It will arguably be the first “normal” month at this year’s box office.
December 2021 was packed with the likes of Spider-Man: No Way Home, West Side Story, Sing 2, and The Matrix Resurrections. But then the Omicron variant hit in late December, spiking daily Covid-19 cases rates to their highest levels of the entire pandemic.
As a result, a number of high-profile theatrical titles postponed or vacated their planned January, February, or March release dates. The Batman led for three consecutive weekends in March, as not a single major wide release debuted in competition on either the film’s second or third frames.
Here’s our guide to the top movies poised to receive a wide release in April 2022.
Morbius
Friday, April 1
Premise: Jared Leto stars as title character Michael Morbius, a scientist searching for a cure to his blood disease who tests a concoction on himself and turns into a vampire. Read Boxoffice PRO‘s interview with director Daniel Espinosa here.
Box office comparisons: This is the third installment in the Sony Pictures / Columbia standalone franchise centered on Marvel Comics villains. 2018’s Venom earned $213.5M, the exact same figure achieved by its 2021 sequel, Venom: Let There Be Carnage. Current Morbius projections are below both of those titles.
Sonic the Hedgehog 2
Friday, April 8
Premise: Paramount’s family action sequel returns Jim Carrey as the live-action villain Doctor Robotnik and Ben Schwartz as the voice of the CGI title character, in this franchise based on the bestselling videogames since the early 1990s.
Box office comparisons: 2020’s original Sonic the Hedgehog earned $146M at the domestic box office, and that was cut short by the pandemic. The film still ranked sixth place during the final weekend before cinemas shut down nationwide, and likely would have earned somewhere around $160M without that curtailment.
Ambulance
Friday, April 8
Premise: Universal’s original R-rated action thriller stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (The Matrix Resurrections) as adopted brothers who get more than they bargained for when attempting to rob a bank. Michael Bay, who helmed five Transformers and two Bad Boys movies, directs.
Box office comparisons: Bay’s two other original (non-sequel) theatrical releases in the past decade were 2016’s 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi with $52.8M and 2013’s Pain & Gain with $49.8M. Three of Gyllenhaal’s more recent action or adventure movies were 2017’s Life with $30.2M, 2015’s Everest with $43.4M, and 2015’s Southpaw with $52.4M.
Father Stu
Wednesday, April 13
Premise: Sony Pictures’ inspiration biopic drama stars Mark Wahlberg as Stuart Long, a convict who turned his life around and became a priest. Mel Gibson has a supporting role as Stu’s father Bill Long and Gibson’s real-life girlfriend since 2014, Rosalind Ross, makes her feature film directorial debut.
Box office comparisons: Wahlberg’s similarly-inspirational Patriots Day earned $31.8M, while Matt Damon’s similar-tone Stillwater made $14.4M last July. Wahlberg’s also-inspirational Joe Bell only totalled $1.4M last July, though Father Stu stands to outearn that in its opening weekend alone.
Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore
Friday, April 15
Premise: The third installment of Warner Bros.’ (supposedly) five-part Fantastic Beasts franchise, which takes place in the Harry Potter universe of the 1920s and 1930s, this fantasy sequel is penned by the original novels’ author J.K. Rowling. Returning Eddie Redmayne as protagonist Newt Scamander and Jude Law as the titular younger version of Albus Dumbledore, who audiences know as his elderly self in the Harry Potter books and films, the movie is directed by David Yates who also helmed four of the eight Potter movies.
Box office comparisons: While 2016’s original Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them took in $234.0M and 2018’s sequel Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald fell shorter with $159.5M, Dumbledore looks to likely fell shorter still. Combining mixed-to-negative reception for Grindelwald plus personal controversies surrounding Rowling herself since the previous installment’s release could result in lower-than-expected box office figures.
The Bad Guys
Friday, April 22
Premise: Five criminal animals — a snake, wolf, shark, spider, and pirhana — team up to form a superteam in the Universal / DreamWorks animated comedy, based on the children’s book series by Aaron Blabey. Pierre Perifel directs, making his feature film directorial debut after helming several shorts.
Box office comparisons: Universal is clearly hoping to replicate the success of their 2010 Despicable Me, which also starred an animated villain and earned $251.5M, though that seems far above the best-case scenario for Bad Guys. More likely box office comparisons here include 2021’s Raya and the Last Dragon with $54.7M or 2019’s Spies in Disguise with $66.7M.
The Northman
Friday, April 22
Premise: Alexander Skarsgård stars as the title character, a Viking warrior, in Focus Features’ historical action thriller costarring Nicole Kidman, Anya Taylor-Joy, Ethan Hawke, and Willem Dafoe. Robert Eggers (The Lighthouse and The Witch) directs.
Box office comparisons: Focus Features’ top two films of 2021 were Stillwater ($14.4M) and Last Night in Soho ($10.1M). Last October’s similar Last Duel, from 20th Century Studios, earned $10.8M.
The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent
Friday, April 22
Premise: Lionsgate’s meta-comedy stars Nicolas Cage as… Nicolas Cage, playing a fictionalized version of himself recruited by the CIA for a secret mission that requires him to reenact qualities from characters across three decades of his prior film roles, from National Treasure to his Academy Award-winning turns in 1995’s Leaving Las Vegas. Tiffany Haddish, Neil Patrick Harris, and Pedro Pascal (Wonder Woman 1984 and The Mandalorian) costar.
Box office comparisons: There is arguably no comparison to this, in the entire 100+ year history of the movie business. Still, Boxoffice PRO‘s most recent long range forecast projects it will earn in the $16M-$36M range.
45 years after the film’s original release, a remastered version of 1977’s concert documentary Abba: TheMovie will be released in cinemas on Thursday, May 12 and Saturday, May 14.
Directed by diector Lasse Hallström — who would later go on to helm What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, The Cider House Rules, Chocolat, Dear John, A Dog’s Purpose, and The Nutcracker and the Four Realms — the film features footage from the Swedish pop group’s 1977 Australian tour.
For this re-release, the film was remastered and scanned at 2K resolution, with restored audio and removal of the original cut’s dirt, scratches, and stains.
The group’s four members — Anni-Frid Lyngstad, Benny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeus, and Agnetha Fältskog — reunited in November 2021 to release Voyage, their first studio album since 1981. The set reached #2 on the Billboard 200 albums chart, behind only the R&B album Still Over It by Summer Walker.
Abba’s lead single, I Still Have Faith in You, is nominated for Record of the Year at next Sunday’s Grammy Awards, marking the group’s first-ever Grammy nomination.
Movie tickets go on sale Wednesday, April 6 at 9 A.M. Eastern Time at AbbaMovie.com.
The film will be distributed by Trafalgar Releasing, in association with Warner Bros. Pictures Group.
“This will be such a fun event for fans to come together and experience ABBA on the big screen for the first time since the 1977 release,” Trafalgar Releasing’s Senior Vice President of Programming and Content Acquisitions Kymberli Frueh said in a press release. “We hope everyone will dig deep into their closets to find vintage ’70s outfits to wear in celebration with us!”
In our March/April issue, Boxoffice Pro revealed our 2022 Giants of Exhibition, ranking the top 50 circuits in North America by screen count. Our rollout was accompanied by an online panel discussion, held on March 15, 2021, designed to explore the potential of cinemas amid a time of continued and substantial change for the industry.
Our panelists hailed from chains that represent a small part of the diversity of the North American cinema landscape: Bob Bagby, CEO of B&B Theatres (sixth-largest chain in North America), the market’s largest family-owned exhibitor; Anthony Laverde, CEO of Emagine Entertainment, a Michigan-based luxury chain that cracked the top 10 of Giants for the first time this year; and Tim League, co-founder and executive chairman of dine-in circuit Alamo Drafthouse (No. 12), which in 2021 emerged from Chapter 11 with a revised business model and an eye to the future.
The theaters may be different, but they all share one goal: providing the best possible experience to their guests. And all three executives share one opinion: Innovation is a necessity, not an option, as the industry emerges from the most turbulent period in its history.
Listen to a recap of this year’s Giants of Exhibition panel—with insights from Bagby, Laverde, and League—in this week’s episode of the Boxoffice Podcast.
For many chains, bouncing back from the pandemic has meant assessing financials and streamlining operations. That’s particularly the case with Alamo Drafthouse, which successfully emerged from Chapter 11 during 2021 and is now expanding into new markets. In this unique period in exhibition history, what factors do you look at when deciding to add new locations?
Tim League, Alamo Drafthouse: Chapter 11 was a new experience for us, one that I’d rather not do again. I’d never done it as a businessman ever before, and I didn’t really know what to expect. There were some silver linings from it. It was awful. It was very painful. But it did leave us with an opportunity to almost burn down the infrastructure of before and build it back up.
