Toward the end of last year, I highlighted how the joyful end of the dual strikes was deflated slightly by the news that Warner Bros. intended to shelve and destroy Coyote vs. Acme for tax reasons. I’m happy to let others argue over whether or not this is good for the general state of filmmaking, the tension between intellectual property maintenance and artistry, the relations between capital and labor, and all that jazz. While it’s hard to read the great Will Forte’s plea and feel nothing for the onscreen and offscreen talent involved, I understand bigger issues are at play. (The size of David Zaslav’s compensation package, which was $39 million in 2022).
I realize it’s not personal, it’s just business. I understand that there is some complex calculation involving debt loads and interest rates and EBITDA margins1 and the such. In my head, though, I imagine David Zaslav bricking Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner behind a wall, the lupine cartoon holding up a sign reading “Monstresor! For the love of God!” as Zaslav madly cackles “Yes, for the love of God, and also taxes!” Because I look at the box office charts every single day and every single day I see a gaping hole in them where family-friendly fare should be and wonder how much money they’re leaving on the table.
Consider last year’s Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, which opened to a relatively meager $12 million (though that number was depressed a bit since the Saturday fell on Christmas Eve, a notoriously bad day for movie attendance) and wound up grossing $186 million domestic because there was nothing in theaters for families for nearly four months after its release.
This year’s Migration hasn’t popped quite as hard because it isn’t quite as good, but even that movie opened to $12 million and has grossed more than $120 million. It has been in the top five for ten straight weeks, and not because it’s great (I’ve seen it twice, it’s … fine). Wonka, another movie that is perfectly fine but not particularly good, has been in the top ten for 11 weeks, earning $215 million domestically. Why have these movies hung around? Allow me to suggest that it’s because there has been nothing in theaters for families for nearly three months after their releases.
All of which is to say that I simply do not understand why Warner Bros. brass, smarting from the PR beating they took when the move to shelve Coyote vs. Acme was announced, failed to dump the film in theaters toward the end of January with a modest, mostly-online-and-Max-based ad campaign, in the hopes of opening with a small box office (say, $12 to $14 million) and then legging out to $100 million domestic based solely on good word of mouth and nothing-in-theaters-momentum. I say this as the parent of two young children who scanned the listings President’s Day weekend hoping to find an indoor activity that would kill two or three hours and came away empty: Coyote vs. Acme, regardless of its quality, would be an improvement over “nothing” or “Migration for the third time.”
I can’t emphasize this enough: The studios with streaming-first strategies are training families and children to watch movies at home and only at home and this is going to be disastrous for the cash cow that is the theatrical experience. Please give us something to take our kids to!
On this Friday’s episode of Across the Movie Aisle, we talked about the Criterion Channel’s Razzies program. The Razzies are bad and it’s good that Criterion is highlighting their badness by focusing on some of the movies they have unfairly maligned over the years.
Links!
Sorry about the lack of newsletter last week; my Dune: Part Two review was supposed to double as the newsletter, but there was a miscommunication with the scheduling folks and, well, oh well. The movie is out this week! You should watch it on as big and loud a screen as you can!
If the IMAX screens are all sold out or you aren’t into the whole Dune thing, I have a couple of other recommendations for you. If you want a quirky comedy, check out Drive-Away Dolls, the latest Coen Brother (singular) picture. If you want something a little more action-oriented, try to track down a screen showing Land of Bad, an action movie featuring Russell Crowe trying to guide Liam Hemsworth out of a jungle before a Filipino branch of the Islamic State can kill him.
Speaking of Drive-Away Dolls, we discussed it on Across the Movie Aisle this Tuesday. I liked the lesbian neo-noir hangout road picture more than Peter and Alyssa, yet more proof that I am deeply invested in the interior lives of onscreen women.
JVL has highlighted the Willy Wonka experience in Glasgow that devolved into angry parents berating the organizers so viciously that they had to call the cops, but if you missed that item in the Triad you really have to read the story. It’s amazing.
Kevin Costner expending all his newfound TV credibility and putting some of his own money into a series of epic big screen westerns is an absolute god-tier movie star power play. You love to see it; I can’t wait to watch it.
Assigned Viewing: Red Right Hand (VOD)
Red Right Hand is the new picture from the Nelms Brothers (Fatman, Small Town Crime), and I talked to them about it on this Saturday’s podcast, so I hope you get a chance to check it out before the episode drops. It’s worth the $6 rental just to watch Andie MacDowell go full “evil southern drug lord queenpin,” trust me.
Correction: EBITDA, not EBIDTA. While I could play that off as part of the joke (click the link), it was in fact just a typo. But it drives home my point that there are undoubtedly complex economic math reasons it makes more sense to kill the movie now rather than taking a write-down later if it flops.
after all the potter, then streaming pixar, the marvel crap and as much old disney as we could find that was "good enough" (2 thumbs snowball express!) -- we've taken to going through all the screwball/romantic-ish comedies starting about 1936, some of which are real gems. and and i just want to say then in conclusion everything else is crap.
Very helpful - thanks! I’ll look for the first one.