Summer Box Office Preview

Welcome back to the Bulwark goes to Hollywood. My name is Sunny Bunch from Culture Editor at the Bulwark work. And I’m very pleased to be rejoined today by Frank Bologna, Frank formerly of CNN. You know him he’s been on the show a bunch of times. We’re gonna talk box office stuff because we’re hitting the box office, summer season here, big important time for theaters, for movies, and we had the first big huge hit of the year.

If we’re if we’re counting Avatar the way of water is last year, which I think everybody does. In Super Mario Bros. Movie. Frank, thanks for being back on the show. What’s going on?

Thanks

for having me. It’s been a bit I missed you. I missed you very much, Sunny.

I missed YouTube, Frank. I’m glad I’m glad to get you back on the show here. So yeah. So it’s it’s a a big weekend last weekend. You know, I think I a lot of a lot of folks were saying, like, look, Super Mario Bros.

This is gonna be huge, and it’s gonna be huge because there have been no family movies in theaters for ever for, like, literally forever. What what was going on there?

So I I said in March, I said my number one pick. For the biggest movie of the year globally is the Super Mario brothers movie from Universal Illumination and Nintendo. And why that was is what you just said is that there has been this kind of like dearth of just family films for months. I mean, we’ve had like a few hits in along the way, we had obviously put some boots the last wish, which kept making money. It has like a fourteen times multiple, which is just incredible.

Like, that’s just like a top gun type of number that it just kept going because families need a place to take their kids to. And as much as we wanna believe, that parents are perfectly fine just watching things at home. It’s a different experience when you take a child to a theater. They have to quiet They have to sit with others. You can get them.

If you go to an Alamo Draught House, you can get them food. So it’s definitely a different experience. You have that plane into this. You obviously had about forty years of nostalgia and brand awareness from Super Mario. There’s never been a real good Super brother’s movie, there was the live action one back in the early nineties that was one of the worst movies ever made.

And then on top of that, it had this kind of like Sarah Longwell buzz too. It that I feel like is the secret sauce when it comes to a blockbuster type of movie that you can’t create out of nothing. It has to just be created organically and that came from people being, you know, a little bit critic like, a little bit critical of the film, especially of Chris Pratt and his voice work in the film since you know, he’s kind of, you know, Mario already has a voice and Prats doing his own little thing. And there was other things like that. So you had people talking about it online.

You had brand awareness that was four decades old. And you had family film back in theaters and you mix all those together and you got the type of numbers and the type of hit, that you that you have now for Mario that’s I think going to last a few weeks. I still think it’s going to be the number one film of the year globally. I think Little Mermaid might challenge it a little bit But I just I think it’s a great example of the importance of theaters and what differentiates it from watching movies at home and why we need like a a bunch of different type of eclectic films to kind of fill in the ecosystem of the box office.

Can we talk about Chris Pratt in the context of the Chris’ for a moment here? Because I think this is really interesting because, I mean, you know, there were for there was a whole meme I made five, six years ago. Right? Which which Chris is the best Chris here? Chris Pratt, Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, and Chris Pine.

And now in back to back weekends, more or less, we’ve had Chris Pine and Chris Evans, both have big movies out, big franchise movies out, Obviously, if just looking at purely at the box office here, right, Chris Pratt is the winner, and he has another movie that’s gonna be huge coming out in a couple weeks. Guardians of the Galaxy Volume three, gonna be gonna be a hit probably, though that number in that movie interestingly is is tracking slightly worse than its predecessor. I don’t know if you saw this, but the the the tracking is down a little on that one. But I I I bring this up because, you know, it’s just it’s just interesting because Chris Pratt seems to be the most, I will say, disliked by critics, but also the most loved by audiences. I mean, the his movies do do big numbers.

Here, The Dress World movies, grad Guardians the Galaxy. He really is, like, franchise Chris at this point. And and his TV show as well, the terminalist that would did huge numbers. For prime video. Meanwhile, Chris Hamsworth is doing huge numbers on Netflix.

But he is like the the king of Netflix. He is the the extraction and extraction two coming out. Like, those are those are big big hits. I don’t know. I I’m not sure where I’m going with this except to say, is Chris Pratt officially number one king of box office.

Chris at this point.

So I I have no pick in the Chris War. My personal favorite is Chris Pine. I think he can do everything. But I I really like Chris Pratt. I’ve like Chris Pratt since in since parks and rec.

I I think the thing with Chris Pratt is is exactly what you said franchise Chris. He doesn’t really do a lot of stuff away from the franchises. He has Jurassic World. He has now Super Mario. He has Guardians of the Galaxy and the whole Marvel Avengers type of, you know, set he’s in there.

And then you get to Hemsworth who obviously is also a Marvel superhero, but is kind of like slowing down a little bit and has kind of moved to Netflix and does some comedic roles and things like that. And then you have Chris Evans who, you know, is Captain America arguably may be the most iconic of all the Chris’. Like, when you think of Captain America, it’s hard not to see Chris Evans. So it’s interesting. And and I think pine of all of them can do a bunch of different things.