Over the last 20 years, we’ve been expanding with new theaters, but we had a little bit of a Frankenstein nature to our company, with things that were patched on. [In addition to its cinema chain, Fantastic Fest, distributor Neon, the American Genre Film Archive, and retailer Mondo are part of the Alamo brand] And there were also hidden expenses that we lost sight of. We made ourselves much more efficient. We have a much smaller overhead at our head office. And we’re trying to realize that we can’t do everything. We’re choosing the most impactful moments to key into. For example, we’re rebuilding a lot of our technology. We were big advocates, before the pandemic, of our subscription program, Season Pass. We’re also realizing that our loyalty program—I probably rate us a C on that. We’re dedicating some technology to increase a lot of minutiae to our technology stack, but also leaning heavily into subscription and what a loyalty program means in the wake of a successful subscription program.
Anthony, what’s been Emagine’s approach to expansion? You’ve added both locations and screen counts over the last year.
Anthony Laverde, Emagine Entertainment: We were lucky. We were very familiar with the seven sites we acquired, so it wasn’t the standard level of due diligence for us. We were either a building owner already or had the ability to acquire an in-market competitor. In the case of the [GQT Movies] sites we acquired, we were very familiar with them. We competed with them for years. It was our management team’s opinion that they had underinvested in their venues for many years and had seen a significant reduction in guest count because of that underinvestment. So it made a lot of sense for us to make them Emagines. We’re going to spend $28 million in the next three quarters rehabilitating these buildings to Emagine standards. I believe that will increase the guest count and bring folks back to the theater, when they have the luxury experience that I know Bob and Tim both provide their guests. I think a common theme between the three of our chains is, the guests come first. We’re not concerned about our competitors. We’re concerned about the guest experience.
Bob, for a family-owned company like B&B Theatres, the pandemic probably brought a lot of scary moments. But you’ve been able to bounce back and invest in your theaters. What has the experience of emerging from the pandemic been like for B&B?
Bob Bagby, B&B Theatres: We are a privately held family company. I believe we’re the largest privately held family company in the United States. When I say “family-owned,” we don’t have a big equity group behind us. Just our family dealing with 20 banks and going for it. We’re so thankful that all of our vendors and bankers and landlords worked with us to get us through this. We are so appreciative.
When the pandemic began, I sat down [with children Bobbie, Brittany, and Brock Bagby, who help run B&B Theatres along with Bob and wife, Bridget]. I told Brock, [EVP and chief content/development officer], “I want you to stay out of the weeds. There are going to be more opportunities for expansion than ever before.” He looked at over 400 deals over the last two years. We added 120 screens. We were very selective. They had to be in areas that were not overscreened, obviously. And they either had to have been remodeled, or there must be tenant improvement money available for a remodel, because you have to have recliners in today’s market. You have to have a nice facility with good sound and projection. That’s what we looked at. Of course, we had very strict terms that we had to have. It was family money, so we were not willing to put a lot of cash into any deal. We had to work with our landlords for funding, and we’re thankful that we made some really good deals over the pandemic.
From the very beginning, though, I was bullish for the future. I knew that once the pandemic ended, people were going to be ready to get off their couches. And I think the success of Spider-Man: No Way Home and The Batman show that I was right.
Also helping bring people back to theaters during the recovery are premium experiences. Tim, something that Alamo announced just prior to the pandemic and is now expanding is your premium format, The Big Show. What does having your own house-branded PLF mean to Alamo?
TL: It’s a question every exhibitor has to face, in terms of whether you go with one of the externally branded PLFs or go internal. We made the decision that we wanted to write our own specifications for what it meant to be premium large format. We have a pretty strict guideline in terms of light level. There are only a couple of sound options. And then the size of the screen. We also wanted to have fun with the brand. Our branding on The Big Show harkens back to something very important to me: the age-old tradition of ballyhoo.
We’ve had great success with it. Whenever we’re building new units or taking over others where we have room to put in a PLF [screen], it’s an integral part of anything new that we’re going to do. The results have been strong, and the response from our guests has been amazing, especially for the tentpole movies. For a movie like The Batman, watching it in PLF—there is no comparison [to having] the immersive picture and, almost equally important, the immersive sound. So it’s very much a part of the road map forward for our expansion.
Bob, have you noticed that premium formats have an impact on getting people back to B&B Theatres for some of these big-budget blockbusters?
BB: Yes. We are seeing the majority of our customers coming back and coming for premium large format or some other experience. We have ScreenX, we have 4DX. That’s what people are doing. They’re there. They want that experience. They’ve been sitting on the couch. A lot of people saved a lot of money not going out for a couple of years, so now they’re willing to pay. And they’re also eating more, which is pretty exciting!
screenPlay, courtesy of B&B Theatres
Two innovative experiences B&B Theatres has invested in are screenPlay, which is a family-friendly auditorium, and the installation of a performance arts stage for live performances at your Shawnee, Kansas location. Can you speak to us about those concepts and the experience of integrating them into traditional multiplexes?
BB: screenPlay is something that we have in a few locations. We actually have a playground in the auditorium. Kids can play 30 minutes before the movie. You have a small upcharge. Then the kids sit down and watch the movie. And yes, they do sit down and watch the movie, because they’re excited to see the movie. We always say it gets their wiggles out right before the movie starts! I take my grandkids, and they are not good all the time. The young ones are talking and want to get up. But it doesn’t bother anybody else in there, because we all have kids and they all get it. We want to start them young in going to the movies and [establishing] their love for the movies.
A lot of us have big—18-, 24-screen, whatever—complexes that we obviously don’t need now that the market has changed. So we’re looking at how to use some of those auditoriums. Our sweet spot is [about] 12 to 14 screens. What do we do with those other screens? In our Shawnee [Kansas] location, we put in B&B Live, which is a live performance space. We work with a partner, a local theater group that does musicals and plays, but we also rent it out for dance recitals. We had the Miss America and the Miss Kansas pageants there, all kinds of things. But the clever thing that I did, after being a father raising two daughters: I built the bar right outside that auditorium. So you can go out, have a beer, watch the game, and then somebody from your family can text you, “OK, she’s getting ready to go on.” That’s been very popular.
We’re doing some other crazy things. In one of our places, we have taken out all the seats and put in bicycles for a spin class. And so you can be riding and watch [trailers and other short programming on] the big screen. We have a comedy club in one of our places. We’re just trying to think of anything out of the box that gets people into our buildings. When they’re in our buildings, they see our posters, and maybe they’ll come back and catch a movie. And while they’re there, hopefully they buy some popcorn.
Photo Courtesy Emagine Entertainment
Over the last year, Emagine has launched some interesting projects involving sports, including free-to-enter watch parties that help drive bar sales and a new sports betting lounge in your Royal Oak, Michigan location. Anthony, can you tell us a bit about how that concept came about and how it’s been doing since opening in December?
AL: We actually thought about this concept and began the process pre-Covid. With the advent of online wagering in the state of Michigan, and now many other states we operate in, we really wanted to bring Vegas to our guests. And we had the extra capacity to change an auditorium and give it the full feel of a Vegas-style sports book. It’s 42 feet of LEDs. It’s heated recliners. It’s wooden tables to hold your laptop or your device while you’re placing your wagers. It’s full service to your seat. You don’t need to fly to Vegas to have the Vegas experience of a sports book. In most cases, you don’t have to drive a few hours to your closest casino. It’s the first one, in our Royal Oak location. And we certainly intend to build more. We’re looking forward to partnering pretty soon with a national operator to really have some fun with it.
More and more chains are introducing non-movie-screening events, whether that’s a sports-betting lounge or a performance space or just having a fun area where people can have a drink after the movie. Given the evolution of that experience, how is the moviegoer of 2022 different from the moviegoer of 2019?
TL: We can debate this. I don’t see a significant difference between the moviegoer of 2019 and 2022. Over the past year, since we’ve been reemerging from the closures, there has been a different level of comfort, when people say, “I’m ready to regain my life as it was before and start behaving normally again.” And I don’t think everybody’s 100 percent there, obviously. But what I am seeing now, especially if you look at The Batman and the sold-out crowds that we’ve all been blessed with, is that it’s growing. There’s a sense of really moving from pandemic to endemic and coming to grips with going out with friends and enjoying the things that you loved before.
So I think it’s still the same. When we have something magic that we offer, when we’re at our best. I think this panel does an exceptional job of bringing showmanship and caring about the details of great sound, great picture, and a great experience at the movies. It’s a wonderful industry that I was drawn to when I was a young man and I still love. I’m still a pretty regular movie crier. The emotions are so strong. And so I think [the moviegoers are] the exact same people. It’s just [that] everybody’s got their own path toward resuming their normal life post-Covid.
Bob, have you seen a significant change in your patrons coming back now in 2022 compared to before the pandemic?
