SATURDAY AM: Refresh for more analysis and chart… Two superstars with massive social media followings, Taylor Swift with 548 million, and Dwayne Johnson with 562 million, are brawling at the box office with the cat lover showing her claws over the former WWE champ as Taylor Swift: The Official Release Party of a Showgirl is conquering the box office with a $30M-$32M opening/sole weekend, and sending The Smashing Machine down for the count with an estimated $6.2M. That is unfortunately Johnson’s lowest opening ever of his career as a leading man — lower than the $8.5M opening of 2010’s Faster, and below the wide break on Fighting With My Family at $7.8M (which he technically had a supporting role in and produced).
Meanwhile, Warner Bros is seeing One Battle After Another north of $12M in weekend 2. Others see it $10M-$11M. Even if One Battle After Another comes in at the low end, that’s a -55% second weekend hold which is better than Leonardo DiCaprio’s Killers of the Flower Moon which posted -60% in weekend dos. What’s clear is One Battle After Another, which is coursing to $100M worldwide by Sunday, is bound to ultimately pass Killers of the Flower (which at $200M+ cost more than the Paul Thomas Anderson pic’s $130M-$140M and also had a 3 1/2 hour running time) which ended its run at $158.7M. Killers of the Flower Moon went the distance to Oscar night with a ten nomination count off its bloated budget and a final $68M domestic box office. When it came to sizing up the profit-loss on Killers of the Flower, Apple dodged that given how the streamer doesn’t assess the finances of their movies by regular motion picture P&L standards. As one film finance source always told me, big budget movies at Apple are essentially advertising costs for their tech products and universe (how fair is that?).
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FRIDAY PM: The No. 1 exhibitor in the world’s theatrical release of Taylor Swift: The Official Release Party of a Showgirl, is heading toward a $15M-$16M Friday with a current opening-weekend forecast of $29M-$31M at 3,700 theaters. Note these figures do not come from AMC Theatres
There are some estimates out there as high as $40M, but here is what’s vital to keep in mind: This is very front-loaded with advance tickets sales arguably accounted for (true, we heard that last time with Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle, but that found an audience). The notion here is that all Swifties are making a date to see Showgirl today, because it’s the release date of her album The Life of a Showgirl (duh).
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Although not any kind of October opening record, the marvel of it all is how the 14x Grammy winner was able to announce a cinematic experience two weeks before its release; steal Premium Large Format screens from Dwayne Johnson’s The Smashing Machine, Leonardo DiCaprio’s One Battle After Another and James Cameron’s re-release of Avatar: The Way of Water; and get to this box office threshold with very little P&A.
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Swift already has broken the Spotify record for most single-day streams; her pre-saves for Showgirl were north of 5 million. No word yet where album sales will land for Swift on Showgirl, but she’s the only performer to have sold more than 1M albums a week seven times. Swift’s bestselling album reportedly is 1989, which has sold 14M copies in the U.S. alone and going platinum abroad.
Ken Hirama/A24/Courtesy Everett Collection
It was the best of times, and it was the worst of times at the weekend box office — the latter going to Dwayne Johnson’s arthouse biopic about UFC fighter Mark Kerr, The Smashing Machine, which unfortunately is in a sleeper hold and destined for $6M-$7M in third place at 3,345 locations (read Deadline’s review here). The net $50M production was funded largely by foreign sales. Smashing Machine hit tracking three weeks ago with a $20M projection. But after Swift announced two weeks ago that she was pushing her way onto The Rock’s weekend, forecasts plummeted. More on that later. No audience score yet on Rotten Tomatoes. Today is $2.7M for the Benny Safdie-directed movie. Swift stole Smashing Machine‘s Dolby Cinemas.
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In second, is Warner Bros.’ second weekend of One Battle After Another (read our review here), still armed with its 70MM Imax locations, with an estimated $12.5M (-43%) after a second Friday of $3.6M. If all goes right, domestic hits $44.1M by Sunday and overseas shoots to $56M take after a second frame $17M haul for a $100.1M global running cume. Knock on wood.
Universal’s second weekend of Gabby’s Dollhouse: The Movie at 3,507 venues is collapsing with $4.7M in 4th, -66%. Not good for a kids movie. That will get the big-screen version of the DreamWorks Animation-Netflix show to $21.1M by Sunday. Today is $1.2M.
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Fifth belongs to New Line’s The Conjuring: Last Rites at 2,753 with a fifth Friday of $1.1M and fifth frame of $3.8M, -44%, and running cume of $166.6M, again, the highest-grossing movie in the horror franchise.
20th Century Studios via Disney’s reissue of Avatar: The Way of Water at 2,140 sites is seeing a $3M outside the Top 5. Today, including previews, is just under $1M. Again, the movie will offer one of three sneak peeks of December’s Avatar: Fire and Ash. The 2022 pic is playing in 3D, Imax, with some PLFs.
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