I I don’t see Chris Pratt starring in, like, a Steven Sanheim type of film where he’s singing, and I don’t see him necessarily as, like, you know, you know, Oscar winning film like hell or high water. You know, he can do those things, but I think what’s interesting here is that franchises are still the point of the realm. And right now, I don’t know if there’s a bigger franchise star across multiple franchises than Chris Pratt. So I think there is that disconnect. I think critically, you have pine, who’s kind of doing all these things that critics kind of like has this huge range.

And Pratt’s really good at being a franchise star in the same way that his father-in-law was Arnold Swartzinager, all those years back in the eighties and nineties.

Alright. So we’ve got Super Mario brothers out. It’s a big hit. And there was a there was a I I wanna describe this as a funny piece. There was a very funny piece.

In a variety this week that said, I don’t know if you’re aware of this Frank, but the theatrical component to the film release strategy is still very important. You basically you can’t make money on mid to mid to high budget movies. If you don’t put it in theaters, and get those box office grosses. Are you are you as shocked by this as I am? Because I haven’t been saying this for like three years now at all.

I I have been dealing with this shock for days. I did not even realize that movie theaters were still around. Because back in twenty twenty, everyone said they went extinct. Everyone said they were in a close. And I remember writing multiple, multiple, multiple stories that said, hey, guys, there the worst case scenario for movie theaters is they’ll likely evolve into whatever the next iteration is, but I just don’t see them going.

And I had pitchforks and and people with torches yelling at me, especially a lot of analysts who focus only on streaming and a lot of Wall Street people who only focused on streaming. It it was always going to end up this way. It was always I mean, don’t get me wrong. In the pandemic, there was sometimes where it’s like, oh, some of these theater chains might go out of business, but I never thought that going to the movies was going to become completely extinct. I think what has happened here has happened multiple times in Hollywood history.

This happened at the advent of television to use a one to one example with streaming. In the in the fifty sixties they weren’t movie going to movie theaters, probably weren’t as wasn’t as popular as going in the thirties and forties. And that happened again with DCR and with BHS’s, I should say, and DVDs and home sales and stuff like that. There’s always been this kind of, like, escalation of technology versus the theaters. And theaters always kind of find a way to come back.

Why is that? It’s because people really like going to the movies. It’s as expensive as tickets can be. It’s still a great way to spend a night. It’s still date nights.

It’s still family nights. It’s still it’s still, you know, events, you know, these are things that are part of the American fabric that is really hard to get rid of. And I kind of saw this Even during the pandemic because what was going through the roof during the pandemic, drive drive ins. People were going to drive ins. People still want to go to the movies.

And I think that during this kind of era, there was executives at studios who had to kind of play this game where they couldn’t place money on red or black anymore. They had to spread it across the table. And some kind of got high on their own supply And basically, we’re like streaming is a future theaters don’t matter. Streaming is the only thing. And I think now where we’re coming to is the fevers breaking a little bit and executives are starting to realize that streaming is not the entire octopus.

It’s a tentacle of the octopus. And let’s look away from Super Mario brothers last weekend and look at something like air. Air made twenty million dollars. Now mind you, it’s was made for seventy to ninety million dollars, but that’s because Amazon’s got money and Ben Affleck and Matt Damon were going to make sure that they and their people got paid. But twenty million dollars for a film that is based on basically like how Nike made a shoe about Michael Jordan is pretty impressive all things considered And if you look through the year so far, yes, franchises have been the, you know, coin of the realm still, as I said earlier, but it’s not because they but people have been going and these have been over exceeding because they’ve been good.

Preeth three’s been good. Screen six was good. John Wick four is considered by many to be the best of all the John Wickes. And I think there is a place for that to kinda keep going especially as we get to the summer which is really known for this kind of stuff. Four franchises, four big brands.

So I never bought into that. I never drank that kool Aid. I will say it’s still the the US domestic box office is still about twenty percent behind twenty nineteen, so it hasn’t reached pre pandemic times. I’m curious to see if it’s gonna get there this summer. I think it will.

I think it I think we’ll be talking positive percentages sometime this summer. But, you know, if you look at this holistically, theaters are back. They never really left, though. And I think audiences want to go to movies, but they just want to go to movies that mean something. They just don’t wanna go to something that is has a name on top of it or as a brand.

They want it to mean something. They want their money to be worth it. And I think that has happened so far this year, and I think it will keep going for weeks and months to come.

Two two thoughts on that. I I I wanna push back slightly on the the idea that air is a is a success at a twenty million dollars box office opening.