BB: The difference that I see is that they’re wanting the premium experience. They’re willing to pay for premium formats, and they eat more, and they just want to get out and experience [the movies]. No question that the young males were the first ones to come back. But we saw a significant amount of our guests return for [No Time to Die], and it was an older demographic that came. Every day that we get the pandemic behind us, we’re going to continue to see our business grow. I saw a person the other day in a mask, in their car, alone. There are still people that are scared. It’s going to take them time. But the biggest thing our industry needs is a constant supply of product with a fair and reasonable window from the studios. And then I think this business is going to explode.
AL: I echo Bob’s last statement loudly. [As to any difference between the moviegoer of 2022 and the moviegoer of 2019], it’s a tough question. Really, the only difference I see is a push toward technology. Ordering your ticket, ordering your food, having your seat, having it all done before you arrive at the cinema. And we’re delivering [the food] to your seat. People were enamored with the contactless, no-lines experience. We hope to continue to grow on that. Technology will only add to the guest experience. [Investing in technology] is something that’s very important for us to continue doing.
[There’s also been] a real push toward more privacy. We recently built a small, 25-seat theater at one of our locations that—and Bob will like this—has a glass wall, and on the other side of the wall is the bar. The parents can put their kids in the theater, and they can see into the theater to check if they’re behaving [while] they’re having drinks and spending money. More privacy, more intimacy, shorter lines, less contact are all waves that will continue. You have to invest in your infrastructure to provide those services.
Emagine Entertainment, Alamo Drafthouse, and B&B Theatres have all been able to bounce back coming out of the Covid-19 crisis. What are you actively considering investing in? When you’re looking at capex, what are your priorities for the next two or three years?
AL: PLF is definitely a must-have these days to provide a guest with an experience they want to come out and spend their money on. Outside of that, we’ve seen a lot of success with live music. We started the Emagine After Dark series, which is basically a speakeasy. It opens at 10 p.m. and runs till 2 a.m. It’s in a single auditorium. We’ll have local acts that can pull 300 to 500 guests at a time. They’ll perform on Thursday, Friday, Saturday night. We’ve seen impressive per cap numbers from holding this “music festival,” if you want to call it that. We think there’s probably an opportunity to expand that with some of our larger PLF screens to more national acts. We provide a luxury experience. You provide the content, people will come. If it’s live music, comedy, plays, or film—and if Hollywood puts out enough film, we’ll continue to put it on the screen. But to fill those holes, we’ll come up with alternative content. 2021 was a record year for us. We generated over 5 percent of revenue from alternative content.
BB: We put in our very first laser projector: the Cinionic, powered by CGS [Cinionic Giant Screen], in the Grand Screen [B&B Theaters’ in-house PLF brand] in our Blacksburg, Virginia theater. It was extremely impressive. That’s something we’re going to do with some of the [older projectors] that need to be replaced. Very expensive, so there are a lot of things we have to work on.
I mentioned earlier [that] some of these larger theaters have more screens than we need. We’re doing some things like taking out screens and gutting [the theater] and turning it into an entertainment center with bowling and an arcade and bigger bars and things of that nature. We found during the pandemic, particularly when things cleared up but the studios still weren’t giving us money, that bowling provided some steady revenue for us. It’s expensive to put in. But it’s something we’re definitely looking at. I think you’ll see us putting in several more entertainment centers in the coming years.
TL: The past six months, we’ve been quite cautious. We haven’t come back to our full-size team. Something that we have sacrificed, by design, are some of the more complex things that we execute. Some of the specialty programming and bar events and things like that. So the first thing we’re doing is getting back to full strength. We’re very close to getting the full team back together. Whereas we have some of our bars open—we’ve been longtime advocates of having a bar associated with the theater—we haven’t quite put all the strange, weird, and wonderful events back into the flow, because it’s labor-intensive to do so. But that’s something we’re going to be doing this summer.
I already mentioned the technology piece. It’s really important to us. [We first launched] online ticketing in 2001. We’ve always thought that some of the biggest differentiators can come from elegant touches to our user interface through the app and by making sure that we have a direct relationship with our customers, both through loyalty and by directly transacting with them.
The Batman is the first time [since the March 2019] we’ve come out with a significant [custom, film-specific] menu, which we used to do all the time. Maybe too many times! I’m not sure. We’ve rebuilt our culinary team back up to where it needs to be. We’re also putting a focus on training to make sure that when we quick-pivot and introduce new experiences, new shows, new content, new menus, that we do an exceptional job at rolling that out across our 38 locations.
Those are some of the main factors. We’re also looking at the revenue streams of private rentals, how that was really great during the pandemic and how that can continue and be a viable revenue source for the next couple of years. But honestly, I think for the next year it’s still cautiously rebuilding our team to full strength so we can operate at full capacity. Our revenue streams have been about 70, 75 percent coming from the blockbusters, 15 or 20 percent from independent film, and 8 or 9 percent from alternative content. I love the independent film sector, but promoting those films when you don’t have a national, multimillion-dollar marketing spend is more difficult. That means it’s on our shoulders. So, yeah, [the goal is] really getting back to what we did in 2019 as good as we were then. And we’re almost there!
The technology piece is so important—but so is providing the customer experience. With things moving more toward contactless, mobile technologies, how do you continue to provide that more personal touch when preferred by your guests?
AL: Our H.R. team is top-notch, and they’ve invested a lot into training and into software to help our staff know every aspect of running a building. I don’t think there’s anything positive about the experience we went through with Covid. But it was one of those situations, “If I only had to. …” There were a lot of items that we were able to check off during that time, and one of them was our own internal training software, to [give] all of our staff true knowledge of our expectations when dealing with our guests.
Secondly, I’d say that you can’t be singularly focused on one aspect of your business. If folks want to wait on line and pay cash and interact and ask one of our teammates how the film is, you still have to allow that experience to take place. Giving guests all of the options possible that would please them and give them a more enjoyable experience is what our job is.
We take an immense amount of data from our guests on a daily and weekly basis. And we’re listening to that feedback. One example is that we recently had been showing foreign films, but we didn’t really see any [significant per caps] from those films. We couldn’t figure out why guests weren’t really spending on concessions. Through a questionnaire that’s on the back of some of our movie tickets, we discovered that most of these guests were wanting to buy concessions during an intermission. So we put an intermission into those films. Sure enough, a week later, we were selling concessions during those foreign films. It’s listening to your guests, and it’s really giving your teammates the opportunity to understand your expectations.
What has been most successful in driving admissions and getting cinemagoers more engaged with their local theaters?
AL: [As long as] Hollywood gives us good content, folks want to have communal experiences. That’s what I truly believe. You have to provide a wonderful experience. You can’t have sticky floors, you can’t have dirty bathrooms, you can’t have stale popcorn. It’s the basics. It’s what guests expect. And if you’re delivering that, I think folks want to come out and have communal experiences.
In our case, we were really lucky [in that] we were able to scale [up] operations pretty quickly. We have real loyalty from our staff and our teammates. One of the things we did during Covid, when we had to unfortunately furlough quite a few folks, is we paid all of their health care, including their portion, throughout the pandemic. We have to thank our chairman [Paul Glantz] for making that difficult decision. It garnered some real loyalty from our wonderful team. When we were ready to ramp back up, it was not difficult to bring [them back]. Everyone was ready, willing, and able. I truly believe being able to ramp back up and give guests that full experience right away gave us a competitive advantage in our marketplace.
BB: As we’ve all said, it is the movies that bring people back. But [as to] what brings them back to our facilities—[there’s our strong] social media presence and our connection with our guests on a regular basis. We have a great creative team that’s always finding ways to engage with our guests.
We also reopened several of our theaters really early. We didn’t have product, but we felt like we had to get open. I think being the first [to come back], we kept people in the habit. With some of the theaters we’ve taken over that were closed during the entire pandemic, we’re seeing it taking much longer to get people back, because they got out of the habit. That’s why we need this constant supply of product, because when you go see The Batman, and you see a trailer for something else next weekend, it makes you want to come back.
We’re constantly experimenting. It’s very labor intensive, and it’s been very challenging with labor shortages. But we did the same thing as Emagine, where we covered [our team’s] health insurance. We definitely had a lot of loyalty from our staff. That helps so much. We try to have fun with them. That makes them have an enjoyable experience, and hopefully they relay that to our guests.
Alamo Drafthouse’s Manhattan location; photo by Michael Mansfield
Tim, Alamo has always been a chain that’s programmed a wide variety of titles: tentpoles, indies, repertory cinema, special events. And each Alamo location has its own feel. What have you found to be most successful in bringing patrons back to your theaters?
TL: There is a particular type of film that’s so big and flashy and loud and experiential and communal. I think both The Batman and Spider-Man fall into that, where [you’re] a part of an audience that loves those franchises and loves those characters, [and you’re] having the best of the best bombastic experience in a cinema, [the kind that] that you can’t have on your laptop while you’re curled up in bed watching content. Those have been the strongest drivers.
