‘PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie’ Barks Past ‘Saw X’ and ‘The Creator’ to Top Spot at the BO!!

Paw Patrol: The Mighty Movie is lapping up $23M, a big win for Paramount and Spin Master, as the picture is part of a $14 billion global retail franchise which both companies get a nice cut from. And successful movies drive toy sales. It was part of Brian Robbins’ plan when he took over the top job at Paramount Pictures Studios to have family brands work at the box office, which also have a rainfall of cash in merchandise, particularly in an entertainment conglomerate that counts the powerful, and evergreen Nickelodeon brand. EntTelligence says Paw Patrol 2 drew 2.3M admissions, with close to half of the pic’s tickets being sold at child pricing.

Some of the stunts which Paramount did to bark up this latest sequel included getting the film in the Guiness Book of World Records with the most dogs in attendance at a movie screening, with 219 at the Autry Museum of American History at Griffith Park in Los Angeles, CA. Costume characters from the film flooded zoos, a White Sox game in Chicago, and children’s hospitals, as well as on-air appearances in all markets. There was an immersive 5,5k square foot Paw Patrol 2 movie experience in Columbus Circle, which ended with a collectible pup tag, photo opp and Dance PAWty, and a gift shop featuring 24 SKUs of PAW Patrol product for purchase. There were also lyric videos created for the three original songs featured in the sequel, including Down Like That by Bryson Tiller, Bark to the Beat by McKenna Grace and Blackbear, and Learning to Fly by Christina Aguilera.

Paramount had custom games and interactive ads integrated into high impact, brand-safe platforms for kids, including the popular gaming site Poptropica Jr., which created a mini-island featuring all the mighty pups. There were also energetic dance videos to GoNoodle, helping students in classrooms get their wiggles out to a PAW Patrol beat. Noggin created two learning-based games exclusive to their app.

Brand partners, who helped garner 3 billion impressions for the pic, included Burger King with movie-themed King Jr. Meal, and Dogtopia, which called on all super-pups by encouraging pet parents to share their dog’s super-powers in a first-time film partnership.

Overall, a job well done by Paramount, considering Paw Patrol 2 star Kim Kardashian wasn’t available to constantly tell all her near half billion followers (across TikTok, X, Instagram, Facebook) to go. However, the reality star did drop the trailer on TikTok before the SAG-AFTRA strike started on June 12.

RelishMix reports that the sequel’s social media universe was below other family film comps at just over 117M. However, Paramount cross promotes its own social media channels (21.2M SMU) and Nick Jr (29.2M SMU) “with extreme video view counts, some with over 100M views each on YouTube playlist loops of clips, which, as usual, very young children adore,” per RelishMix.

Lionsgate is calling $18M on Saw X (1.4M admissions, per Entelligence) which rebounded the franchise greatly from Spiral-ing down the drain, this opening +106% over Spiral‘s $8.75M. Saw X opening is just under that of the original movie back in 2004, which was $18.2M. While tracking saw Saw X at $20M+, Lionsgate says that they did not. What’s clear is that at $13M production cost, there’s still a pulse here in the torture genre franchise, unlike the Expendables 4, which can be put to sleep. For trivia purposes: Saw III repped the highest opening for a Saw pic at $33.6M back in 2006. The average domestic opening for a Saw movie through nine pictures is $23M.

The campaign for Saw X, evident in the title, was to return the movie back to its roots and get the core followers back, while creating new faithful with a message that sold the character and heart of the horror series, not the gore. Looking to lasso a meme, Lionsgate had a remote-controlled Billy the Puppet as the centerpiece of the campaign, with some clever viral social media stunts and a PR tour. This yielded 46M views on owned TikTok content alone just from Billy. The question remains whether some of this cool stuff was dropped too late in the campaign.

Billy did a parody of the AMC Nicole Kidman commercial, released two weeks ago:

He also showed up on KTLA, did a Vogue 73 Questions parody (which had close to 10K likes on IG, released two days ago), appeared on a parody of MTV Cribs (released three days ago), and served as a Barista as part of a full HVC partnership. Among in theater stuff there was a “Don’t Text PSA” featuring Billy at Alamo Drafthouse, and Marcus CEO Greg Marcus shot a TikTok with the puppet.

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Both Creator and Saw X screened at Fantastic Fest in Austin, TX.