I mean,

like, it’s it that’s that’s we’re we’re talking about what a hundred after advertising and all that about a hundred thirty million dollar movie. But the the real question here is what does Amazon really want out of it? Right? Like, so this is like, this movie making twenty million dollars at the box office in its opening weekend is nice. It’s it’s okay.

It’s better than the last duel, which is the last Ben Affleck, Matt Damon movie, which unfortunately got kind of buried at the end of the pandemic there. But the but I I it’s a very weird time to be like hey, look at this this movie with two a listers that cost a hundred and thirty million dollars with production in P and A, twenty million dollars That’s a that’s a hit. Right? That’s a weird thing to say. A

hundred percent. But I would also make the point that in terms of films like that that aren’t tied to brand, that aren’t tied to franchises, if this movie was made by Paramount or, you know, twentieth century, I don’t think it ever gets to that type of budget. It kinda reminds me of the Nancy Myers story of the hundred and thirty million dollar Nancy Myers movie. I think it it is a streamer was like, we’ll budget this at whatever you wanna budget it. And these guys were like, fine.

Let’s budget it as much as possible, and Amazon will get play out of this on their streaming service. I still look at something that opened up against the biggest movie of the year that made more than two hundred million dollars over five days. And it still found way to make twenty million. It didn’t make like like movies like that last year. We’d be talking about it making less than ten million.

Yeah. So I think there is I don’t wanna sit here and say, oh my god, what a huge success for air, but I just think from a macro level to look at that and go it opened against the biggest movie year so far. Yes. The budget is extraordinary, but that’s because it’s produced by a tech company that can afford it and they likely ballooned that budget as much as they could, and it did better than it was. I know the bar is pretty much under the ground for movies like that, so that’s not really saying much.

But when I saw that twenty million dollar number, I was like, okay, I could see this, you know, it’s gonna probably not make a ton of money for Amazon. But like you said, Amazon’s gonna get a lot more out of this than say a paramount would Because I think paramount would have budgeted this for at, like, forty or fifty million dollars or even less and this would have been a still would have been a hit, would have been the same movie. I don’t know. But I I didn’t see seventy to ninety million dollars in the movie, you know, it’s not like there’s a lot of special effects. I do think that it speaks to something that could happen more and more this summer.

And as we go forward, as people trickle back to the theater, It’ll be interesting to see. I I just didn’t think it was necessarily a huge bomber disaster. I think it’s a nice start. Now at this point, I think I think middle I think middle range films need more nice starts to get that momentum back. Yeah.

I mean, the other thing the other thing to consider here is something that a guy you interviewed not too long ago, Jason Blum, or Jason Blum from Blum House, he talks about which is the the negative aspects of essentially cost plus budget Right? Which is he he he’s a big believer in theatrical in the sense that if you put a movie out there that’s good and audiences wanna come to, you make the money on the back end. And you keep the budget low, you keep it down twenty ten to twenty million dollars if you can. As opposed to the streaming companies, which are just like, we’re gonna give you everything front and nothing on the back end. So whatever you we’re gonna whatever it costs, you’ll get ten percent more than that.

And that’s not great for that’s not great for, I don’t know, budget stinginess. True. But like I said, with air, I’m actually excited that it made twenty because it shows the

streamers like Apple, Netflix, and Amazon who can just blow money however they want, it can be like, hey, guys, you can still put this on your streaming service in sixty days but it can make twenty like, I bet that movie kind of ends around forty million dollars. And for a streamer, that’s great. They’re just playing a completely different game. Yep. Than than the traditional studios.

If this was a traditional studio movie, this was made by Universal for seventy to ninety million dollars and made twenty million, I would not be sitting here being like, oh, well, that was pretty good. I’d be like, oh, they’re not gonna make back their money. Yeah. But I think it teets it it works twofold. It’s it’s a nice start for media medium films.

And it also teaches streamers that they can put their movies into theaters, make a nice little chunk of change that doesn’t that is basically couch cushion change for Amazon and Apple And I think those two things are important because we need medium films to come back and we need the streamers to kind of be like theaters aren’t something that we need to avoid like the plague. It actually can be something that can give us some money and maybe eventually if we do this more often build some momentum where we can actually make a profit before it even gets to streaming. Yeah.

And forty million, it will cover basically the cost of advertising for this movie in theaters, which is more or less what. Anyway, the the other thing I just wanted to highlight briefly going back to that variety piece, there there’s a simple There’s a very simple economic calculus here, which is that if you are going to make a movie that costs a hundred million dollars, it makes no sense to put it directly on streaming because you will not capture a hundred million dollars worth of revenue from people either signing up or not cancelling because of that specific movie. Almost almost I I think you can count the the number of films that will get people to sign up or stay on on on one hand. You know? And and and it’s not even films usually.

It’s TV shows, things like Stranger Things. Or the Mandalorian. Right? Those are those are that’s where those hundred million dollar budgets need to go. So if you can’t make the money up there, you have to put it in theaters for these movies to get made period.