But we’ve also had really good success with movies that have Q&As or when we can put forth a fun menu or there’s something experiential. People are making the decision, “Do I feel comfortable going out and having an experience indoors with others?” It’s important to lure them in with the best of the best that we have to offer. The table stakes of clean facility, big sound, bright picture. But [also] those experiential elements that you can really only do outside of the home. When you draw in those early adopters, people remember how special it is to come to the theater.
Do you have any advice on lessons you’ve learned that smaller operators—whether that’s a chain or an individual theater—can integrate into their cinemas?
AL: Hyperlocal marketing is really important. We have a saying: We don’t just build a building and take from the community. You give back. Our chairman is constantly going to local high schools and participating in contests. We invite high school bands to play in our lobby, and we reach out to high schools for employment. I can’t tell you how many parents have written us emails about how we were their son or daughter’s first job, and they’ve come out of their shell because they’re interacting with people. Becoming a real part of the community where each building is located is one of the real reasons why Emagine is successful. We’re part of the community. We’re not just a big, brick building.
Bob, with B&B Theatres being part of so many local communities across the country, what have been some experiences you could share with independent exhibitors?
BB: It wasn’t that long ago that we were a very small regional circuit. We’ve lived that life, and we’ve tried to carry that into the bigger market. What the small independents can do are the same things we’re talking about today. Get involved in your community. Give great customer service. Just get actively promoting your theater. You can bring a band in on a Friday night and have them in the lobby as people are leaving. Our facilities are so unique. In many small towns, [the cinema] is the social center of the community, other than high school football. Those are the two things to do in a small town. It is instrumental to keep these smaller markets alive. The communities have rallied around that, and they will support you. Just keep being involved with the community.
The recovery period has been met with a ramp-up of mergers and acquisitions [M&A] activity. Anthony, Emagine has been a part of that, acquiring a number of cinemas in the last year. On a macro level, what impact do you believe M&A activity is going to have on exhibition in the coming years?
AL: We’re still looking at opportunities. They [now] require a little more due diligence on our part, as we’re not as familiar with some of the markets we’re looking at. I certainly think that controlling your destiny is important—and building yourself a moat. In southeastern Michigan and some areas of Minnesota, we have a nice moat and brand loyalty. When you’re looking at acquisitions, they can’t be over-screened, and it has to give you the opportunity to reward that capital that gets deployed to make those buildings [up to] Emagine standards.
I certainly think we’re going to see a tremendous amount of M&A over the next few years. I think scale is going to matter in the business going forward. And hopefully we have more content to show. But if you have scale, you can produce your own content, and you can deliver it in different methods. You can film a band in one auditorium and stream it out to all your locations and have your own ticketed event. There are multiple ways to use scale to your advantage.
Bob, what impact do you think M&A will have on the industry?
BB: We’re just like everybody, still looking at a lot of opportunities. It’s a little more difficult to get the deals done now than it was in the midst of the pandemic. I believe there are going to be a lot of changes coming. There are a lot of theaters in this industry that have not been remodeled. If you don’t have an updated theater with recliners, people just don’t go. We’re 80 percent recliner, but there are still some [B&B locations without them, and] we see that people aren’t coming back as fast [to those].
I think you’re gonna see some closures. Some [locations] maybe need to go away, because [the market is] overscreened. But I think there will be some great opportunities for those people that are aggressive and willing to invest. We believe in the future, and if you provide that comfortable seat and a bar and a great, clean facility and good customer service, people are going to come back.
There will be some that will close, but I think most [theaters] are going to survive. We have to be innovative. We have to keep looking for the next best thing to keep our customers engaged. There may be some changing of hands with theaters, but I think you’re not going to see a big reduction in screen count.
Tim, as the co-founder and executive chairman of a smaller chain that saw substantial expansion in the years prior to the pandemic—and that has further expansion planned—what are your thoughts on industry M&A?
TL: It’s a complicated answer for me. Part of my answer hearkens back to the question before this, about what smaller theaters can do to be stronger during this reemergence. You refer to us as a chain, and we’re undeniably a chain. But I started as a single-screen, single-location theater. Mom-and-pop, with me and my wife. As we’ve grown, I found that the biggest challenge is holding onto what we were able to do much easier as a single location, which is be a local theater, be a community theater.
If local theaters can do the table stakes, you have a leg up, because you can instill loyalty within the local community just by being awesome and loving movies. I know we’re a chain, but can we see ourselves as a loose collection of local theaters?
[Regarding] M&A, we’re certainly pursuing growth opportunities. But when we tackle them, we can’t let the core experience and the dedication to being a part of the community and sharing our love of the movies and letting local folks in each market have a meaningful voice and provide the personality of our theaters [get left behind]. The big problem of the massive M&A that happened in the ’80s and the ’90s was a sanitizing of the experience. You lost all the personality, and it became a commodity business. So I fear M&A. And yet, we’re going to try to do some! But I do it with grave concern that we don’t destroy what I think is the most important thing about who we are, which is our personality and love of movies.
In an exclusive interview with Boxoffice Pro France, Jocelyn Bouyssy, CEO of CGR Cinémas, the second-largest exhibition circuit in France and sixth-largest in Europe, reveals current owners Luc and Charles Raymond are exploring the sale of the circuit.
CGR Cinémas is well known in the industry as one of the world’s top cinema circuits—the second-largest chain in France (claiming 12% of the market share in 2021) and sixth-largest in Europe—but the group’s activities expand beyond exhibition. Could you remind us of the other areas in entertainment in which you currently operate?
Georges Raymond founded the company as an exhibition circuit. Today, we have 74 cinemas and more than 700 screens throughout France. We’ve also expanded into the cinema technology space to introduce our Premium Large Format (PLF) concept, Ice Theaters, to exhibitors outside of France. We are active on the distribution side with Apollo Films and our event cinema outfit, CGR Events.
I made the decision to diversify the company beyond the cinema space about ten years ago. Today, we operate 17 hotels, a thalassotherapy center, and a number of different concepts in the restaurant business—ranging from a restaurant by acclaimed chef Pierre Gagnaire to a handful of Burger King locations.
Speaking of the Raymond Family, today you’re announcing the start of a new phase for the company…
Luc and Charles Raymond, the heirs of CGR founding president Georges Raymond, have decided to hand over ownership of the group. We’re turning a page in the company’s history as we begin to explore our options. The Raymond family wants to be part of this transition and is helping us identify partners who are just as passionate about our company’s history as we are. Partners committed to not only running the company, but developing it.
An ICE Theaters Auditorium.
Photo Courtesy of CGR Cinemas and ICE Theaters
“The decision to start this process of exploring new shareholders for CGR Cinémas group, which could lead to its sale, is an important step for us. Motivated by the best interests of this magnificent company, started over 50 years ago by our father, we feel this is the best time to begin this new phase. Naturally, this is an emotional decision, but one made with both focus and determination.”
– Charles Raymond, Co-Owner, CGR Cinémas
What are the strengths of the CGR group?
We have always fostered a culture of efficiency and innovation. We are big proponents of developing and promoting our internal resources, something I myself am an example of. This strategy of investing in and developing our employees has proven to be vital to our success, especially given the current recruitment difficulties affecting the market. Talent retention and development is a big part of our culture. There is a special bond at CGR between the men and women who work for the group.
You have a long history with the company yourself.
I just celebrated 37 years working at CGR. I started as a projectionist in Agen [in southern France], and I often say that I learned just about every role in the company on my path to becoming CEO, a position I’ve held for 16 years now. I think that by being close to your colleagues, you will always be able to find dependable co-workers near you.
As the cinema industry struggles to emerge from the turbulence of the pandemic, why are you optimistic for the sector in general and for CGR Cinémas in particular?
We’ve learned a lot from this crisis. We were afraid of a change in the business model—even if we could clearly see the arrival of streaming—and now we have the recent changes to [theatrical exclusivity] laws in France. We operate in a country with very specific and particular business practices. Tensions around this shift have begun to ease with the agreement Netflix just signed, and we’re beginning to realize that the business will become more self-regulated moving forward.
I’m usually an optimist by nature, and I’m particularly confident at the moment—especially after seeing how business picked up with the release of Spider-Man: No Way Home in December.
This generation, glued to their smartphones and capable of watching a streaming series on a foot-long screen, responds to our medium as long as there are movies that appeal to them. Older audiences are taking longer to come back, and that’s normal: they are the most vulnerable population in this pandemic and we cannot ignore the anxiety provoked by going to the movies while emergency health measures are still in place. Sometimes all it takes is a film to bring them back alongside younger audiences, as we’ve seen with the latest film from the Kev Adams comedy Maison de retraite here in France.
I often say that cinema is an emotion, it’s part of our social fabric. As long as we have films that appeal to audiences, people will come. Our problem [during the pandemic], independent of the competition by streaming platforms, had more to do with the release delays enacted by certain distributors. I don’t hold anything against them for making those decisions, but at a certain point we need their films to “structure” the release calendar.. We’re finally getting back to a positive rhythm, and that’s why I’m so optimistic about a global recovery.