Disney’s number for New Regency/20th Century Studios’ The Creator is $14M, or just shy of 1M admissions. This is an upset stateside. However, hope resides in bigger ticket sales abroad, with a $32.3M global start. Disney did support this movie. However, it’s very hard in the current SAG-AFTRA strike to trumpet an original movie like this to the masses. It’s truly upsetting for a burgeoning star such as John David Washington: This is the actor’s second conceived event movie after Warner Bros.’ Tenet to get crimped by external forces beyond movie marketing’s control; the first pic was an attempt to reopen theaters in Covid, which did not work, and this title is up against the actors’ strike.

Understand, this is the type of movie that would have blown the roof off of Comic-Con. However, the cast couldn’t travel down with Gareth Edwards for a solo studio-sponsored panel on the movie (he appeared on Collider’s directors panel and showed off some footage).

The Creator is the type of movie you’d take TIFF, just New Regency did with The Martian back in 2015. It’s also the type of movie that would have world premiered at Venice.

But it didn’t make sense for the studio to spend money to do that during the strike.

Some marketing folks will take jabs at the studio’s campaign, that it was vague in early trailers. However, the movie does deliver. Perhaps a different release date closer to summer and with the wattage of cast would have brought some more money in here. People, it’s like Covid times at the box office: With the actors on strike, we’re not in a normal marketplace. Abroad, Creator opened No. 1 in France, Spain, UK (including previews) as well as Belgium (non-local), Netherlands, Poland (non-local), Bahrain, Georgia, Kazakhstan (non-local), Oman (non-local), Portugal, Qatar, Ukraine, UAE (non-local), Hong Kong, Thailand, Indonesia (non-local), India (non-local) and Malaysia (non-local). Originality means something somewhere, with Creator opening ahead of Saw X in Spain, UK (including previews) and Australia, as well as Denmark, Norway, Poland, Czech Republic, and Ukraine.

Imax ticket sales for The Creator were $3M domestic, $5.2M WW, and was a big win overall in premium format, with 53% of the weekend coming from PLF and Imax screens. Disney will hold some of these into next weekend, with Sony’s Kraven the Hunter having departed the first weekend of October. Disney will co-share Imax with Universal’s Exorcist: The Believer. Proof remains in the numbers regarding the pic’s playability — with the top 20 locations earning $14K-$52K, the top being AMC Lincoln Square.

Again, New Regency had Disney stick to this release date because of the history of original sci-fi pics launching at this time of year. While we can argue that the place for the movie was elsewhere on the calendar, the exhibition marketplace is $14M richer this weekend because of Creator. Glass half-full.

Official Comscore estimate on the weekend is $85.2M, +31% from the same frame a year ago, but down -10% from the last frame of September 2019.

Sunday studio reported figures:

1.) Paw Patrol: The Mighty Movie (Par) 3989 theaters, Fri $6.8M, Sat $9.6M Sun $6.5M 3-day $23M/Wk 1

2) Saw X (LG) 3,262 theaters Fri $8M Sat $6.1M Sun $3.9M 3-day $18M/Wk 1

3.) The Creator (New Reg/20th/Dis) 3,680 theaters, Fri $5.6M, Sat $5.1M $3.3M 3-day $14M/Wk 1

4.) The Nun 2 (NL) 2871 (-665) theaters, Fri $1.32M (-45%), Sat $2M Sun $1.2M 3-day $4.67M (-45%) Total $76.7M/Wk 4

5) The Blind (Fath) 1714 theaters, Fri $1.26M Sat $1.6M Sun $1.2M 3-day $4.1M/Wk 1

6.) A Haunting in Venice (Dis) 2,785 (-520) Fri $1M (-42%), Sat $1.6M Sun $1M 3-day $3.8M (-39%)/Total $31.6M/Wk 3

7.) Dumb Money (Sony) 2837 (+2218) theaters, Fri $1.3M (+31%) Sat $1.3M Sun $900K 3-day $3.5M (+66%), Total $7.3M/Wk 3

8.) Equalizer 3 (Sony) 2,184 (-1086) theaters Fri $765K Sat $1.2M Sun $715K 3-day $2.7M (-43%), Total: $85.9M /Wk 5

9.) Expendables 4 (LG) 3518 theaters, Fri $713K Sat $1M Sun $692K 3-day $2.495M (-68%), Total $13.2M/Wk 2

10.) Barbie (WB) 1,302 (-1332) theaters Fri $355K Sat $650K Sun $425K 3-day $1.43M (-55%), Total $633M/Wk 11