences that they have. They need their stories told in a particular way. And it’s your job as an art house to find those films. That’s, I think, the only way to diversify your welcoming and inclusion in your bricks-and-mortar space.
Paul Serwitz: Our group of theaters really varies in their demographic draws. Some areas and theaters really do skew more mature and older. Others have a younger draw. So it’s a mixed bag for us. But we obviously want to try to find ways to expand the younger audience, because they are the ones that are the biggest drivers right now in returning to theaters. We knew from the beginning of Covid that the older audience was going to have the most trepidation of returning. I believe that they are really starting to show up now. But there’s still a great need to diversify the audience.
It starts with the film. The film has its inherent appeal: maybe younger, maybe older, maybe a combination. Beyond that, it’s marketing, it’s social media, it’s alternative content programming. Some of the best alternative content we’ve had in recent months have skewed younger. Bo Burnham: Inside was huge for us. Some of the music alternative content: Tom Petty, The Doors, Oasis.We’re getting back to programming one-offs with Rocky Horror Picture Show and The Room. Those are all things that help drive a younger audience.
Barak Epstein: We have the opposite problem. We have the younger people, we don’t have the older people. Part of it is just that we’re in a little bit of a younger, hipper, part of town. The only movie I’ve shown this year that we did get old people to come to was the Velvet Underground doc. We tried showing the James Bond movie, which wasn’t a super hit for us, because I couldn’t find the older people who wanted to come see it. But if we show [Andrzej Zulawski’s 1981 horror film] Possession, I’ll sell out in about five minutes. There wasn’t anybody over 27 when we showed Possession. There’s certain repertory movies that just bring in the younger crowds. That’s what we really excel with.
Spider-Man: No Way Home is the most anticipated movie of the holiday season, according to a Marcus Theatres survey of nearly 2,400 customers enrolled in the exhibitor’s Magical Movie Rewards loyalty program in 17 states, the company announced on Tuesday (Nov. 23).
The forthcoming Sony/Marvel sequel was named on 63% of survey respondents’ lists of their five most-anticipated holiday movies, the theater chain reports. The film was the highest-ranked title in 10 states, as well as the most-anticipated title among male respondents. It was followed closely in second place by Ghostbusters: Afterlife, which was named on 62% of respondents’ most-anticipated lists and was also the top-ranked title in seven states. The Sony reboot was also the top-ranked title among female respondents across the board.
The remainder of the top five includes Warner Bros.’ The Matrix: Resurrections (named on 49% of lists), Disney/20th Century Studios’ The King’s Man (45%) and Universal/Illumination’s Sing 2 (43%). Survey respondents live in Arkansas, Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Georgia, Louisiana, New York, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin.
Along with new releases, respondents were asked to name their top five holiday classics to see on the big screen. First place on that question went to the 2003 Will Ferrell classic Elf, with 57% of respondents naming the film, which was ranked No. 1 in 12 out of the 17 states surveyed. It was followed by National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (named on 50% of lists), A Christmas Story (46%), How the Grinch Stole Christmas (46%) and It’s a Wonderful Life (42%).
Speaking of holiday classics, Marcus Theaters will begin screening its 2021 line-up of seasonal favorites starting Dec. 3 for $5 per person. All five of the most-mentioned films on the survey are a part of this year’s schedule, which also includes White Christmas and The Polar Express. The full schedule can be found here.
Magical Movie Rewards loyalty members were also asked to name the gifts they’re planning to give and also the gifts they most hope to receive this season. Gift cards for experiences (sporting events, movies, dinner, etc.) took first place on both metrics, with 64% of respondents reporting that they plan to give a gift card this season and 71% saying they hope to receive one. The top three gifts that respondents are planning to give were rounded out by clothing (43%) and electronics (40%), while the top three gifts respondents hope to receive include gift cards for products (47%) and clothing (36%). Notably, 54% of respondents also said they were “extremely” or “somewhat” concerned about the product shortages and shipping delays this holiday season.
Finally, Marcus loyalty members were asked how they’re planning to celebrate the holidays this year, with results differing sharply given the widespread availability of vaccines now as opposed to 2020. When compared with survey results in 2020, 54% of respondents reported they plan to see a movie with family or friends during Thanksgiving week this year, versus 34% last year. In 2020, 36% of respondents saw a movie together in 2020 during Christmas week, while 62% said they plan to do so this year. A total of 68% also plan to gather with extended family this year, versus 47% who did so in 2020. Lastly, 36% of respondents plan to travel this year, versus 24% who did so last year.
In a statement, Marcus Theaters chairman, president and CEO Rolando Rodriguez also noted that 97% of survey respondents said they plan to visit a movie theater by Jan. 1. “This isn’t a surprise, especially this year as reconnecting with one another is incredibly important and movies have a way of bringing us together,” said Rodriguez. “Plus, the movie slate is as strong as ever.”
Regal has announced a pair of new partnerships. The first, struck with pure-digital payments network Flexa, will allow Regal customers to pay for movie tickets, popcorn and more using digital currencies. The second partnership, reached with Uber Eats, will allow customers of the meal-delivery service to order Regal concessions via the Uber Eats app.
