‘Gran Turismo’ Races Ahead to Debut at the Top of the BO!!!

In one of the dullest weekends of the year, there was a lot of melodrama. However, Sony’s Gran Turismo won the weekend with $17.4M — and rival studios, except for Warners Bros, see it that way too.

Barbie came in with $15.1M, not $17.1M, to no one’s shock. “It was never going to do that kind of business,” said one rival distribution cappo this AM. Warners was throwing furniture all weekend long because Sony included nine days of previews in its Friday total, propelling Gran Turismo to No. 1, stopping Barbie‘s collection of No. 1 weekends. It will be interesting to see how the dust settles next weekend: Will Sony have the No. 1 and 2 movie in Equalizer 3 (which is expected to do $30M+ business over four days) and Gran Turismo?

Barbie‘s Sunday came in at $5.7M, +6% over Saturday’s $5.4M, while Gran Turismo‘s Sunday was $4.7M, +15% over Saturday’s $4.1M — both juiced by National Cinema Day $4 tickets. We’ll have more stats on that day soon. Barbie did 1.42M admissions yesterday to Gran Turismo‘s 1.17M, which if you scroll down, you’ll see that’s where the industry saw the former in terms of ticket stubs — not 1.937M.

Again, rival studios are acting like cats with birds in their mouth over this whole Gran Turismo and Barbie war because everyone has stuffed previews into their opening days before — just not to the degree that Sony has. Why not call B.S.? Because, you too Warners, will one day get to put nine days of previews into your opening day number.

Sunday AM: With National Cinema Day today and all tickets for all movies $4 –a celebration which brings mixed emotions to those in the industry–many are seeing Sony’s Gran Turismo waving the checkered flag with around $17.3M after a $4.1M Saturday that plummeted due to the fact that it was up against an $8.5M Friday chock full of nine days of previews.

Warner Bros. is calling Barbie‘s sixth weekend at $17.1M while rivals show it at a $15.1M take after a $5.3M Saturday that was +33% over its Friday. As we mentioned Warners are irate over Sony’s handling of preview box office accounting on Gran Turismo. Warners believes that Sony should back out all the non-Thursday previews out of Gran Turismo‘s Friday ($3.9M) so that Barbie can be No. 1 for a fifth time in a row. No rival studio’s internal box office chart sees it that way. Where is Warner getting the logic that Barbie gets to $17.1M this weekend? Read on, as it’s all about National Cinema Day.

Meanwhile, Oppenheimer is expected to hit $300M by EOD today.

Now the Cinema Day of it all…

While we won’t have hard admission stats until tomorrow, box office analytics firm EntTelligence is currently seeing committed 3.1M ticket purchases (not box office, that’s admissions people) for today in presales. Will walk-up business get us to a level of last year’s National Cinema Day, which fell on a Saturday during Labor Day weekend, and clocked 8 million? One studio is betting that we do 8.75M in admissions today.

Barbie, as expected, is leading Sunday in admissions with over 504K. Now Warner Bros is projecting that they’ll do $7.75M worth of business today for Barbie. That means Barbie will have to do 1.937M in admissions off of $4 ticket sales. Some don’t see how that’s possible as they believe Barbie will do around $5.8M in National Cinema Day admissions which means 1.45M admissions.

Other top presellers in terms of admission so far today are Blue Beetle (501K+), Gran Turismo (391K), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (322K+) and Oppenheimer (302K).

Gran Turismo is projected to do $4.45M today (and rivals agree) which would mean 1.1M admissions.

As of this weekend during her entire domestic run, Barbie will have over 50M tickets sold or $594.8M per EntTelligence.

EntTelligence says that 40% of National Cinema Day sales so far are for movies playing between 1PM and 5PM while 27% are between 5PM-9PM.

While exhibition is happy about National Cinema Day as more bodies bring concessions dollars, studios aren’t yippy skippy as it means less box office, especially this year when there’s premium product on the marquee. This wasn’t a big deal last year as there weren’t any new studio wide releases due to the Covid post-production logjam, just re-releases like Spider-Man: No Way Home and Jaws. The thinking by some is that we needed National Cinema Day more last year than this year in regards to encouraging people to return to cinemas, particularly at a time when there was no product and people still hesitant from Covid. The whole day boils down to a fight between admissions and dollars: Do you generate enough in admissions that still yields big box office? At the end of the day, didn’t you just crater business on Friday and Saturday in favor of Sunday? One rival studio projection is that National Cinema Day will ring up $35M for all titles (or 8.75M admissions), which is 13% above Saturday’s $31M, and 22% ahead of Friday’s $28.6M for all titles in what’s looking like a $94.6M weekend, +79% over the same frame a year ago.

Other news:

MGM’s Bottoms looks to hit a theater average of $51,6K for $516,2K, which could beat Everything Everywhere All at Once‘s $50,1K opening theater average. Next weekend, the film will expand to approximately 700 additional theaters across North America. The Emma Seligman directed and written title, and produced by Elizabeth Banks and Max Handelman is 93% positive. Women under 25 rated it 98% with a 96% definite recommend on PostTrak. The opening night audience was young (86% between 18-34), LGBTQ+ (59%). Diversity demos were 67% Caucasian, 20% Latino and Hispanic, 7% Black and 14% Asian. The studio reports “that attendees were avid, smarthouse moviegoers who came to see the film because of its fresh/original take on the high school, coming of age genre.”

A note about the Liam Neeson movie Retribution. This is the nth recent Neeson action film that’s coming in with an opening in the lower single digits after last year’s Marlowe ($1.8M), Memory ($3.1M), Blacklight ($3.5M) and 2021’s The Marksman ($3.1M). But get this, these movies are profitable or else they wouldn’t get made. “I wish I had a Liam Neeson action film,” drooled one foreign sales boss to me. It remains to be seen at the fall film festival troika who’ll actually snap up acquisition titles with the Byzantine legalese of SAG-AFTRA agreements. There could be booby traps. We won’t know until an acquisition is made; and what the aftermath of that is for the buyer in regards to downstreams. However, a Liam Neeson movie (if one was in the marketplace) is well worth whatever SAG-AFTRA termed deal is. Retribution, made by StudioCanal and the Picture Company, was made for a price around $20M. Neeson gets a payday in the upper single digits. Lionsgate bought U.S. for $6M, (Memory finaled domestic at $7.3M) and they keep the P&A low in the high single digit range. PVOD is where this movie overindexes. Between foreign sales and Lionsgate, that’s covering about $18M of the production cost. StudioCanal already has its own territories that they’re reaping box office and ancillaries off of with France, Germany, Australia, UK and Poland. Everyone comes out of the wash OK, I’m told by sources. For foreign sales folks and distributors, is being in business on a Neeson pic similar to that of a Nicolas Cage movie? “It’s better,” says another foreign sales exec.