I don't mean to gloat, but... yes I do
It's fine, anyone I'm giving shit to can cry into their newfound buckets of money.
“We all have our little faults.
“When WB (Barbie) and Universal (Oppenheimer) originally scheduled the movies on the same weekend, they probably assumed their audiences were completely different - i.e. women vs dudes - and they felt good about their choices. And then, Barbenheimer happened. Which probably confused them a little, but that doesn’t surprise me. Because studios often assume who their audiences are and target accordingly vs let a movie’s audience show themselves and direct their efforts thusly. I’m not going to get too deep into how they segment here (ask me sometime though), but regardless, you now have two movies whose overlapping section of the venn diagram is larger than one might’ve thought.
Or maybe not. Because this is all conjecture until the movies are released and we see the research on who actually went to see which movie. You can imagine the studios were directionally right in their audience profiles, but it’ll be fun to see regardless (well, for some of us at least). Because if they overlap more than people suspected, and both movies make good money on opening weekend and beyond, then it may push forward the theory that people don’t always just go see “a movie,” they see mo-vies. Specifically ones that interest them.“
Oh hey, I said that!
Yeah, two weeks in ago in the There Will Be Poop Jokes edition of WIT+ describing the then upcoming, but now occurred event that is (was?) Barbenheimer.
So, how did everything turn out?
“The audience was about 60 percent female for “Barbie” and 60 percent male for “Oppenheimer,” meaning each had a broader appeal than many initially anticipated.”
Go on…
“For a film this pink, you would have expected the audience to be closer to 90 percent female — we got a ton of guys,” said Jeff Goldstein, president of domestic distribution at Warner Bros.
No really, keep talking…
“About 200,000 people purchased tickets to see “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” as a double feature, according to the National Association of Theater Owners, a trade organization.“ [note: that’s just same day, to say nothing of different days]
Ok, sure, but did the movies make any moneeeeeey. Well, let’s go back a bit for a second. And sorry, gonna get nerdy on you, bear with me. 🧸
About a month before the release of Barbie and Oppenheimer…
“Barbie could open to a peppy $70 million-$80 million….As for Oppenheimer, Universal and Christopher Nolan‘s epic starring Cillian Murphy is tracking for $40M in domestic dollars.”
Last week in the New York Times…
“Barbie… has the potential to earn $100 million …according to analysts who track audience interest and use complex formulas to forecast box office performance…Oppenheimer, which cost at least $100 million before marketing, is looking at around $50 million in domestic ticket sales over the same period.”
Welp… Barbie made $162 million - the biggest opening all time for a film directed by a woman, 20th biggest opening ever and largest this year while Oppenheimer made $82.4 million - second-highest opening for a non-franchise, R-rated film.
It was also the fourth highest grossing weekend ever at the box office and the first time one movie opened to at least $100 million and another of $50 million plus.
Yeah, I’d say both did pretty well. Those analysts who use “complex formulas to forecast box office performance?” Well, I think it’s fair to say they’re gonna need to make their formulas a bit more complex, cuz their shit was off. Way off.
How does an industry get it so wrong in so many ways when it’s something they’ve been doing for literally a century? It’s obviously not the first time predictions have been off for a new release - audience-wise or monetarily. It happens all the time. But this was a bit egregious. I have a personal connection to this topic as I’m sure some of you have heard me pontificate about before, because I worked on the problem of predictions a bit during my time in the industry. Great to see nothing’s changed. 🙃
My whole point a couple weeks ago was that I wish studios were a bit more humble on the overall, both in their audience assumptions, but also in what ultimately works - i.e. maybe releasing two big anticipated movies on the same weekend is good for moviegoing and the movies themselves.
I know, I’m not being very humble right now so what right do I have to ask for it? I don’t, not really. But at the very least I’d hope it’d start a discussion. Buuuut I know better. The lessons learned here will very likely not be the ones that should be. And instead we’re bound to get copies or iterations of these two wildly ambitious and now wildly successful movies.
Hell, Mattel is already making plans to mine their other properties, including… Uno??
At least we’ll always have Barbenheimer.
💕 💣
NEWSY BITS 👾
Netflix rolls out ‘My Netflix,’ a new tab for trailers, reminders and more [only on mobile at the moment - likely because people are constantly complaining that it’s impossible to find anything on streaming services. Netflix seems to be doing something about it] - Techcrunch
EXTRA CREDIT MOVIE(S) 📝
Sympathy for the Devil - Nic Cage doin’ Nic Cage things in a thriller that reviews are saying is way better than you’d probably expect for a two-hander set in a speeding car. Playing in Limited Theaters This Friday
War Pony - two Indigenous men (both played by non-actors), each struggling to find their manhood in a story co-directed by Riley Keough that’s getting extremely good reviews, saying it gets at an intimacy rarely found in movies. Playing in Limited Theaters and Streaming This Friday
The Beanie Bubble - a bit of a goofy looking movie where Zach Galifianakis & Elizabeth Banks star as the people who built the Beanie Baby phenomenon. The reviews are kind enough, mostly for the cast rather than the story though. Streaming on Apple TV+ This Friday
One review of Haunted Mansion brought up a salient thought. If one is going to remake movies, instead of retooling really good ones, why not take another shot at the stinkers w/ potential? Expectations-wise it’s clearly the right move. Relevant of course because Mansion is the second attempt at turning the famous Disneyland ride into a cinematic one - Eddie Murphy lead the first in 2003 and it, um, didn’t go very well.
