In a fight between a 22 year old reality brand and a over-the-hill disaster genre at the box office, Paramount’s Jackass Forever wins, punking its mid-teen pre-weekend estimates for a $23.5M opening to Lionsgate’s Moonfall which fell to Earth with $10M.
To its benefit, the Jackass brand was never beaten as hard over the course of its 22 years like the disaster movie genre has been at the box office. That’s a contributing factor here in its weekend win. At the same time, it’s a movie in its stunt satire which plays to the heart of the TikTok generation. Amazing to note that the over 35 crowd repped 25% of business while 67% were 18-34. Translation: the Jackass brand got younger, and that’s a winning hand for any studio savoring franchises. At 4.5 out of 5 stars on Comscore/Screen Engine’s PostTrak, it’s a joyous crowd pleaser at the box office.
Paramount pushed Jackass Forever on TikTok reaching an audience north of 150M. Live coverage from the LA premiere garnered nearly 7M+ views alone. On TikTok, the focus was all around how the Jackass crew was the first and the best at this type of content. The influencers/content creators Paramount worked with always referred to Jackass as “the OG” or “the best”. The studio also screened the movie to all influencers.
Another key to Jackass Forever‘s success: It’s the first pure comedy in a long time at the box office.
“When was the last time you grabbed your friends and had a great time,” Paramount Domestic Distribution Chief Chris Aronson tells Deadline this morning, “That was the whole thrust of what Johnny Knoxville and team wanted to do in making this movie, and working with us on the marketing after everything the world has been through.”
The Jeff Tremaine-directed movie over-indexed in the West and Midwest and was at norm in the Northeast and South Central, while under-indexing in the Southeast. Top markets that over-performed included LA, Phoenix, Sacramento, Denver, San Diego, Las Vegas, Portland OR, Fresno, Albuquerque, El Paso, Pittsburgh, and Milwaukee. Top grossing theaters hailed from LA (9 out of the top 10, 18 of the top 20, and 27 out of the top 40 theaters), Albuquerque, El Paso, Phoenix, Pharr TX, Denver, San Diego, Sacramento, Oklahoma City, Salt Lake City, Fresno, and San Antonio.
Paramount marketed this movie straight to the bro-sports crowd with the Jackass cast showing up at UFC 270: Ngannou vs. Gane in Anaheim and constant promotions throughout the match and at the stadium. Knoxville also put time in at WWE Royal Rumble. Steve-O also had his Bucket List tour.
Says RelishMix about Paramount’s promotion for Jackass Forever, “Johnny Knoxville has focused his social activity on his 3.6M Instagram and paused his Facebook of 5.3M and Twitter of 1.6M. WWE cross-promo events are popping engagement very well as Steve-O leads the charge with 20.1M total fans along with Chris Pontius at 2.3M and Dave England at 667K for a total of 36.5M activated and un-activated.”
Jackass Forever‘s TV campaign per iSpot aired on such networks as CBS, ESPN, Comedy Central, MTV and FXX across such shows as NFL, The Office re-runs, SportsCenter, NBA games and Family Guy.
With cinemas just re-opening in the province of Ontario and Quebec scheduled to re-open on Monday, Canada repped a solid 4.5% market share on 6% of total locations for Jackass Forever. Overall, Canada’s market share was 2.35% for the movie.
While the Roland Emmerich-type of disaster movies were already a tired genre before the pandemic —Geostorm lost money on the same type of production cost here, $140M— it’s important to remember that this massive package came together in pre-pandemic times, and was strictly built for foreign audiences, not U.S. moviegoers. Moonfall‘s opening here is under Geostorm‘s $13.3M stateside start.
For all the talk of cinema capacity restrictions and territory closures, moviegoers abroad have shown to come back with a movie like Spider-Man: No Way Home which has vacuumed up $1.03 billion abroad (and that’s without China), however, this movie’s success which hit Brazil, Russia and a handful of territories this weekend remains to be seen.
After a big budget disaster like Universal/Film Nation’s The 355 (currently around $24M WW) which cost $75M, is Moonfall more poison for the foreign sales ecosystem, which is continually challenged by streamers’ aggressive feature acquisitions? The answer, many sources tell me, is simply ‘No’. First, we live in a world where there is a desperate need for product around the world, not just in streaming.
And even though Moonfall didn’t deliver at the box office, exhibitors were starving for new product especially after two weekends without any new major studio wide release titles. EntTelligence reports that there were 800K admissions to Moonfall to Jackass Forever‘s 2M.