Just as a financ just as a very basic financial matter.

Yeah. I think that is I I it’s funny. Back in twenty twenty one, I did a a video basically being, like, why direct to streaming, it may not work. And the reason was is because people just kind of felt at that time being like, oh, I can get a Marvel movie direct to streaming all the time because that’s how this should work. It’s it’s not that was never going to work.

Like, you can get some of the smaller movies, like, I think air could have went directly to streaming. Like, it could have done that. And maybe it would have done I I don’t know. But, like, now got another twenty million dollars in that opening weekend. It’ll make some more money as we go along.

But you were never gonna get a top gun or a mission possible or a a marvel movie going direct to because there’s there’s no way they make that money back. In fact, look at what Paramount did with Top Gun. They could have released that multiple times during the pandemic and got a huge amount of sign ups for Paramount plus and they still went, we wanna open this in theaters and they play that bet, and they did that, it opened huge, it kept opening huge, and then it was the biggest thing on Paramount plus when it went to Paramount Plus in December. So that is the real blueprint of how these guys really need to roll things out. And I think anybody who said otherwise it was either lying to consumers or did not know enough And I think we’re just at a point now where studios and media companies are starting to realize that they’re not gonna be valued in the same way that tech companies are valued because even tech companies right now are not gonna valued the way that tech companies used to be valued.

And I think they’re looking at the last hundred years of making money through all these different platforms and going Well, it’s nice that we built streaming, but that’s not gonna be the only end all be all. I think those days of how to win the streaming wars is now adjusting to why have a streaming war at all.

I will once again reiterate my very basic and and true argument that streaming needs to be a replacement for DVD and Blu ray sales and not a replacement for all revenue in the universe of of a of a studio or company. But we’ll we’ll leave that there. Alright. So what’s coming up the rest of the year here. We’re we’re doing a summer box office preview here.

Before the show, you said you had nine or ten films that like — Yeah. — look like they they are gonna be the the most important movies of the year, they will tell the story of the year and how things are going. So why don’t we why don’t we run through that list? One of the most

interesting movies of the summer, if not the year, is on May fifth, which is Guardians of Galaxy Volume three. And the reason I think that’s interesting is because Marvel has kind of not had a great year so far. Quantum, opened up pretty big, but then dropped like a rock in the weeks that came after. And as kind of left the pop culture consciousness. And people have been asking, do consumers have superhero fatigue?

I think that we’re going to see on May fifth if that’s actually true or not. You mentioned earlier that it’s opening a little bit less than the predecessor volume two in twenty seventeen. I would argue that that kind of makes sense even if Marvel was doing pretty well because regardless of the galaxy that original one back in twenty fourteen was such huge film was such a beloved film that people were super excited for volume two, and now it’s gone about six years without a Guardians movie and people have kind of forgotten about the brand a little bit, but I think that this movie can do well because there’s a finality to it, at least that deals this way. I think Batista’s done with Marvel. I think that the marketing keeps making me feel that know, something’s gonna happen to Rocket or one of the characters is gonna die.

And obviously James Gunn is running DC now over at Warner Bros. So I don’t see him doing a lot more of these movies going forward. The marketing has been really nice. It’s been really fun. I think that will really say a lot about where Marvel is and where superhero genre is.

I think we could get to a point where maybe we don’t have what we have for the last decade or more of like superhero movies are the entire industry. I think they can actually fall into, like, a proper place inside of the box office, which is maybe we get, you know, a couple of these superhero movies a year, maybe one or two maybe we get about two Marvel, three Marvel movies a year instead of these, you know, four with, like, two streaming series just to kinda calm down on the on the deluge. But, you know, speaking of Guardians, another one too is on June sixteenth, which is elemental, which kind of speaks to something else that’s going out with Disney, which is Pixar is going through the same stuff that that Marvel’s going through, which is like people got used to watching Pixar movies at home. So I kind of find these two kind of interconnected in a way that speaks a bigger, larger language for Disney. If if audience show up for volume three and elemental, I think it actually can lead to a place where we’re kind of back on track for Disney where they can kind of own the marketplace again a little bit.

But if guardians, you know, opens soft and then drops like a rock in its second and third week, and elemental just kinda goes the way light ear did last year where people are kind of confused by it or feel like they can wait sixty days instead of going the way Mario did or the other animated movies. Have so far, that’s going to really hit Disney Heart and they’re gonna have to really kind of have a moment where they kind of think things out and see what their next step is. So I think it’ll be really interesting that we’re starting the summer with a film that’s going to not just speak to the box office, but also speak to one of the largest media companies in the world and they’re kind of trajectory forward. Yeah.