Coming out almost exactly two decades post Murphy version, the cast assembled by director Justin Simien is also quite comedy-oriented with stars LaKeith Stanfield, Owen Wilson, Rosario Dawson, Danny DeVito, Tiffany Haddish and a hammed up Jamie Lee Curtis working to clear out a you know what. But instead of going only for guffaws and chortles, the movie tries to fit in a story of loss and wandering through the dark within the literal absence of light that abounds the adventure. But you wouldn’t know it if you watched the trailers which are puzzling story-less beyond “house filled with ghosts, must remove!” Which is of course the over-arching thing, but people usually need a more human centered aspect - and you will get it via a committed Stanfield who plays a skeptical astrophysicist who lost his wife and is still grieving. To say the mansion he’s asked to help dispel of ghouls, as well as the mother and son who enlisted his aid, will help him in kind is automatic. This is a Disney movie after all.
But interestingly Disney did allow Simien to make the movie PG-13, which should mean a bit more creep factor, definitely a few knob-clicks higher than the ‘03 rendition, but reviews say nothing such that it’ll terrify the kiddies - well, I guess it depends on the kids. 👻
And on the overall, reviews are far (far) more generous in their opinions here than the first edition, but obviously that’s not saying a ton and this take’s RT score is somewhat drab. But if I might add a bit of personal context… some of you may remember when I talked about Simien’s last movie, Bad Hair, that Justin and I were actually on the same team at Paramount for a time. I’d even be so bold to call him a friend. A smart, kind and funny one. I’ve seen more bits and pieces from him than I would from a film’s director normally because we’re connected on “the socials.” And I can tell you he’s an extremely committed filmmaker and put a lot into this one. Beyond spending a summer as a Disneyland employee, thus creating a familiarity with the ride, he’s stated (over and over) how he wanted to honor the film’s setting of New Orleans via the film’s cast as well as bring forth the production details within the house and beyond (to say nothing of easter eggs from the ride).
So yes, I’m biased, but I’m hoping some of that bias rubs off on you too. Because when you’re distanced from something it can sometimes feel a bit cold, but I can promise this had the warm touch of someone who cares deeply about the story they’re trying to convey. And maybe knowing that, you’ll feel it a bit more when you watch. I know I will.
Out: Thursday
Where: Theaters
2 hrs 2 mins | PG-13 | 🍅: 47%
From all the horror movies that have ever horror’d (editor’s note: maybe not the best wording) you’d be forgiven for thinking that teenagers are just a bunch of dum-dums making ridiculous decisions because they brains ain’t gooood. When in fact, according to “THE SCIENCE”, teenagers are actually just as risk-averse and aware of the consequences of risky behavior as fully-fledged adults are - but only if they’re aware of said risks. The differences in behavior can then seem to be explained by two factors: first, they (teens) overweigh the rewards of potentially dangerous behavior due to their larger dopamine drip compared to adults and second, they have friends - i.e. they tryin’ to impress.
“Research has shown that when peers are in the room, or if adolescents even think peers may be observing them from another room or online, they are more likely to take risks, and the reward response from risk-taking behavior becomes amplified.” - from the UCLA Center for the Developing Adolescent
Often times this type of behavior is good, it allows teenagers to figure out who they are and what they like!
But there’s also the bad kind… the kind where one has a friend livestream them across YouTube grasping onto some sort of freaking devil-hand where they get possessed by a demon who turns their eyes into pools of oil and makes them do contortions, speak in tongues, make out with dogs or worse. And if one holds on for more than 90 seconds? Yeah, just don’t.
I dug into that little psychology lesson to let you enjoy Talk to Me a bit more. Because it might be a bit too easy to dismiss a group of (Australian) teens who decide to play a game of “fuck around and find out.” But knowing that it makes some wisp of sense of why they’d do such a crazy thing, maybe it’ll help you avoid missing out on what’s maybe the best reviewed horror movie of the year (hell, even the last few years).
“There is an emotional backbone to the film, a sense of helpless grief bubbling throughout before erupting at the end, like a bloodletting. But it is refreshingly simple and forthright in its mission: this is also just a horror interested in being scary, which holds its own merit, even in the so-called ‘elevated horror’ era.“ - from the Empire review of Talk to Me
Because if you approach it with the mindset of “this is ridiculous, why would anyone even think about doing that? Horror movies are so stupid” yeah, you might be disappointed. But stretch that malleable brain of yours a bit and you just might allow yourself to have it torn to pieces. Metaphorically…1
Out: Friday
Where: Theaters
1 hr 35 mins | R | 🍅: 96%
There’s a new Exorcist movie and who knows if it’ll be good. But I can tell you one thing, when that piano based theme song comes on? Oooo eeeee, still hits. And boy do they know it.
The Exorcist: Believer - double trouble.
The Marvels - big movies like this get second trailers. So here we are.
well, hopefully