Regarding CGR, my optimism lies in the strength of our work culture and the closeness we’ve maintained with our audience over the past two years. We put a lot of work on our digital presence—things like our website, mobile app, social networks, and influencer marketing— in order to boost our box office through online sales and advance ticketing on our website. The crisis allowed us to step back and think about the future of our business and our company. Our identity is one of a family-owned, regional ricuit. Whatever happens in the future, I’d like to keep those ties with our local communities. This identity is in line with our distribution outfit, Apollo Films. In France, this is a business with its focus set on audiences in Paris, but we can’t ignore that the vast majority of our tickets are sold in the provinces. We have a diverse audience in this country, where films perform differently across different regions—something that shouldn’t prevent a title’s national roll-out…cinema is a popular pastime in all of France, that’s part of the corporate culture we intend to keep.
You mentioned the importance of premium formats for CGR. What role does premiumization play for CGR’s current strategy?
Premiums formats aren’t new. Imax, 4DX, and ScreenX were all technologies I liked, but weren’t viable for us to implement in the French provinces. Large global or European circuits could afford agreements with those companies, but I found that we weren’t able access those premium formats in medium-sized cities. That’s how we came to create our own, in-house PLF concept—a solution developed by an exhibitor that could be made available to other exhibitors. Through this concept, we want to give any exhibitor the chance to have a PLF auditorium without having to pay any associated royalties.
We launched Ice Theaters five years ago. It took some work to introduce the concept in the United States, where you can’t just launch it in the industry by saying it’s an idea coming from “Jocelyn from CGR.” After our first five years on the market, we can say the concept is a success thanks in large part to the support it’s received, particularly from Luc Besson. He was the first filmmaker to entrust us with a movie in the format, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, which we mastered for Ice Theaters during post-production. We have since created a post-production “bunker” at our headquarters in La Rochelle [on the Southwest coast of France], approved by the Motion Picture Association, that we’ve operated for the last year and a half. A film released in Ice Theaters requires three weeks of post-production, a significant investment, but one that gives the audience a completely different moviegoing experience. It also benefits exhibitors in average-sized cities by not forcing them to pay royalties in perpetuity.
We quickly realized the advantage of having a PLF presence in our circuit. The average ticket price at CGR is around €7 in a standard format, and nearly double that price (€13) at an Ice Theaters auditorium. The studios in Hollywood were equally as convinced by Ice Theaters, and today all the majors—Universal, Warner, Sony, Disney and Paramount—offer their biggest titles in our format. We recently signed the deal to bring Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness to Ice Theaters this year.
In a business sector that earns half its revenue on weekends, we’re noticing more people coming to our off-peak showtimes—something that makes us very happy. There has been plenty of coverage, particularly in Boxoffice Pro, highlighting audiences’ interest in premium formats: comfort, image, sound, and in our case, immersion as well!
What is the footprint of Ice Theaters today?
We have a presence in 40 cities across France, and we have been negotiating with five other French circuits since the onset of the pandemic. Globally, we may be among the only ones to have opened a premium theater during closures, with the inauguration of two theaters in Saudi Arabia while we were all still in the midst of Covid. We opened an Ice Theaters auditorium in Los Angeles [at Regal’s LA Live site in downtown LA] just before the pandemic, so we lost two years there in what was essentially a false start—but recent admissions are already making up for that lost time.
Since cinemas reopened, we’ve been able to sign Spanish circuit Ocine, a deal we closed at CineEurope 2021. Their first Ice auditorium will open in Barcelona on April 8. We are currently in negotiations to expand Ice Theaters footprint to theaters in Germany, Estonia, and many other territories.
You decided to follow in the steps of other major French circuits by entering the distribution business some years back. How have you found that experience?
I had sworn to myself that I would never go into distribution! François Clerc [president of Apollo Films], who had worked at Gaumont and StudioCanal, is someone I know very well and whose work I’ve always admired. We were talking about working together—his way of handling projects, budgets, and audience segments—and he said something that really resonated with me: “I believe in popular cinema”. For me, it is not pejorative to use that phrase, “popular cinema”. Cinema should not be elitist. It’s a real outing, for everyone. So we created Apollo Films, which is now called Apollo Films / Groupe CGR Cinémas, and we are very proud of our efforts. Les Invisibles (2019) was the first title we released. Of course, the two years of the Covid crisis complicated matters. Today, we have Louis-Julien Petit’s follow up to Les Invisibles, La Brigade (2022), on our slate. There are many other projects that are close to my heart that we’re currently working on as part of this adventure into distribution.
Apollo Films wasn’t your first foray into distribution. You were already active in the space through event cinema with CGR Events.
To tell you the truth, [CGR Events] is probably what convinced me to launch Apollo Films. I had acquired experience as a “pseudo-distributor” shortly after the advent of digital cinema and realized there were untapped audience niches. Theater, concerts, sports…we’ve tried everything! We have had big hits like Mozart, the rock opera [a French stage musical], which sold 250,000 tickets, and Matt Pokora’s concerts [a French pop star]. Then we started looking at event cinema programming that was working abroad, like anime.
Through CGR Events, we released Demon Slayer on May 19, 2021, the day cinemas reopened, and sold 750,000 tickets—a phenomenal surprise, even to ourselves. We continued in this niche with Jujutsu Kaisen 0, which has already sold over 430,000 tickets in fifteen days. There are so many events possible through broadcasts, whether they are live or not. Niche programming enables us to reach people who don’t regularly come to our theaters—and that’s the primary purpose of CGR Events.
You’ve also branched out to other leisure and entertainment industries, like hotels and restaurants.
Around ten years ago, one of our employees raised the idea of diversifying into other industries. We first tried diversifying with a hotel in Quiberon [on the west coast of France]. Today, we’ve grown that presence to 17 hotels in a group helmed by the manager of that first property we acquired. That’s what I mean when I talk about the strength of our workforce:he gave us the drive and confidence to continue to develop that part of our business. We have several franchised hotels, including seven in La Rochelle, and the five-star MGallery in Châtelaillon [also in the Southwest coast of France], a restaurant from acclaimed chef Pierre Gagnaire, and a brand new thalassotherapy spa just opposite, with an economy-tier hotel. We have carved out a presence that allows us to create synergies with our cinema activities. We receive film crews every week at our hotels and organize seminars twice a year with our distributor friends at those properties. It’s another chapter of the story we’re writing, one that we are very proud of.
A new chapter of that story begins with the announcement that CGR is looking for new shareholders to lead the group into the future. What are your principal objectives with this transition?
We’re staying focused on our day-to-day tasks, so I’ll be working twice as hard through the remainder of my tenure. Choosing our new partner is the most important part of this process. Someone who can retain all those values, that corporate DNA, that I spoke about. Our employees, the men and women who work at CGR, are the ones who raised this company to the prominence it holds today.
Our priority is to find someone who respects our corporate culture—both our values and ambition. In the meantime, we will continue to develop our business. We have three projects in development, and we also have great ambition for Ice Theaters, which I think can become a global player in the PLF business. We know Ice has great potential to expand and scale overseas. I’m focused on continuing to write this story with our existing team. We’ve accomplished so much together over the years, and I firmly believe there is a lot more left for us to accomplish.
Sony has been on a box office hot streak thanks to their delivery of theatrically exclusive, crowd-pleasing hits throughout the pandemic recovery. This weekend, as 2022 turns the page into its second quarter, the studio returns with Morbius.
Produced in association with Marvel, Morbius will transition another anti-hero character from comic books to the big screen. Still, this film is not yet officially confirmed to be part of Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe. The tangential brand association remains a possible strength for the Jared Leto-led film, but as discussed previously, this origin story has had a challenging road to release.
Unfortunately, pre-release tracking hasn’t improved since the initial long range outlook. Morbius has yet to capture widespread mainstream interest in the way both Venom films did leading up to their debuts, and that portends a much more conservative box office result than is usually expected of Marvel-related films.
The lack of any significant connection to the MCU (we’ll look past the brief inclusion of Michael Keaton in a recent trailer) makes this a horse of a different color. Fans and casual moviegoers are approaching it as more of a standalone comic book adaptation without the kind of snowballing, enthusiasm that’s typical of MCU films and their connective episodic tissue.
Even the Venom series itself saw a massive pick-up in interest close to release for both of its films, driving box office over-performances in both instances. Such a development has not yet occurred in Morbius‘ case as pre-sales have stalled at a slow pace for post-Thursday shows following an already muted launch.
The lack of growing momentum is made further cautionary by the film’s two-year exposure. A first teaser trailer arrived, to mixed reactions, two months before the pandemic shut down theaters in 2020.
Budgeted at $75 million before marketing and distribution, Sony doesn’t necessarily need this film to reach the stellar heights of prior Marvel-related pics for it to become a financial success, and global play will have the ultimate say as to whether or not Morbius warrants a direct sequel in the studio’s spin-off from the MCU with their own Spider-Man-related universe.