Under its agreement with Flexa, Regal customers can now pay with a variety of cryptocurrencies – including bitcoin, ether, dogecoin and Dai – “all instantly and with zero risk of fraud,” according to a press release announcing the deal. The partnership covers the exhibitor’s entire global footprint of over 500 theaters representing more than 7,000 screens. The digital currencies valid under the deal include:
Cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH), litecoin (LTC), and dogecoin (DOGE);
Digital dollars and stablecoins including USD Coin (USDC), Dai (DAI), and Gemini dollar (GUSD);
Digital tokens including LINK, ATOM, Basic Attention Token (BAT), and more.
In the release, Flexa is touted for its “guaranteed settlement, flexible integration options, fraud-proof architecture, and breadth of currency and payment options” that “solve enduring challenges and points of friction that are currently hindering the widespread adoption of digital assets.” Regal notes that it’s currently working with Flexa to “enable better payments for as many different assets and across as many different protocols…as possible,” including the Lightning Network. As an example, the exhibitor notes that Regal guests will soon have the ability to link their Regal Crown Club loyalty account for special rewards when paying at Regal with Flexa-enabled apps.
“As more of our customers demand digital asset solutions and safer payment methods, we are grateful to have found a partner in Flexa, a company that is revolutionizing digital payments with cutting-edge software and an innovative business platform,” said Ken Thewes, chief marketing officer at Regal, in a statement. “This exciting partnership enables us to easily and seamlessly accept digital currencies – including dogecoin, stablecoins and bitcoin – across our theatre footprint in a simple and completely contactless way, providing our guests with the flexibility and safety they deserve as we embark on a new era.”
“Flexa is committed to helping merchants enable easier, faster, and safer payment options for their customers, and that’s just one of the reasons we’re incredibly proud to work with Regal, whose dedication to creating an enjoyable and widely accessible cinematic experience for their loyal patrons is second to none,” added Trevor Filter, co-founder of Flexa. “We’re very pleased to partner with Regal as we work to enable universal digital currency payment options for movies and more, and help bring the future of payments to cinema.”
The Uber Eats partnership will make Regal’s concession items available to buy in the Uber Eats app from over 150 Regal locations across the U.S. In celebration of the new deal, customers will save $5 off any purchase of more than $25 from November 23-29.
The 60th feature film from Walt Disney Animation Studios opens with crickets chirping quietly and the sound of someone whispering, “Abre tus ojos” (open your eyes). Right from the opening moment of Encanto, the audience is immersed in the sights and sounds of Colombia.
The past few Walt Disney Animation Studios films took place in fictional lands — inspired by real places, but fictional nonetheless. Raya and the Last Dragon was set in Kumandra, a Southeast Asian nation like Cambodia, Myanmar, or Thailand. Moana took place in Motunui, modeled on Polynesia and Hawaii. Frozen and Frozen II unfolded in Arendelle, a mythical Scandinavian land.
“From the beginning we knew we wanted to set it in Latin America,” Encanto producer Clark Spencer tells Boxoffice Pro, “but do we do it ‘inspired by’ or pick a real location? In our research, we discovered that Colombia is really the crossroads of Latin America. The people are Spanish, they’re Black, they’re Indigenous. The land has [diverse] topography. Within this one country, you can get everything you want and more from Latin America.”
The location is real. What’s surreal is — pretty much everything else.
The Setting
The opening sequence tells the Madrigal family’s backstory: forced from their longtime village almost a century earlier, they settled into a house in the middle of a forest. The family members, and the house they reside in, gained magical powers. Then the scene fast-forwards to the present day, when a young woman in that opening flashback is now the elderly matriarch of a multigenerational family unlike any other.
Fifteen-year-old protagonist, Mirabel, voiced by Stephanie Beatriz of television’s “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” sings an opening number introducing her family, including shape-shifter Camilo; Pepa, who can control the weather; Antonio, who communicates with animals; and Luisa, who boasts super strength. Throughout the tune, teacups pour themselves, shoes slide onto characters’ feet as they’re walking, and a staircase instantly transforms into a slide.
If the opening number—the way it sets the scene and introduces every character in the large ensemble cast—reminds you of the opening number from Broadway’s Hamilton, there’s a reason for that: Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote the film’s eight original songs. “I was working from home in my bedroom for most of this project, and my 6-year-old daughter stays out of my bedroom most of the day,” producer Yvett Merino says. “But one time she came in, saw our live Zoom meeting which included Lin, and exclaimed, ‘That’s Hamilton!’”
The Process
Ah yes, the Zoom meetings. Which raises the question: where exactly was the production process on Wednesday, March 11, 2020, “the day everything changed”?
“That day, we had just screened [a very early version of] the movie for the third time,” director and writer Jared Bush says, noting they ultimately screened it eight times over the course of production. “Clark came in and said, ‘We’re going to do something called social distancing. Everyone go home. It will probably be about two weeks,’” Bush laughs at the memory.
“When we finally got back to the studio in-person after more than a year, long-gone iterations of characters and storyboards were pinned up on the walls,” Bush remembers. “The office was a time capsule of how the movie used to be.”
