The overall box office, at around $86.8M, is off 24% from a year ago. But AMC‘s Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour and Apple/Paramount/Imperative Entertainment’s Martin Scorsese movie, Killers of the Flower Moon, kept the business afloat and popcorn popping with respective weekend takes of $32M (AMC says $31M) and $23M. We’re still waiting on Apple & Paramount’s official number, but it’s $23M. Kudos to Apple here from changing up the release of the Scorsese pic from limited to wide; there was no need to tee-off in a very noncompetitive marketplace with demand like this.
Killers of the Flower Moon is an exceptional start for what is a very long movie — longer than Oppenheimer– and a great beginning for Apple’s foray into the wide theatrical business, especially at a time when actors can’t promote because of the actors strike. Imagine if there wasn’t an actors strike, how much higher this could go?
Also, it’s an applaudable start for a period movie, this being set in the 1920s. Quite often, tracking sources pin ‘period’ as a factor that dogs grosses. And the exits are great for Killers of the Flower Moon: With an A- CinemaScore, Killers of the Flower Moon is one of three “A” grades for Oscar-winner Scorsese with CinemaScore, the other two being The Departed (A-) and Goodfellas (A-).
Comscore/Screen Engine’s PostTrak remains high at 88% and 4 1/2 stars, and a 72% recommend. CinemaScore audiences have been hard on several Scorsese classics, and haven’t handed him many A grades during his career in the pollster’s era, i.e. Casino (B-), The Aviator (B+), Gangs of New York (B), Wolf of Wall Street (C), and Shutter Island (C+).
With exits like these, expect this awards season front-runner to play for weeks on end, some estimating that it will have a 4x or 5x multiple stateside in the end, off its opening here. Some 50% bought their tickets to the movie day-of, and that’s a very encouraging sign for word of mouth. Also hopeful is the fact that 44% of the audience was under 30 here.
Some might wonder how a $200M+ movie before P&A from Apple Original Films, even with a global opening of $44M, might be considered a win here. Quite often, we’d be throwing hatchets at such P&Ls. While this might be considered a flop for a motion picture studio, several sources tell me that a tech company Apple doesn’t count it this way. “This is a form of advertising for them to get people to come to their ecosystem; that’s how they see it. They don’t see it as pure profit and loss, in fact, it’s a marketing expense for them,” says one wise film finance executive. Entertainment for Apple is but a sliver of their prime revenues amid iPads, computers, and iPhones. When it comes to determining the success of a theatrical release from a streamer such as Apple or Amazon, one distribution source tells me “as long as the theatrical rental covers their marketing expense, it’s a job well done.”
In the case of Air, which Amazon shelled out $125M for and only made $90M WW, I understand the streamer continues to relish the long tail of the movie and its impact on Prime Video in terms of views, subscriber hold, and resonance on other parts of Amazon.com. It’s all because it was a theatrical release. There’s just other boxes that a theatrical release ticks for streamers other than just pure P&L. Says one source close to the pic, “This movie is synonymous with the Apple brand for quality, and the quality of this movie speaks volumes about what they want to accomplish in the film space. It’s incredible and something to be admired.”
At $23M+, Killers of the Flower Moon is just north of DiCaprio’s opening box office average with Scorsese of $19M, and it’s the best start for a De Niro and Scorsese combo, beating Cape Fear‘s $10.2M opening, back when Ska music was in style.
Taylor won Friday at $10.4M to Killers of the Flower Moon‘s $9.4M, which includes Thursday previews of $2.6M. Swift stayed strong on Saturday, climbing 27% over Friday with $13.2M yesterday. Killers of the Flower Moon eased -14% with $8.1M. Eras Tour becomes the first concert film in history to make more than $100 million at the domestic box office, and did so in just five days of showtimes.
What’s working here for Killers of the Flower Moon? First, let’s start with the fact that the movie was promoted to the entire Apple sub base on Apple TV+, and they were told not to stay home. It’s DiCaprio, Scorsese, and De Niro, and to any clear-thinking adult moviegoer, that’s a call to get off your couch (81% were over 25). Throw in the fact that the movie is based on a best-selling book. Apple, since blasting the movie off with the support of its cast out of Cannes, has kept the loudspeakers on in the pic’s promotion, with a robust outdoor campaign (go to the Century City Mall and digital billboards for Killers of the Flower Moon are all around you).
iSpot measured a very robust TV ad spend for the film at $15.4M, which reached 1.12 billion household TV impressions. Spots aired across NFL football, (13.7%), college football (6.9%), MLB (4.6%), Law & Order SVU (3.0%) and House Hunters (2.4%), with top network ad runs on ESPN (9.6%), Fox (9.5%), CBS (8.6%), NBC (6.3%) and ABC (6.2%).