In Korea, for example, there are four major theatrical distributors, three large theater chains, four big cable/pay television companies, three major TV networks, and three large streaming services: all require content and compete for the same from the US major studios. This results in multiyear output deals at premium prices. Similarly, the demand for product will continue to rise under the combined forces of increased access to multiplexes, the spread of internet through mobile networks, increased demand from more numerous content providers and the emergence of middle classes across the globe.
As one foreign sales insider told me “foreign buyers can’t help themselves, they’ll always gamble on themselves.” Meaning, if they don’t buy into a big-budget project like Moonfall as they hit the marketplace, they’ll never see any potential for upside. The smart ones are keen not to go all in, rather grab what they can in a slate of films.
In the wake of Geostorm reaping a $72M loss, few, if any major studio would go all in on a disaster movie like Moonfall, not to mention the astronaut subgenre has been beaten to death with Gravity, Ad Astra, The Martian, and First Man. In addition, Emmerich built it for movie theaters, not for streamers. The most risk averse means for making this movie was through foreign sales: China kicked in $40M, Lionsgate was on the hook for around $15M we’re told on good authority, Germany around $15M+; in total about 65% of the pic’s $146M budget, with shooting tax credits from Montreal kicked in (which by the way, Canada isn’t seeing Moonfall this week as the local distributor there pulled the movie due to Omicron). AGC Studios, which handled foreign sales on Emmerich’s Midway, and CAA Media Finance handled sales here on Moonfall.
Surely, all those buyers who bought into Moonfall will see some sort of hit to their P&Ls; Lionsgate is on the hook for $35M P&A (iSpot measures that Lionsgate spent $12.2M in TV ads to Paramount’s $5.2M for Jackass Forever and Disney’s current $12.1M spend for Death on the Nile which opens this Friday). It’s not to say that Lionsgate abandoned the movie, they surely supported the second film from their Midway filmmaker. However, it’s truly hard to see any kind of profit here through some wonky slide rule with box office optics such as this.
Imax auditoriums drew $1.4M of Moonfall‘s weekend with another $900K overseas. Imax and PLF accounted together for 36% of the gross.
Some will say that Moonfall‘s misfire was on account to skewing toward an older audience with 75% over 25, and 31% over 45 years old, however, there’s enough VFX here to appeal to an 18-34 crowd. They can just sniff a bad movie, and in the TikTok age, bad word spreads like wildfire.
1.) Jackass Forever (Par) 3,604 theaters, Fri $9.6M/Sat $8.4M/Sun $5.5M/3-day $23.5M/Wk 1
2.) Moonfall (LG) 3,446 theaters Fri $3.4M/Sat $4M/Sun $2.5M/3-day $10M/Wk 1
3.) Spider-Man: No Way Home (Sony) 3,600 (-75) theaters, Fri $2.08M (-24%)/Sat $4.65M/Sun $2.87M/ 3-day $9.6M (-13%)/Total $748.95M/Wk 8
Spidey is now $11.55M from becoming the No. 3 highest grossing movie at the domestic box office, beating Avatar.
4.) Scream (Par) 3,227 (-360) theaters Fri $1.2M (-42%)/Sat $2.28M/Sun $1.22M/3-day $4.7M (-35%), Total: $68.9M/Wk 4
5.) Sing 2 (Uni/Ill) 3,266 (-184) theaters, Fri $810K (-22%)/Sat $2.1M/Sun $1.26M/3-day $4.17M (-11%)/Total: $139.6M/Wk 7
6.) The King’s Man (20th/Dis) 1,910 (-505) theaters Fri $305K (-33%)/3-day $1.1M (-33%)/Total $35.7M/Wk 7
7.) Redeeming Love (Uni) 1,797 (-166) theaters, Fri $270K (-53%)/Sat $460K/Sun $280K/ 3-day $1M (-43%)/Total: $8M/Wk 3
8.) American Underdog (LG) 1,470 (-643) theaters, Fri $212K (-39%)/Sat $379K/Sun $209K/ 3-day: $800K (-31%)/Total: $25.9M/Wk 7
9.) The 355 (Uni/FilmNation) 1,710 (-803) theaters, Fri $170K (-55%)/ Sat $340K/Sun $190K/ 3-day $700K (-52%)/Total $14.1M/Wk 5
10.) The Wolf and the Lion (Blue Fox Entertainment)1,005 theaters, Fri $163K/Sat $309K/ Sun $207K/3-day $679K/Wk 1
11.) Licorice Pizza (UAR) 786 (+14) theaters, Fri $167K (-10%)/Sat $289K/Sun $159K/ 3-day: $615K (-2%)Total $12.7M/Wk 11