So how exactly did the movie used to be?
“We thought it was a funny idea to have Mirabel playing with dolls and talking to herself at the beginning of the movie,” co-director and writer Charise Castro Smith admits, though they ultimately nixed the idea as slightly too juvenile for the teenage character.
“At one point, Pepa’s power was being indestructible,” director Byron Howard adds. “In order to retrieve a soccer ball on the other side of a cliff, they’d load her into the cannon and shoot her across the canyon.” They dropped the concept for several reasons — namely, if one of the characters were literally indestructible, that would presumably eliminate the need for Mirabel to embark on her heroic quest.
The Design
That quest, to save her family’s house from a threat to its magic, is made all the more challenging by a small problem: Mirabel is the only member of the family without any powers.
Her outward appearance reflects her all-around ordinariness. After so many unrealistically beautiful Disney heroines throughout the decades, from Snow White, Aurora (Sleeping Beauty), and Cinderella to the more recent Elsa (Frozen), Moana, and Rapunzel, Mirabel is the first Disney female animated protagonist with glasses—and oversize ones, at that. While three male Disney animated protagonists have worn glasses—in Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Chicken Little, and Meet the Robinsons, not to mention the title character in Warner Bros.’ Harry Potter franchise—Disney seemed to be loath to take that leap with a female character, until now.
The lead filmmakers, accompanied by Lin-Manuel Miranda and his father, Luis, were inspired to include these geographically specific details after a 2018 preproduction trip to Colombia, where they immersed themselves in the nation’s culture, history, music, architecture, and more. They were largely coming in as novices: Miranda’s ancestry is Puerto Rican, while Howard and Bush landed the job after co-directing 2013’s hit Zootopia and had no connections to Colombia.
To ensure the nation was represented accurately, the filmmakers set up what they nicknamed the Colombian Cultural Trust, a group of 10 people who were either from the nation or experts on it, including journalists and anthropologists. They contributed in various ways, including by reviewing various versions of the script.
What’s an example of a way the Trust influenced the movie? “Colombian families are very close-knit, often touching each other, hugging each other,” head of animation Kira Lehtomaki explains. “So, we didn’t shy away from having them constantly touching each other’s hair or holding each other’s arms.”
The Music
Disney screened three musical sequences at a recent press junket. The opening number clearly contains Colombian and other Latin American influences in a fun upbeat style. So does “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” which tells the tale of the black sheep member of the family in a slinky mid-tempo salsa.
Then the movie breaks with those influences completely on the third song, in which Jessica Darrow’s Luisa laments that her physical superstrength masks a fragile ego. With no detectable Colombian influence at all, the song clearly owes a debt to the ubiquitous female-empowerment pop anthems of the 2010s. Then again, perhaps it will end up the soundtrack’s biggest hit, just as “How Far I’ll Go” became the biggest hit from Moana, despite possessing arguably the least detectable Polynesian musical or lyrical influence on the soundtrack.
“We would meet with Lin every Friday night, 6 p.m. our time, 9 p.m. his time, because he’s on the East Coast. That’s a big ask for somebody, to always meet on Friday night,” acknowledges Spencer, who in addition to his producer role also serves as president of Walt Disney Animation Studios. “We’d be updating him on the story, he’s in a room with instruments around him, would immediately be inspired by something, grab an instrument and start playing. The great Lin-Manuel Miranda is performing just for you!”
The Release
With the film approaching its announced November 24 release date, theatrical exclusivity was hardly guaranteed.
Following September’s massive debut of Disney and Marvel Studios’ Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, those fears were eliminated. Due in large part to its theatrical exclusivity, the film opened above even the most optimistic projections and currently ranks as the highest-grossing release of 2021 domestically. Later that same week, Disney announced that all its remaining 2021 movies would receive theatrical exclusivity, albeit for varying lengths of time. For Encanto, that’s 30 days, after which it will premiere on Disney Plus on Christmas Eve.
But truly, this film begs to be seen at the cinema. “When we were making the movie in quarantine, we could only see it on computers,” Bush says. “We could only see it on the big screen when we went back to the studio [around May]. Seeing it huge for the first time, I literally had tears down my face.”
AT THE MOVIES
What’s your favorite snack at the movie theater concession stand?
Clark Spencer, Producer and President of Walt Disney Animation Studios: Peanut M&M’s and Diet Coke. The reason I don’t go to the popcorn is because I literally cannot stop. My parents owned a single-screen theater when I was a kid. When I was young, I would sit on my grandmother’s lap while she sold tickets. My older sisters would work at the concession stand. I was jealous. At the end of the night, I could pick one thing each night. I would pick Necco wafers.
Byron Howard, Director: Popcorn, Junior Mints, and Twizzlers.
Jared Bush, Director and Writer: Popcorn. Come on! I will go through a bucket, and if I can get my free refill, I will make myself sick.
Charise Castro Smith, Co-Director and Screenwriter: Popcorn. And if I’m feeling a little different, nachos.
Yvett Merino, Producer: Red Vines and Diet Coke. But not together! I’ve tried it—it’s too much!
