‘Croods 2’ crosses $ 50 million; Searchlight Not Reporting Box Office in ‘Nomadland’ – Deadline

Yes, yes, yes, Universal / DreamWorks Animation’s Croods: a new era topped the box office on its fifth weekend in 13 races and surpassed $ 50 million, moving closer and closer to becoming the highest grossing film in the pandemic and potentially disturbing Warner Bros. ‘ Principle (US $ 57.9 million in the domestic market).

However, in a business where the transparency of numbers has always been public, for better or for worse, Disney’s Searchlight Pictures does not report numbers at the box office or location. This includes Frances McDormand in the film directed by Chloe Zhao, four Golden Globe nominated films Nomadland, which gained breadth this weekend in its third performance at 1,175 venues.

The photo has already been released on the Imax and PLF screens in the past two weeks, where, according to sources, it cost $ 170,000. This past week, Nomadland collected an estimate $ 503K, which is on par with Searchlight’s opening weekend David Copperfield’s personal story in late August, when theaters reopened, it debuted at $ 475,800 on 1,360 sites. Add it up, the total running BO of Nomadland is around $ 673K.

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Interestingly, for a film about a woman who decides to leave society and live in the vast desert alone, Searchlight throws out box office commercialism. Look, the numbers for Nomadland they are what they are during the pandemic, and with 53% of the US / Canada exposure closed, no one is posting large numbers.

In order for Searchlight to generate the typical opening weekend for the uber-arthouse, they would get from four cinemas in Los Angeles and New York in a film like Nomadland, they have to distribute the film widely, playing the title in many smaller markets; those who are typically prepared to burst with a platform launch preceding it in notable DMAs.

Nomadland I would have been in 7th place in the top 10 this weekend. This seems prestigious enough to highlight for now.

Searchlight’s decision not to report data about Nomadland talks about an interesting trend that is happening with competitors at the box office during Covid. This will not be an award season in which the box office determines the prestige or spot of a nominee. Arguably, all these films, most of them from streamers that are not reporting at the box office – Netflix’s Mank, The Trial of the Chicago 7, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Amazon’s One night in Miami, Focus features’ Promising Young Woman, Warner Bros. ‘ Judas and the Black Messiah, and Nomadland will be judged by their pure aesthetic by voters. Not from a commercial perspective. Remember how Universal’s poor box office Steve Jobs stifled the prospects for the award season for that photo? This is not going to happen this season in any way, shape or form. I mean, these streamers don’t even report the number of views! And you would think that this would be something to boast about during the awards season, which millions watched your film. Do not.

“Conventional commercial practice went out the window for the sector during the pandemic. The traditional Oscar box-office jump we see every year (for obvious reasons) is simply not going to happen, ”Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore, told Deadline.

“It is usually a choice of love or money when it comes to Oscar. Do you want love for Oscar or do you want a revenue boost? Well, this year, it is love that will be the most important currency, since the films that shake Oscars are not going to make a big jump in their box office as many have done in the past ”, adds Dergarabedian.

The searchlight also did not NomadlandPostTrak public exit report available. Critics love this 95% slow recording film certified as fresh. RelishMix noticed a mixed-leaning-positive attitude towards the photo on McDormand’s social media and van fans.

Nomadland, as you would expect with an art title, it has a very small social media universe of 16.5 million on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Searchlight has posted 15 videos for the film in the past six months on YouTube, a combination of trailers and questions and answers from the cast / filmmaker, with a short film about the drive-in debut of the photo at the Rose Bowl in the early fall.

“Although the cast is entirely non-social, the detail on YouTube shows that the materials are being exceptionally well posted, re-posted and reviewed – not just on movie fan channels, but by super-fan-reviewers. The video count for most clips in the past two weeks is small, but the posting of reviews is very strong in more than 350 videos in the last 2 weeks, ”says RelishMix.

On the other hand, for not reporting the BO, there is no room for a victory return in the current market, and it would be ridiculous to announce any kind of box office increase in premiums. What Focus will say about Promising young woman? That the total BO of the four times nominated for the Golden Globe (now in $ 5.1M) increased by 16% since his Golden Globe nomination? There is nothing to shout, nor any indication that there is a public fever around the film.

The only small hope that lies in what movie distributors call “coming across” a nominee at the BO – when their box office skips from arthouses to major movie chains – this could happen after the Oscars on April 25. Movies like Promising young woman, Nomadland, etc. they are probably still going to be released, and if more cinemas, especially Regal, are open by then, and the New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles multiplexes reopen, then the industry may be able to tout the aftermath of an Oscar victory.

I heard that Searchlight didn’t want to report numbers about Nomadland because there is no context in the current pandemic market that makes sense of the numbers; especially with the simultaneous release of the photo on Hulu this weekend. This despite the fact that Warner Bros. present numbers like $ 3.3M in the BO in Judas and the Black Messiah, while the movie plays simultaneously on its HBO Max streaming service. Searchlight, like Warners, wanted to help theaters by giving them access to the film and, as we can see, there is a population out there that chooses to go to theaters and not subscribe to streaming (don’t get me wrong – I don’t subscribe to this crazy man theory of ‘Let the audience choose to see the movie wherever they want’. This is a recipe for the film industry’s collapse and a financial disaster).

However, what is disturbing about Searchlight’s decision not to report box office: is that more and more notable distributors are choosing to follow the path of Netflix and Amazon in protecting their numbers. Hopefully, this will not continue when we reopen; that successes are only announced and bad news is covered up. That would be a shame. All this ‘box office hiding place’ sets a precedent for bad habits to continue in a healthy financial atmosphere. The accessibility of the box office by all distributors and exhibitions helps the industry in general in making decisions.

Imagine for a minute, if we didn’t have access to Universal’s daily box office Get out? This film paved the way for socially conscious gender titles, raising an incredible $ 176 million + in the United States. Knowing what the exhibitor tracks and markets that film and how it fared informs the industry and gives confidence to other studio executives to take a chance on what would be considered a risky project on paper.

The box office information is power.

Weekend box office from 19 to 21 February:

1.) The Croods: A New Age (Uni) 1,913 cinemas (+23), 3 days: $ 1.7M (-18%) / Total: $ 50.8 million/ Sem 13

two.) The little things (WB) 2,061 cinemas (-29), 3 days: $ 1.2M (-39%) / Total: $ 11.7 million/ Wk 4

3.) Judas and the Black Messiah (WB) 1,906 cinemas (+18), 3 days: $ 905K (-55%) / Total: $ 3.3M/ Wk 2