I mean, elemental is a fascinating one because I I do it’s been interesting to watch the success of Illumination, which made Rise Minions and Myers Brothers. And and puts some boots which is over at DreamWorks compared to what’s been happening at Disney, just a series of disasters on the animated front with Lightyear and Strange World and and everything else that’s going on there. But I I do think that part of that is because Disney has has trained families and parents to to just wait to watch their new movies on Disney plus They they they have they have conditioned people to expect those movies to, if not, be on the service immediately within a week or two. And if you if you have, look, I’ve got I’ve got two kids. I like taking them to the theaters, but it it is not cheap.

And it is kind of a hassle. And if if I’m given the option if I’m somebody who is less committed to the success of theatrical, I am I am probably just saying, no. No. We’ll watch it at home. Watch it at home in ten days.

Kids. That’s

Yeah. But I also would make the argument that things that were trained during the pandemic can be untrained. And I would make this all argument with Super Mario. If you gotta remember, what was the first studio to put everything basically on streaming. That was universal.

Now do they go all in in the way on peacock that that Disney plus has? No, not necessarily. Disney plus became Disney for a while there. So I I I will say, you know, if Guardians of the Galaxy has great critical reviews and is a huge hit, And same thing with Elemental, if it has great critical reviews and it has good word-of-mouth, people will still go out even if they have to kind of wait because people like, that’s enough time from Mario in April to on Pixar movie in June, but you’re right. They do have to kind of fix the psychology of it.

Another another another animated movie that I wanna talk about is Spider Man Across the Spider Verse, which is also opening June second. That movie has kind of been like the Rosetta Stone for animation lately, the original Spider Verse movie in that everything looks like Spider Verse movies now. Like, I kind of love this two d mix with three d animation. So that might kind of hit it too that, like, people might be like, well, we don’t need to go see elemental because we just want to go see a family film two weeks ago with Spider Verse, but I would make the argument that I think Pixar is still Pixar still holds a brand It’s just Disney needs to do a better job of marketing that movie to be seen in theaters. And Alimento has to have the goods.

And I feel the same thing with Guardians. Both Marvel and Pixar cannot rest on their name anymore. They need to have the movie to back up the branding when just a few years ago, it could be Pixar, Frank Pilata’s story, and it would make a billion dollars because it was Pixar. They they just need to kinda have the goods now. And I think that’s good for both Disney and for the industry that you can’t just rest on a name alone anymore.

You actually have to put in the type of, you know, movie and production that is worthy of the name, not to say that hasn’t happened in the past, but It used to be just, oh, that’s a marvel movie. I don’t care who’s in it. I don’t care what it’s about. I’m gonna go see it. That has changed, and I think that’s for the

best. Alright. So we’ve got across the spider verse, which I think is gonna be I think it’s gonna be a big hit. I I I For some reason, I I feel like the first was mildly disappointing. I think people wanted a little more out of that in terms of box office, not in terms of critical response or audience reaction.

But I do think it’s also growing a lot in the in the I think I think this is one that families in particular have picked up at home and and really grown to love. So I’m curious to see if this if this really pops at the box office. Alright. What else we got? What else is So

I’m gonna I’m gonna touch this real I’m gonna touch on this one real quick because there’s not a lot to talk about it, but I love it because it’s one of my favorite brands. Fast ten is coming out in May. It’s gonna be really interesting to watch and see if that has any impact in the domestic side of things that has become a really international brand If we remember with f nine, John Cena had to do kind of a Mia Copa with China. It was a whole thing with that. It’s vitally important to the brand internationally.

Numbers of of the fast and furious series. This is supposedly part one of part two of the final film. I’ll believe it when I see it when it comes to fast and furious. But that one kind of like falls right in the middle of May. It’s gonna be interesting to see if, say, Guardians isn’t the type of movie we think it is.

If that can kind of pick up the steam a little bit before we get to, like, Memorial Day and the traditional summer. So just wanted to touch on that real quick. The next interesting kind of storyline happens in mid June with Asteroid City and no hard feelings. And the and those is the West Anderson film as Asteroid City that stars a bunch of different stars. It’s kind of like his looney tunes esque western looking kind of film, and then no hard feelings is Sony’s Jennifer Lawrence Ramcom.

Now why are these two interesting to me? Is, right now, these will really tell me especially no hard feelings. Do audience wanna see anything other than just, oh, this has you know, branding to it. I think no heart feelings was really the trailer for it when it came out. I think last month was really, really popular.

People thought it was funny. People were knocked that, like, Jennifer Lawrence was even in a movie like this because it reminded us of, like, the films of, like, Superbad and forty year old version, the Judd Apital type of years. You know, the old schools, the Anchor Man’s, where it was just like, oh, a raunchy romcom. Like, there’s been a long time since we’ve had one of these. I I think Wes has his, you know, loyal following.

I don’t think it’s gonna make a ton of money. I think but it’ll be interesting to see if it kind of over projects and does well for what it is. And those two movies will tell me a lot. They come right in the middle of summer. They come right in the middle of all these brands.

