Pray for the cinemas.
“The Marksman,” an open road thriller by Liam Neeson, held first place for the second weekend in a row, raising just over $ 2 million. The film grossed $ 6.1 million after 10 days of release.
This performance allows the film to maintain its box office crown, but that kind of distinction is not worth what it was in pre-pandemic times, particularly with cinemas closed indefinitely in major markets like New York and Los Angeles.
In fact, the exhibition scenario is a wasteland and with the vaccine implantation hampered by the lack of, you know, vaccines, help may be scarce. Few things portend a rapid recovery in a sector of the economy decimated by the public health crisis. Last week, MGM gave in to the inevitable and pushed the release of its James Bond sequel, “No Time to Die”, from April to October 8. The film was initially planned to premiere in the spring of 2020, before COVID-19 reversed daily life.
Bond’s move sparked a flurry of changes on the release date, with names like “Morbius”, “Ghostbusters Afterlife”, “Cinderella” and “A Quiet Place Part II”, all moving to the end of the year in hopes of overcoming one. pandemic that continues to kill people at an alarming rate. At the same time, Adam Aron, CEO of AMC, the dangerously leveraged exhibitor who swayed on the brink of financial ruin for much of the coronavirus, sat down for a long time with the New York Times, in which he sought to reassure Wall Street that the theater chain would renegotiate its debt and recapitalize (again) to get rid of the plague. There are many more tracks for Aron and his exhibition brothers to deal with before COVID is behind them.
See how the rest of the pack did. DreamWorks Animation’s “The Croods: A New Age” grossed $ 1.8 million in its ninth week of release, bringing its domestic revenue to $ 41.8 million. Internationally, cinema raised $ 1.6 million in 17 territories, bringing its global total to $ 139.8 million.
Warner Bros. ‘ “Wonder Woman 1984” raised US $ 1.6 million domestically. The superhero sequel debuted simultaneously on HBO Max in an effort to attract subscribers to WarnerMedia’s streaming service. Internationally, “Wonder Woman 1984” raised $ 2.1 million. The global collection of the film is US $ 148 million.
Sony Pictures’ “Monster Hunter”, a film adaptation of a popular video game, grossed $ 820,000 and domestic revenue of $ 10.2 million.
Universal’s News of the World, a western with Tom Hanks that is also available on PVOD, raised $ 810,000. The film grossed $ 9.6 million domestically after five weeks of release.
Lionsgate’s “Fatale,” a psychological thriller featuring Hilary Swank, raised $ 415,000. It has gross domestic revenue of $ 5.3 million after just over a month in theaters.
Focus Features’s “promising young woman” raised $ 400,000, bringing its gross value to $ 4 million. Both the sequel to “The Croods” and “Promising Young Woman” are available on PVOD, part of the parent Universal studio’s agreement with exhibitors to release movies in theaters in exchange for allowing them to set up on demand weeks after their big screen bows.
Here is a sign of how drained the theater business is: box office revenue this month fell 90% from January 2020, when the pandemic had not yet established itself.