By comparison, Venom: Let There Be Carnage reported cost over $110 million to produce.
Across the universe of social metrics, sentiment, pre-sales, tracking, and trailer views, models indicate Morbius is lining up on a trajectory with the likes of Birds of Prey, The Suicide Squad, and Uncharted rather than Venom or the recent MCU debuts of Shang-Chi and Eternals. It has also fallen behind tracking models for April 2019’s Shazam!, which Warner Bros. and DC sent to a $53.5 million domestic opening.
A review embargo is also in place until late Wednesday, just one day before preview shows begin, further exacerbating concern about a lack of confidence in how word of mouth may play out.
The Marvel association always presents an opportunity for strong walk-up business as the weekend hits, and audience reception could surprise with a stronger reaction than early screenings indicate, but the film’s darker tone and lack of an identifiable humor element (ala Venom) may unfortunately hold this origin back from the the upper and middle tiers of comic book movie launches.
Sony reported on Tuesday that they expect a domestic opening weekend around $33 million.
This weekend will also see the re-expansion of Apple Studios’ CODA fresh off its Best Picture win at the Academy Awards. Reports and internal projections suggest the film could reach 600 or more locations domestically this weekend.
Traditionally, this would probably be enough of a footprint to bring a prestige title into (or back into) the weekend top ten, but Apple has yet to provide box office reports for the film at any point during its distribution. As such, we’re not offering CODA forecasts at this time.
Meanwhile, Paramount will send The Contractor into limited release as part of its hybrid strategy for the Chris Pine-led thriller. The studio purchased the film from STX recently. Expectations are modest given its low profile and minimal marketing push in conjunction with at-home availability.
Last but not least, A24’s platform sensation Everything Everywhere All at Once will expand to a reported 38 locations this weekend, via studio confirmation. The film scored a stellar $510K debut from just 10 locations last weekend and is in the middle of a staggered nationwide rollout that will culminate with a wide release on April 8.
The film is a sleeper candidate to crack the top ten this weekend, but we’re not offering forecasts at this time since the studio has not been reporting daily box office updates and has yet to confirm how Wednesday’s IMAX shows will be included.
Weekend Forecast Ranges
Morbius Opening Weekend Range: $36 — 46 million
The Contractor Opening Weekend Range: <$1 million
Weekend Forecast & Location Counts
Boxoffice projects between a 1 to 10 percent increase for this weekend’s top ten films from last weekend’s $78.5 million top ten aggregate.
Film
Distributor
3-Day Weekend Forecast
Projected Domestic Total through Sunday, April 3
Location Count Projection (as of Wednesday)
% Change from Last Wknd
Morbius
Sony Pictures / Columbia
$40,200,000
$40,200,000
~4,000
NEW
The Lost City
Paramount Pictures
$16,200,000
$55,900,000
~4,253
-46%
The Batman
Warner Bros.
$11,500,000
$350,200,000
~3,800
-44%
Uncharted
Sony Pictures / Columbia
$3,300,000
$138,700,000
~3,200
-34%
RRR – Rise Roar Revolt
Sarigama Cinemas
$2,600,000
$13,800,000
~1,000
-73%
Jujutsu Kaisen 0: The Movie
Funimation
$2,100,000
$31,500,000
~2,100
-54%
Dog
United Artists Releasing
$1,700,000
$60,600,000
~2,300
-21%
Spider-Man: No Way Home
Sony Pictures / Columbia & Marvel Studios
$1,600,000
$803,000,000
~1,700
-20%
X
A24
$1,200,000
$10,600,000
~2,100
-46%
Sing 2
Universal Pictures
$1,100,000
$162,100,000
~2,400
-20%
*All forecasts are subject to revision before the first confirmation of Thursday previews or Friday estimates from studios or official sources.
Theater counts are updated as confirmed by studios. The above table does not necessarily represent the top ten as some studios do not finalize weekend location counts and/or an intent to report box office returns prior to publishing.
Cinionic will be returning to Las Vegas for CinemaCon 2022 with with an all-laser portfolio and solution for movie theaters around the world. The company will also celebrate a major milestone at the event, having installed over 100,000 projectors globally since its launch. To commemorate the benchmark, Cinionic will be hosting a week of special presentations and events at its expanded Cinionic World exhibition space in the Romans Ballrooms at Caesar’s Palace.
“After two decades and more than 100,000 projectors, we have built a strong foundation for the future of cinema,” said Wim Buyens, CEO Cinionic. “The opportunity to elevate the experience for millions of moviegoers every day is thanks to the partnership and trust of those who stand beside us. As the box office rises, we return to CinemaCon with solutions to drive attendance and efficiency for the long-term.”
Visitors to Cinionic World 2022 can explore future-ready solutions with daily presentations at the purpose-built Laser Theater and hands-on opportunities with award-winning technologies.
Also returning this year is a live taping of The Insiders Show podcast presented by Cinionic and the Advanced Imaging Society (AIS). Hosted by Cinionic’s Wim Buyens and AIS president Jim Chabin, the podcast’s Season 3 premiere will take place in the Cinionic World Laser Theater on Tuesday, April 26 at noon. Last year’s guests included Cinemark CEO, Mark Zoradi and NATO’s John Fithian. The live event is free for all registered CinemaCon attendees and tickets must be reserved in advance.
Event cinema distributor Iconic Events will be bringing UFC’s monthly mixed martial arts (MMA) par-per-view series live to movie theaters across the United States through the end of 2022.
Iconic has previously served as the event cinema distribution partner of several UFC headline matches, including UFC 270: Ngannou vs Gane; UFC 271: Adesanya vs Whittaker 2; and UFC 272: Covington vs Masvidal.
Upcoming events include UFC 273: Volkanovski vs The Korean Zombie on Saturday, April 9.
“UFC is the ultimate theatrical sporting event–there’s simply nothing like experiencing these highly entertaining, competitive, and captivating fights on the big screen,” said Steve Bunnell, Iconic Events’ CEO. “UFC athletes are the best in the world and seeing them on giant movie theatre screens with the high-end sound cranked up is a thrilling way to watch them. Iconic has been the big-screen home for UFC’s pay-per-views since UFC 257: Poirier vs McGregor in January 2021. With this new deal, UFC in theatres is simply an irreplaceable way to experience the non-stop action and drama of the Octagon.”
“This partnership with Iconic is yet another incredibly effective way to continue to build the profile of our athletes, bring awareness to our most important events, and to provide yet another exciting way to experience UFC’s live product,” said David Shaw, Senior Vice President, International and Content, UFC. “The team at Iconic are terrific partners, and we know they’ll make these fights a must-see draw to movie theatres for UFC fans nationwide.”
Since the character’s 1971 introduction (in comic The Amazing Spider-Man #101), the vampire Morbius has been a Spider-Man universe staple, appearing in numerous comics, animated television series, and video games. Yet he’s never made the leap to film, until now.
In the upcoming dark action-adventure Morbius, Jared Leto stars as scientist Michael Morbius, who accidentally becomes a vampire after attempting to cure himself of a rare blood disease. Leto, who won a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for Dallas Buyers Club (2013), previously starred as superhero villain Joker in Suicide Squad (2016).
Sony Pictures debuts the film exclusively in cinemas on Friday, April 1. Swedish director Daniel Espinosa helms the project, having previously directed 2017’s outer space thriller Life, starring Ryan Reynolds and Jake Gyllenhaal, and 2012’s action-drama Safe House, starring Denzel Washington.
Espinosa spoke to Boxoffice Pro about his life’s journey from teenage ex-convict to major Hollywood director, his long-standing love of Marvel Comics, and his selectively limited and judicious use of green screen.
You got your start at 18 by knocking on the door of a film production office and offering to make their coffee for free. Did you even have aspirations to become a director?
Not really. At the time, I was living in an elevator. I was homeless. After six months of that, I thought, “I might as well go somewhere where I can at least dream a bit.” Since I’m broke and living off food that I can steal, I at least want to be with people I can admire. So for the first two months in that production office, nobody knew where I lived. They just knew that here was this new guy making coffee for free.
But I worked my ass off. Slowly, I got a little pay. Then I could rent a sofa at a friend’s place. Off I went, becoming a grown-up.
Eventually you started directing European movies, but you once said in an interview that you never imagined working in the American film business. So how does it feel to be directing one of the most anticipated American tentpole movies of the entire year?
It’s absurd. It’s very strange when you look at it from that perspective. I think I’d never dreamed about American movies because they seemed so extremely far away. When you start off as a 16-year-old going to jail, then you come out and end up on the street for six months, then you get a job making coffee, the idea that you would be anything at all was almost impossible. The idea that you would become an American film director feels like a dream that is not even worthy of aspiring to, because it would just cloud you.
When I was on the set and directing my first scene with Jared, with his excellent preparation, and Stefania Cella—who is the production designer on [Marvel’s Disney Plus show] Moon Knight as well—who had built a beautiful set, I had to pinch myself. Gratitude, man. You have to exercise gratitude.