And if know heart feelings in Ashford City can do well by their standards. I think it can speak a lot to consumers making moves to not just spend their money on, you know, this is Fast ten or this is Guardians three or this is mission impossible. Eighteen, you know? Like, this this will be interesting to see, and I think we need movies like this to do well for what they are. Do do I think know her feelings or asks her if she’s gonna make a billion dollars know?

But if they make a hundred million dollars based on their budgets, which I don’t know offhand, I think that would be interesting. I think that’d be really, really beneficial and healthy to the industry in the same way that a movie like the Black Bone last year was to the industry at large. Yeah.

I mean, you can’t have a thriving theatrical industry that doesn’t appeal on at least some level to adults. And these are these are the the the niche that you have identified here, right, is the r rated movie for adults. This is these are gonna be, you know, these are not movies for kids. These are not movies you think kids do. I think asteroid cities are.

Right? I don’t maybe it’s maybe it’s the

I’d assume so.

But but the but these are, you know, these are movies that that that have to be successful because they’re not super expensive. But they do get older audiences back out to theaters. And and if you you cannot you cannot have theatrical ecosystem that only appeals to people between the age of, like, twenty five and thirty four. That that just doesn’t work.

Alright. So moving on, I have two I have two more pairs of films that I think speak to a larger story line. That’s kind of my mode right now. And the first pair is Indiana Jones in the Dialed Destiny, a mission impossible dead reckoning part one. Dialed Destiny opens on June thirtieth and Mission Impossible opens on June fourteenth.

Now, what’s the story line with this? Is do we have another Top Gun this summer? Now, what I mean by that is like Top Gun was one of the biggest most popular movies that we have seen in years. And I don’t think dial of destiny or mission impossible is going to reach those types of levels where it’s just this remarkable film that it gets nominated for Oscars and everyone you see no matter where they come from loves it. But I think if you asked me a year ago, what I thought top gun would have been that.

I would have been like, no, probably not. I think it would do okay. I think it’ll do fine. But I don’t know if younger people even care about top gun. And I was proven completely wrong as most of the industry was even though I thought it was gonna do pretty well.

This is the same kind of thing we’re hearing about Indiana Jones. Indiana Jones is a movie from the eighties. It’s it’s bringing back a star from the eighties. It’s potentially the last film, at least for this star, you know, Harrison Ford is in his eighties. He doesn’t wanna do this anymore.

He fun he said at d twenty three in a in a joking way since I’m I’m done falling down for you people. So think it’ll be interesting to see if people come out, if that movie is well reviewed, if it has good word-of-mouth, it opens and can, and a couple weeks, so we’ll know a little bit more about it before it opens funny enough so to kingdom of the crystal skull. So I don’t really think that really means anything that it opens that can But also, it’ll be interesting to see if people will come out to kind of say goodbye to this character. I know you like, You can’t see this at home, but right behind me as readers of the lost star posters, my favorite film. So I will be there.

And I like James Mangold. I think he’s made a lot of great films. He and Logan is a is a good movie about a hero coming to an end for Versaari was a lot of fun. It’ll be interesting. The trailers have looked really fun So that’s that there.

Can that kind of like capture some of the magic that Top Gun did? But more more organically, looking at Mission Impossible, Can it get that top gun bump? Because Tom Cruise is now going back to doing his other franchise and the marketing and the sell here for me at least is, hey, did you like Top Gun last year? Did you think it was really neat and fun? Well, guess what?

We’re making another one kinda, but it’s mission impossible and there’s gonna be even crazier stunts in this one. And it’s a lot of fun you should come. So it’s gonna be interesting to see if those two movies which are, you know, led by action stars of the eighties who are a little bit older. Obviously, Tom, Cruise, and Harris afford kinda defy age. But it’ll be interesting to see if that gets a bump If if Mission Impossible gets a bump, I would not be shocked that movie that series has never really made more than seven, eight hundred million dollars.

Maybe it gets to that billion dollars because of that top bump bump. Indiana Jones isn’t directed by Steven Spielberg, but maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe somebody new comes in. We’ll see how Disney kinda propels that for. They’re kinda shifting now to a focus on that after Guardians.

Indi will be a big thing. It’s getting marketed everywhere. And it’s Indiana Jones who doesn’t like Indiana Jones. So it’ll be interesting to see if those two movies which hit right in the middle of the summer can kinda catch fire because it’s an easy sell to be like, hey, what are you doing Friday night? Do you wanna go see the new Indiana Jones movie?

And hey, what are you doing Friday night? Do you wanna go see the new Mission Impossible movie. You like Top Gun. Right? So I think that’ll be interesting to see.

Do you think people say, do you wanna go see the new Mission Impossible movie or the new Tom Cruise movie.

I think they’re gonna say in this situation, I think it’s going to be the Tom Cruise movie after Top Gun. Yeah. Because last year, it was It’s hard to say. I I feel like there was a lot of people who went to go see Top Gun, and that’s for the best because I think Top Gun is a a better film than Top Gun. But I think with Indiana Jones, the question is, do you wanna go see the Indiana Jones movie?

