Hollywood may be able to pull off this “year-round event movie” schedule that they’ve been trying to do this year. This isn’t the first time this has happened, as (for example) July of 2018 saw Spider-Man: Homecoming ($334m from a $117m launch), Despicable Me 3 ($264m from a $71m debut), Girls Trip ($115m from a $30m debut) and Dunkirk ($190m from a $50m debut) all earning best-case-scenario domestic box office despite more-or-less opening concurrently. But when you have a big slasher movie, a big superhero movie and a big musical romance, all three can thrive concurrently. When you have a bunch of stereotypical “event movies” opening against each other, they all (or mostly all) take a hit, especially when one (the $700 million-grossing Black Panther) rises above the fray ( Tomb Raider, Pacific Rim: Uprising, A Wrinkle in Time, etc.). Aside from being star (Tom Hardy, Lady Gaga and Jamie Lee Curtis) +character (Venom, Ally and Laurie Strode) +concept (a Venom movie, an adult-skewing passion play within the music industry and a Halloween sequel that ignored the other Halloween sequels) driven biggies that audiences clearly wanted to see, they couldn’t be more different from each other. But you had a PG-13 superhero movie, an R-rated musical drama and an R-rated slasher sequel. Sure, there are folks who saw all three or two of them. They pulled off best-case-scenario box office precisely because they were event movies whose relative fandoms didn’t overlap. What do all three have in common? The more important distinction is what they don’t have in common. The David Gordon Green-directed slasher is still flirting with selling more tickets (around $185m adjusted for inflation) than John Carpenter and Debra Hill’s 1978 Halloween. It isn’t as leggy as the other two October biggies, but it is already the biggest slasher movie ever in unadjusted grosses by a lot. That’s, sans inflation, the biggest scary movie launch for anything other than the Jurassic World movies and It. Universal and Blumhouse’s Halloween hit a perfect storm of strong reviews, a seasonally-appropriate release date, a media narrative that turned the return of Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode into a #MeToo-friendly parable, huge IP-driven interest and brand loyalty for a $76 million debut weekend. It has also dominated the online meme game to boot, which is a big deal for a non-Disney flick. It has earned strong word-of-mouth and superb legs (no drops below 34% thus far) to be the babysitter-worthy movie of choice. Again showing that live-action musical (or music-centric) melodrama are still something for which audiences will drive to the theater, the Bradley Cooper-directed drama remains atop this year’s Oscar food chain and will soon pass the $174m domestic gross of The Greatest Showman. Selling itself as a somewhat conventional superhero origin story allowed the marketing to hide its weirder aspects for paying consumers to discover and allowed it to thrive as a conventional event movie amid less conventional event movies.Ī Star Is Born, a $36 million remake of an oft-told tale, parlayed Lady Gaga’s fandom and related PR typhoon, to say nothing of rave pre-release reviews, into becoming one of the biggest romantic dramas ever. The Tom Hardy/Michelle Williams superhero flick stood out as a PG-13, four-quadrant superhero movie alongside a deluge of horror films ( Goosebumps 2, Suspiria, The House with a Clock in Its Walls, Halloween, etc.) and adult-skewing dramas ( A Star is Born, First Man, Bad Times at the El Royale). That one isn’t quite as leggy (it was a seasonal treat), but it’s still currently above $152m domestic on a $10m budget.Īs Venom prepares to go bananas in China in the hopes of surpassing the $709 million global gross of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, we should admit that Sony was right to go with a PG-13 rating. And three weeks ago, Universal’s Halloween scored one of the biggest horror movie debuts of all time with $76.2m. Oh, and on the same weekend, Sony’s Venom parlayed advance interest and a number of “so bad that it’s good” reviews to snag a record-crushing $80m opening weekend before crossing $200m as of Tuesday. Warner Bros.’ A Star Is Born which legged it to $168 million (and counting) from a $42.9m domestic debut. Moreover, they were demographically-specific event movies that were able to thrive concurrently. Venom, A Star Is Born and Halloween were big deal smash hits.
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