A person who really has reason to exercise gratitude is your father, who was tortured for four years by the Pinochet regime in his native Chile following a military coup. You’ve previously said that that personal connection made it emotionally difficult to film a torture sequence in Safe House. Were there any similarly triggering sequences in Morbius, or is this film too escapist and fantastical for that?
There were rough moments. This character is in a lot of pain. Jared has his way of stuffing himself into his characters. At times where he was really weak and fragile, it was really hard to see. But it was also filled with lots of joy, because I’ve been a big comic book reader my whole life. To stand there and see someone levitate? That’s a very joyful experience.
Jared Leto was attached to star before you signed on. He personally met with several director candidates, and you met with him in Germany while he was touring with his rock band Thirty Seconds to Mars. What was said at the meeting that landed you the job?
For me, Morbius is the ultimate Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde story. That’s always been a theme for the Marvel universe—in the Marvel Cinematic Universe too, but especially the [comics]. You have the Lizard, you have the Hulk, Wolverine in many ways. Morbius was a story that should only be about that: about this good man who has to fight for his own humanity.
So we just had an open, frank conversation about where we stood and what we thought. I thought that was very good for both of us, because we got a very honest perspective of each other.
Sony Pictures is releasing a series of stand-alone films based on Spider-Man universe villains. Venom (2018) and its sequel Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021) were first. Kraven the Hunter comes next year. Did you look to Venom as inspiration, or were you just trying to do your own thing?
I’m a big Marvel Comics buff. What I love is that they’re all connected to each other, even if they’re different genres. [Marvel Comics writers] Chris Claremont and Ed Brubaker have very little to do with each other, but it would be possible for them to write in the same universe, even though artistically they’re very far apart. On the other hand, if I read a comic book where the writer didn’t note that he was part of a universe that already existed, I would get pissed off.
So, I mean, you have to. It’s all part of the same universe. I loved Venom.
In that same vein, did you look to director Jon Watts’s current series of Spider-Man movies for inspiration, too?
Well, that’s a bit different, because we’re two very different movies! No Way Home cost about $200 million, or was it $300 million? My movie cost $70 million. [Laughs.] Our movie has to stand on its own by its originality, by its imagination, its power. It’s like comparing a smaller war movie to [1962’s famously high-budget] The Longest Day.
Do you have a favorite memory from production?
Having Jared Leto play a cripple, watching him go through the pain of just walking and arriving in front of my camera, truly showed his dedication to the role.
On your previous movie, Life, you refused to use any green screen. Did you try to continue that approach with Morbius, or was this film just too high-budget to avoid it?
I actually wanted to use green screen on this one, because I wanted his powers to be expressed. Michael Morbius gets added senses upon the senses you and I have. He has echolocation. How would that express itself on-screen? The only thing that can come close to it are psychedelic experiences. Once you get into that realm, you get into the realm where what you’re watching when you’re filming is not the final version.
Now, I still didn’t use much green screen. But lots of things were added to let us “become” Morbius and see the world through his eyes.
You’ve collaborated with composer Jon Ekstrand on most of your projects going back to your short-film days, first working together at Stockholm Film School when you were 19. Surely this was the largest music budget he’d ever had. Did he try to expand his musical horizons accordingly?
When you make a Marvel movie, you have to make a great theme. You’re competing with the greatest composers on the planet. In the same way that he took an enormous step from Child 44 to Life, he again took an enormous step from Life to this one. We know each other so well. Every time I’ve done a movie in the past, I’ve thought, “Now I’ve gotten to a new stage.” But because we live next door to each other, I’d go to his studio to have a coffee, I’d hear something he’s written and think, “Oh, he’s so much better than me.”
You’re from Sweden, but in a previous interview, you called Night of the Living Dead the greatest movie ending of all time. So, clearly, your influences are a combination of European and American. Would you say one influence is greater?
It’s a mixture of both. A lot of directors are. If you look at great directors like Alfonso Cuarón, he has a lot of Mexican tradition inside himself, but at the same time he has a very strong American tradition. Jacques Audiard, one of his first movies, The Beat That My Heart Skipped, was a remake of an American movie called Fingers.
I think this idea of foreign cinema versus American cinema has started to dissolve ever since this invasion of foreign directors that happened in the 2000s: Paul Greengrass, Guillermo del Toro, Alejandro G. Iñárritu. The new director is a melting pot.
Sony Pictures is releasing this film exclusively in theaters. Why is it important for audiences to see this on the big screen?
The cinema experience is very important as a storytelling form, because we do it together—with a bunch of our friends, of course, but also a bunch of strangers. It’s a very exciting experience, sitting there with hundreds of other people. The first moments where I really saw “crowds” were in the movie theater. You went into the city, you got your movie ticket, you sat in the cinema, and there were kids from all over town that were sitting there. That would make me feel that I was part of something.
Sony took a stand on cinema. [Sony Pictures Entertainment Chair] Tom Rothman loves cinema. Whether you want to talk about cinema from the 1920s or ’30s or ’40s, or ’70s, ’80s, ’90s, he’s seen them all. Even the year before this pandemic happened, he got Quentin Tarantino, one of our biggest defenders of cinema among all directors. [After releasing all his prior films with Harvey Weinstein’s distributors Miramax or The Weinstein Company, Tarantino released 2019’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood through Sony Pictures.] This is an extension of that idea, of what cinema should stand for.
AT THE MOVIES
What is your all-time favorite moviegoing memory or experience?
A Swedish sci-fi movie called The Brothers Lionheart, which is about two brothers who die and end up in this afterlife where they have to fight this huge dragon. I was 6 years old, and I dreamed about that dragon for 10 years after that. You know the author Astrid Lindgren, who wrote Pippi Longstocking? She wrote it.
What is your favorite snack at the movie theater concession stand?
For me, it’s popcorn. I love popcorn. I hate the sound of it, but I love popcorn.
Nonprofit independent trade organization CTC (Cinema Technology Community) announced Monday its second one-day online event “One Community Day 2022.”
The event will be held both in person as part of the UK Cinema Association’s forthcoming spring conference and live streaming online on Wednesday, April 6. Access to the live stream will be free for industry professionals, starting at 8:30 A.M. Eastern Standard Time.
The day’s keynote talks, interviews, and presentations will cover issues including cybersecurity, event cinema presentation quality, engaging audiences with technology, and 3D. The day will end with a taping of CTC’s podcast In the Pub with Mike Bradbury.
Cinema professionals can sign up for CTC’s One Community Day online by visiting www.onecommunityday.com.
One Community Day 2022 forms the final part of CTC’s two-year Covid Response Program, which has supported the global industry throughout the crisis by providing educational and networking opportunities to its global membership.
“Two years ago we launched our Community Membership Scheme, providing industry professionals with free access to the wide range of deliverables produced by CTC, including white papers, video seminars, magazines, podcasts, audio interviews, and much more,” CTC President Richard Mitchell said in a company press release. “As the industry emerges from the pandemic and we see audiences returning to cinemas around the world, our second One Community Day completes our support package by bringing the industry together again, to learn and network.”
National CineMedia(NCM) announced Monday the launch of NCMx, anew data, insights, and analytics platform using the company’s knowledge and data about moviegoer behavior to connect brands with custom audiences in theaters, as well as on digital screens — both before and after attending movies.
The platform will allow NCM to execute advanced audience-matching against key geographic, behavioral, and contextual targets on the big screen, as well as use the NCMxcapabilities to retarget moviegoers with digital ads and mobile offers afterwards.
“Movie theaters continue to attract and capture the undivided attention of this highly desirable 18-34-year-old audience en masse,” NCM’s President of Sales, Marketing, and Partnerships Scott Felenstein said in a company press release. “With NCMx, cinema is now more targetable, measurable and accountable than ever before, offering brands highly customized, hard-to-reach audience segments with clear business outcomes.”
The announcement was made at the company’s upfront presentation for advertisers in New York City.
The company also announced an addition to their existing Noovie pre-show content series, including the trivia game The Noovie Trivia Show. Debuting in June, the game will be hosted by Maria Menounos and also available on NCM’s Noovie Trivia app.
NCM is the largest domestic cinema advertising network, with their pre-show Noovie programming presented in circuits including AMC, Regal, and Cinemark.
B&B Theatres will debut a 24-screen cinema location in Omaha, Nebraska — their first location in the state.
The Omaha location, at 3555 S 140th Plaza, will include three PLF (premium large format) Grand Screen auditoriums. All auditoriums will include Barco laser projectors from Cinionic and luxury electric recliners.
An opening date will be announced in the upcoming weeks.
Primarily based in the south and midwest, the circuit currently has locations in Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, and Washington.
“Our family-owned, privately-held company is thrilled to join the Omaha market,” B&B Theatres President and CEO Bob Bagby said in a company press release. “We love what we do and can’t wait to bring the magic of the movies to the area.”