I don’t think anyone’s gonna go say, hey, do you wanna go see the New Harrison Ford

movie? Yeah. With mission

impossible, I think it could be split sixty forty probably towards cruise.

Yeah. I I I do like the advertising campaign for the new Mission Impossible film, which is basically watch Tom Cruise try to kill himself on film for you. Like

It’s a great selling plant. It really is. I mean, like, hey, he jumps off a cliff in this one. Hey, we throw a train off a cliff in this one. It’s just it gets to a certain point where it’s just, like, I think the reason that top gun works so well is that when you watched it, Even the stuff that was fake, you couldn’t tell.

And the stuff that was real, like, when he took off from a aircraft carrier, you were like, oh, that actually happened and it made you want to think about the movie when you got home. You’re like, I gotta look up how he actually did this. I gotta watch it again to see what I miss. And I think that can kinda really play into both of these films that were very stunt oriented And maybe we can see you know, maybe the question becomes, like, how did eighty year old Harrison Ford jump off that far? Was that him?

Was that CGI? Like, I need to figure that out. So I think those movies can do really well if they kinda capture capture some of the magic of top them last year.

So what’s the last pair of

So the last pair is the most cinematic day of the year, Sunny, which is July twenty first when we will have one of the best Double features a movie history which is Barbie by Greta Gerwig from Warner Brothers and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. You could literally, we have the two genders here, but I will be seeing Barbie and Oppenheimer because I love both of these movies. I think they’re gonna really fun to see. So let’s start with Oppenheimer because it’s just so interesting. Basically, everyone you’ve ever heard of is starring in this movie.

Obviously, it’s led by Simeon Murphy. He plays what what is the name of the uniquely plays Oppenheimer? I almost just ask who does he play? He plays Oppenheimer. The creator of the nuclear bomb.

This is about the Manhattan project. The question with this is it’s it’s reportedly three hours long. I think Matt Damon has even said it’s three hours long. It’s in the middle of the summer. Basically, Universal is selling this almost kind of like hey, do you have anxiety?

Do you want some? So, like basically, you watch this film, this ticking clock, you go to the movie theater, and they have the big board with the ticking clock everything’s counting down to this. And I think if it if it moves the way that Dunkirk did and finds that audience, that older audience that kind of wants to see a well made movie starring stars that’s about World War two. I think it could be a hit for Universal and kind of set them up as the new Christopher Nolan studio, but we’ll see. And I think it’s gonna be a challenge because how do you sell that movie to people under the age of thirty?

How do you get people to come in and watch a three hour movie? Even though I’ve never been against three hour movies, I’d make them as as you want to just bring back intermission. And I think it’ll be really interesting to think I think the marketing has been great so far. I I trust Universal and Donna Langley, the head of Universal. I think they are I think she has one of the best tastes in in all of Hollywood.

And I think that Christopher Nolan, I mean, The thing with Christopher Nolan and me is that, like, he’s kind of like a a toxic boyfriend to me sometimes. You know, I’ll basically be like, you know what? This is gonna be the movie. Like, this is gonna be what dumb Kirk should have been for me. Or this is going to, like, I’m gonna go see Tennant.

This is what inception should be. And sometimes it’s not and sometimes it’s surprising, but he always puts in a lot of effort And I’m really excited to see how that movie does, especially considering it doesn’t feel like a a summer movie feels more like a movie that should be in the winter On the other side of the spectrum is Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, which everyone is talking about. It has I mean, I can’t go anywhere online without having and, you know, Barbie. And it’s like it it’s a different character in the Barbie template, and he’s just Ken. She’s just everything.

And it’s got Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, a a cast of characters in it. And it’s got Greta Gerwig. And she is, in my opinion, one of the best directors in Hollywood, you know, little little women was a masterpiece. I also think that, you know, Lady Bird was a masterpiece. And this has a lot of, like, social satire to it potentially, and I think she can thread that needle where it’s not directly in your face and you can still take your kids to a fun Barbie movie.

But for older audience, I’d be like, I got that joke. I see what you’re doing there. And it just looks really fun and really bright and I think we need something like that as we go forward. So I think that day is I’m gonna probably order like a six course meal through both of those movies at Alamo Drafthouse that day. But it’s really exciting.

And I mean outside of that, I think the only movie I did mention, which will be interesting, is over Memorial Day, which is a a very important day of the year for the summer. Is Disney’s The Little Mermaid? I the the marketing for it has been kind of people being critical of it, but it’s still a little mermaid. People love the little mermaid, and those films like the lion king, the reboots, Aladdin have all broken a billion dollars. They’ve all done incredibly well, so we’ll be able to see that.