It’s also a western, and while some thought this movie would simply play well in New York and L.A., its strongest regions are the South Central and the West. op markets that over-indexed include LA, NY, SF, Boston, Seattle, Denver, Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Austin, Minneapolis, Vancouver BC while top markets that under-indexed include Houston, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Miami, and Tampa. Top theaters came from NY, LA, OKC, Boston, SF, Tulsa, Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver BC, Washington DC, Dallas, and Albuquerque.
For Paramount, in some ways, this is reminiscent of the Coen Bros’ True Grit, which was a wide-appealing western for them, and had a $24.8M start. However, that pic had some legs. We’ll see where Killers of the Flower Moon roams. Top theater in the nation belongs to AMC Lincoln Square, which has minted more than $122K so far. PLFs and Imax are driving 37% of ticket sales. Imax’s global weekend take for the Scorsese movie was $5.1M from 750 IMAX screens in 74 markets. Of that $3.3M is from U.S./Canada or 14.3% of the pic’s current total from 402 auditoriums.
Demo diagnostics for Killers of the Flower Moon on PostTrak are 62% Male/38% Female, with 46% of the audience between 18-34 years old and the largest quad being 25-34 years old at 27%, with an amazing 38% of the audience over 45. Diversity demos were 60% Caucasian, 17% Latino and Hispanic, 8% Black, 8% Asian, and 7% Native American/other, the latter who gave the movie about the Osage Nation tragedy an 84% grade. Best grades for the movie were from the under-25 guys demos, who didn’t show up in bulk at 13%, but who gave the DiCaprio-De Niro movie a 90% grade.
Prathyangira Cinemas’s Leo: Bloody Sweet (with prints in Tamil, Hindi, Telugu) did huge numbers this week in Toronto, Seattle, Dallas, Austin, San Francisco, New York and Montreal.
Sunday figures:
1.) Taylor Swift: Eras Tour (AMC) 3,855 theaters, Fri $10.4M (-72%), $13.3M Sun $8.8M, 3-day $32.4M (-66%)/Total $131.1M/ Wk 2
2.) Killers of the Flower Moon (Apple/Par) 3,628 theaters Fri $9.4M, Sat $8.1M Sun $5.5M 3-day $23M/Wk 1
3.) Exorcist: The Believer (Uni) 3,323 (-361) theaters Fri $1.68M (-56%) Sat $2.4M Sun $1.4M 3-day $5.6M, -49%, Total $54.2M/Wk 3
4.) Paw Patrol 2 (Par) 3,364 (-343) theaters, Fri $1.15M (-26%) Sat $2M Sun $1.2M 3-day $4.4M (-36%) Total $56M/Wk 4
5.) Nightmare Before Christmas (re) (Dis) 1,650 theaters, Fri $1.45M Sat $1.6M Sun $1M 3-day $4.1M/Total lifetime $81.4M /Wk 1
6.) Saw X (LG) 2,756 (-302) theaters, Fri $1.1M (-40%) Sat $1.57M Sun $947K 3-day $3.58M (-37%) Total $47.2M/Wk 4
7.) The Creator (New Reg/20th)2,490 theaters (-470), Fri $750K (-36%) Sat $1.1M Sun $700K 3-day $2.6M (-39%), Total $36.7M/Wk 4
8.) Leo: Bloody Sweet (Prath) 720 theaters, Fri $732K Sat $816K Sun $530K 3-day $2.05M Total $4.6M/Wk 1
9.) A Haunting in Venice (Dis) 1,600 (-690) theaters Fri $350K (-40%) Sat $450K Sun $300K 3-day $1.1M (-41%)/Total $40.9M/Wk 6
10.) The Blind (Fath) 1,049 theaters (-101) Fri $320K Sat $394K Sun $296K 3-day $1M (-48%), Total $15.6M/ Wk 4
11.) The Nun 2 (NL) 1,364 theaters (-764), Fri $255K (-49%) Sat $395K Sun $237K 3-day $887K (-45%) Total $85.3M/Wk 7