B&B Theatres ranks #6 in Boxoffice PRO‘s Giants of Exhibition 2022 listing of North America’s largest cinema circuits, with 513 screens at 56 locations.
Paramount’s adventure comedyThe Lost Citydebuted on top this weekend with an estimated $31 million, exceeding the openings of several other similar comedies from the past few years, including several pre-pandemic titles from 2017-19:
+3% aboveMen in Black: International($30.0M)
+9% aboveFree Guy($28.3M)
+15% aboveZombieland: Double Tap($26.8M)
+44% aboveGood Boys($21.4M)
+45% aboveThe Hitman’s Bodyguard($21.3M)
+50% aboveBlockers($20.5M)
+82% aboveGame Night($17.0M)
More than doubleDog, last month’s title which also starred Channing Tatum ($14.8M)
Directed by brothers Aaron and Adam Nee, making their major-studio feature film directorial debut,Citystars Sandra Bullock, Channing Tatum, and Daniel Radcliffe. The film’s release this weekend sought to reconnect audiences with an adult-skewing audiences in the post-pandemic era, seen as a litmus test for the viability of a major studio comedy in the streaming age.
Demographics
The success of The Lost City was always going to come down to reconnecting with moviegoing audiences, particularly older females, thus reviving date night programming at the movies. The film was able to accomplish just that with an opening weekend audience was 56% female and 47% age 35+.
According to Paramount, the film over-indexed in the western half of the U.S., came in at about expectations in the southeast, and under-indexed in the northeast. Notable over-indexing markets included Albuquerque, Denver, Honolulu, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Minneapolis, Oklahoma City, Phoenix, Portland, Salt Lake City, and Tampa. Meanwhile, notable under-indexing markets included Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Houston, New York City, and Philadelphia.
Paramount’s marketing team relied on the film’s star power to launch a pre-awareness campaign that included a YouTube trailer with custom intro from Bullock and Tatum which has already garnered over 170 million views. Trailers during the Winter Olympics and the Super Bowl also helped boost awareness in key demos ahead of a talk show tour by cast members in the weeks leading up to release.
“In many ways, this is a throwback movie with major stars and a terrific supporting cast in a genre that has been somewhat scarce in the theatrical marketplace,” Chris Aronson, president of domestic distribution at Paramount, told Boxoffice Pro editorial director Daniel Loria on Sunday. “At the end of the day, The Lost City became that catalyst to get part of our audience that has been more reluctant to go back to the movies—and older demographic, skewing female. This movie became the catalyst for them to do that. All in all, I think it’s a very positive sign for the theatrical business.”
The Lost City is the latest in a series of new titles released by Paramount in 2022 that has successfully engaged different parts of the moviegoing audience during a difficult Q1.
“One of our strategies was to have a diverse slate. We felt strongly that each and every one of our movies could reach our audience and market to that audience and deliver the goods,” said Aronson. “We had Scream and Jackass Forever. Now we have The Lost City. In a couple of weeks, we’re going to have Sonic the Hedgehog 2, which I think is going to be a major film for families and general audiences. And then we enter a much more robust release schedule with varied offerings. For me, that has always been the sign of a healthy marketplace: when there is something for everyone. Not just that one big superhero movie— obviously, there’s a huge market for that, but it’s not for everybody.”
The Batman
In second place, Warner Bros.’The Batmanfell -44% to $20.5M in its fourth frame, after leading for the prior three weekends.
The film has now earned $331.9M. Through the same point in release, that’s:
-24% behind 2008’sThe Dark Knight(441.6M)
-14% behind 2012’sThe Dark Knight Rises($389.5M)
+6% ahead of 2016’sBatman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice(311.3M)
+56% ahead of 2017’sJustice League($212.1M)
[ReadBoxoffice PRO’s recent article on a history of theBatmanfranchise’s box office historyhere.]
After the film had earned the majority of its earnings from domestic throughout its entire run, the balance finally tipped towards a majority-overseas earnings this weekend, at $340.9M of its $672.9M global total (50.6%).
Top overseas markets to date are led by the United Kingdom ($47.4M), Mexico ($28.0M), Australia ($24.1M), France ($22.2M), and China ($17.9M).
RRR
Sarigama Cinemas’RRR – Rise Roar Revolt, a 3h 7m Telugu-language action film about Indian revolutionaries in the 1920s, claimed third place with a $9.5M start.
Playing in only 1,200 theaters, or less than one-third the reach of the top films in the marketplace, the film started -9% behind the $10.4M opening of fellow Telugu-language titleBaahubali 2: The Conclusion.
Spider-Man: No Way Home Crosses $800M
Still ranking eighth place with $2.0M, despite now being available on digital platforms, Sony’sSpider-Man: No Way Homehas now spent all 15 of its weekends in the top 10. That marks the most weekends sinceFrozenspent 16 such weekends in late 2013 and early 2014.
The last time a film spent 15+ weekends in the top 10 beforeFrozen?Chicago, which also spent 16 such frames in late 2002 and early 2003.
2017’sSpider-Man: Homecomingspent 11 weekends in that tier, while 2019’sSpider-Man: Far From Homespent seven.
Homealso crosses $800M this weekend, with an $800.5M domestic total. That ranks #3 all time, behind only 2015’sStar Wars: The Force Awakens($936.6M) and 2019’sAvengers: Endgame($858.3M).
Sing 2
Universal’s animatedSing 2notches its 14th weekend in the top 10, taking ninth place this frame with an estimated $1.2M. 2016’s originalSingspent eight weekends in that top tier.
Everything Everywhere All at Once
A24’sEverything Everywhere All at Onceopened with an estimated $509,659 on 10 screens. That $50,965 per-screen average is the biggest of 2022 so far, beating the February 4 weekend $34,606 average of Neon’sThe Worst Person in the Worldon four screens.
It’s also the fourth-highest average in the pandemic/post-pandemic era, behind the first two frames for United Artists’Licorice Pizza($86,289 and $60,426, both on four screens last November 26 and December 3) and December 17 debut of Sony Pictures’Spider-Man: No Way Homewith $59,995.
The genre-defying film Everything is directed by Daniels – the joint nickname of directors Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan, who previously helmedSwiss Army Man– and stars Michelle Yeoh (Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,Crazy Rich Asians). It will expand nationwide two weekends from now, on April 8.
Oscars bump?
With the Academy Awards airing Sunday night, none of the Best Picture nominees came anywhere close to the top 10, but several experienced mild declines likely caused by Oscars buzz:
West Side Storyfell only -4%, from $53K to $51K, despite almost increasing its screen count by +80% from 270 to 485.
Licorice Pizzadropped only -6%, from $165K to $153K, with a mere -8% screen drop from 507 to 462. (Meaning its per-theater average experienced a slight uptick, from $325 to $333.)
Nightmare Alleyfell much further, dropping -35% from $28K to $18K, despite more than doubling its screen count from 270 to 485.
Warner Bros. did not release Sunday morning estimates forDuneorKing Richard, which are playing on 460 and 454 screens nationwide this weekend, respectively.
Weekend comparisons
Total box office this weekend came in around $81.9M, which is:
+2% above last weekend’s total of $80.2M, whenThe Batmanled for a third frame with $36.7M.
4.6x the equivalent weekend in 2021 with $17.6M, as the box office was taking its first pandemic-era steps back to normalcy asRaya and the Last Dragonled for a third frame with $5.1M.
-45% behind the equivalent weekend in 2019 with $148.8M, whenUsled for a second frame with $71.1M.
YTD box office stands around $1.30B. That’s:
-41% behind this same point in 2019.
-27% behind this same point in 2020. (The box office was essentially shut down for months starting at this point in 2020, so the 2022 YTD comparison will exceed it not long from now.)
6.2x this same point in the pandemic recovery year of 2021.
Top distributors
As has been the case all year so far, the leading distributor in the domestic market remains Sony Pictures with $372.7M. Warner Bros. ranks #2 with $342.9M.
While Warner Bros. has significantly closed the gap in recent weeks, it will be almost impossible for them to take the lead before Sony releasesMorbiusnext weekend and pads its lead, especially since Sony’sUnchartedandSpider-Man: No Way Homewill also continue to earn millions until then.
Disney seems poised to take the crown at some point this summer or possibly fall, particularly when including their subsidiary 20th Century Studios releases.
Paramount currently claims third with $171.7M and Universal claims fourth with $129.9M.
Leading the month
The Batmanhas now earned about 57% of March’s box office thus far.
AsBoxoffice PROpredicted earlier this month,The Batmanseems potentially poised to exceed 50% of March’s box office by month’s end. That feat has only been accomplished by three films in the 21st century, two of them in the past year alone:
The Avengers(51.9% of the box office in May 2012).
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings(54.7% in September 2021).
Spider-Man: No Way Home(62.2% in December 2021).
Sunday’s Studio Weekend Estimates: March 25-27, 2022