But it’s really interesting to have this summer kind of highlight kind of hit its peak with these two very different films in Oppenheimer and Barbie that speak to very different ways of entering the Hollywood atmosphere.

Yeah. I I am excited for for all of these things. Less I I I can already tell right now that I’m gonna be annoyed when Barbie ends up outgrossing Oppenheimer just on general principle. That’s gonna that’s gonna annoy me. But

What? Just just embrace it. It’s Barbie. It listen. Sunny.

No.

I know I know I know on your surface. You’re like, oh, I have to like Christopher Rollandola. I know Deep Down, you’re a Barbie guy. I know. It’s okay.

We don’t have to we don’t have to ruin this friendship because we wanted to slide to the audience.

Thing about Greta Gerwig is that she’s so nice. Her movies are so her she makes such nice movies. You know, they’re so they’re so pleasant. Maybe

we should do a Maybe we should do a switch where she directs Oppenheimer and Christopher Nolan directs Barbie and see how they turn out.

That would be I see. I would watch I would watch Christopher Nolan’s Barbie with Bated Breath. I’d be very excited.

Maybe five hours long. I don’t care.

Be the Barbie spy movie. That we know. We’ve always wanted. That’s awesome. Alright.

Well, that’s that’s a that is a that is what’s coming up this summer. It’s it’s very interesting. I am I am super to see how this all plays out. You know, if if the box office can get back to about eighty five to ninety percent of where it was in twenty nineteen, we’ll we’ll be happy, I think, as as movie lovers, but we’ll see we’ll see how it goes. Is there anything else what I as you know, I was like to end by asking if there’s an I should have asked.

We covered a lot here, so I I don’t know. But what what what should folks know about what’s coming up? I’m

gonna give it to the summer theme. It’s ninety degrees in New York right now even though it’s only April fourteenth and I already have my AC on. But the thing I think we need to keep out for is watch the summer closely, Because Hollywood needs to build as much benefit and profit as possible and get that percentage as high as possible versus pre pandemic times for the US box office because I think after Labor Day, it’s gonna fall off a cliff. There’s not an avatar this year, guys. There’s not a lot of big films.

I mean, we have the marbles, and I think the actress

You don’t think marbles is gonna be a huge I I I got excited for your marbles. I think

I think I’ll feel better it after I see how people feel about guardians. Yeah. But I think, you know, even if it is a hit, even if it’s a billion dollar hit, you can’t live off of just one billion dollar hit for four months to end out the year. And I think there is a real chance that we’re gonna have a hot summer and it’s gonna be an incredible kind of, like, we’re gonna have a bunch of films both big and small do well. We’re gonna have a lot of expectations be beat because I think people really wanna come back the movies.

I think this is the summer where people really wanna come back to the movies. But I think that when it comes to Labor Day, you’re gonna have a lot of people writing about Oh, movies are back. This was the biggest summer since Blake blah blah blah blah blah,

but

I think to not end this on kind of a want want note I think that we’re gonna have a real, like, struggle to get to the end of the year and not end not take away from the boost from the summer and have that come back down to earth. But, you know, this is all good because we’ve had a a a very hot spring I think we’re gonna have a very good summer even if the fall and winter is not where it was last year. I don’t see how it could be considering Avatar came out last in December, I think this is what the studios want. And if you talked to studios and executives back in twenty twenty, they’d be on their knees happy that we’re at this place. So I think enjoy it.

Go see the movies. If you wanna wait a couple weeks to watch on streaming, don’t watch it in the movie theater and then watch it again on streaming or do whatever you want, but that’s where we’re at. I think we’re heading towards a place where consumers are finally gonna get that choice to see movies and theaters, to see movies on streaming, and to have both be successful on a way. And I think that we’re heading to a point where studios are going to have to be like, we have to kind of sell this movie and package this movie and create movies that are gonna get people into theaters because we can’t just rely on what we have relied before the pandemic.

I’ll go out on a limb and make one post summer prediction hot Scorsese October. Let’s do it. Hotlander. Talk about a movie that’s four hours long. So are you gonna get talent it right now.

Well, hopefully, it’s not like the Irishman which was way too long as both of us agree on. Right, Sunny?

I don’t I don’t agree on that. It’s that’s that’s a movie that is that’s almost four hours long and you should watch it in a theater because the theater will focus your attention better than watching it at home. I

will I will be watching killers of the Flower Moon from Apple in theaters come October, and I hope it does incredibly well. I hope I hope there’s a I hope I’m wrong about the fall and the winter. I hope there’s a bunch of big blockbusters I haven’t even predicted.

Hot scores tober. Put it in your put it in your calendar now. Alright. Thank you, Frank, for being on the show. I appreciate it.

We’ll get you we’ll get you back on sooner this time hopefully. And of course, I’m Sonny Bunch from Culture Editor at The Bulwark, and I will be back next week. With another episode of The Bulwark goes to Hollywood, you guys.