Three New Original Movies Bombed At The Memorial Day Box Office And That's A Problem
Memorial Day weekend came and went, with Disney's "The Little Mermaid" taking the lion's share of the attention from moviegoers, as expected, with a $95.4 million opening weekend. These Disney live-action remakes generally make a lot of money, and that isn't changing yet (huge budget be damned). Meanwhile, movies like "Fast X" and "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3" were still pulling in meaningful amounts of money. Those blockbusters dominated the conversation, and as a result, a trio of new original films flopped hard upon arrival, painting a grim picture of the state of non-branded movies in the theatrical marketplace.
Bert Kreischer's "The Machine," Sebastian Maniscalco's "About My Father," and Gerard Butler's action flick "Kandahar" all arrived in theaters over the holiday weekend — and all three of them failed to do much business. "The Machine," inspired by the comedian's viral stand-up bit, did the best of the bunch, taking in $5 million. Still, that's a brutal result for a film with a budget in the $20 million range. It gets worse from there. "About My Father," a family comedy that stars Maniscalco and Robert De Niro, made just $4.3 million with a similar budget. Again, brutal. The worst debut went to "Kandahar," which hardly made a blip, taking in just $2.41 million on more than 2,100 screens. Yikes.
In fairness, all of these movies are "Rotten" on Rotten Tomatoes right now, and they carry a so-so B+ CinemaScore. So it's not as though audiences are overlooking acclaimed gems here or anything like that. Still, the fact that none of these movies could garner even a moderate audience out of the gate is pretty concerning, particularly for those of us who wish to see more movies in theaters that are not reboots, remakes, sequels, or branded IP plays.
A bad year for original movies (so far)
The truly unfortunate thing is that this is far from unexpected. Having three movies tank in a single weekend shines a big light on things, with Sony, Lionsgate, and Briarcliff all taking a big hit to the wallet at once, but it's not as though this is an isolated incident. Case in point: There is not a single original movie in the top ten at the global box office for 2023 thus far (with "Pathaan" coming in at number 12). 2022 was not much better, with China's "Water Gage Bridge" serving as the only original in the top ten. In North America? Nothing original pops up on the list until "Bullet Train" at number 18. Nothing above it but sequels, adaptations, reboots, etc.
This trend had been accelerating before the pandemic, but having theaters shut down for a year and having very few new movies drawing in audiences for months after didn't help matters. Now, people are largely content to wait until movies arrive at home, with exclusive theatrical windows shrinking as a result of the pandemic. Unfortunately, a movie like "Kandahar" still needs to sell tickets to justify its existence — particularly because many streamers are starting to tighten up the purse strings.
As we've seen with Warner Bros. Discovery in regards to Max, direct-to-streaming movies are becoming less prevalent as they are difficult to justify from a dollars-and-cents perspective. If it doesn't make at least some sense in theaters, the movie has less of a shot at getting made at all unless it's made for next to nothing. Sure, some movies can be made on a shoestring budget. But a mid-budget action flick anchored by Gerard Butler? It's not in the cards as much as it used to be. A star-driven comedy? Similarly tough to do for less than $15-20 million.
Is there hope on the horizon?
While the situation looks bad right now, the coming months have some titles coming our way that could provide us with an original hit or two. The bigger question is, can the hits outweigh the misses? If not, we run the risk as collective moviegoers of having studios take fewer bets on original movies. That's not good for anyone, but it's very much in danger of happening. Make no mistake, the movie business is primarily a business. Without a likely path to profit, the moneymen will stop anything original that isn't a horror movie (see: "Smile" and "M3GAN" making boatloads of cash).
In the coming weeks, high-profile originals such as Pixar's "Elemental," the horror/comedy "The Blackening," Jennifer Lawrence's "No Hard Feelings," director Wes Anderson's "Asteroid City," and Lionsgate's buzzy comedy "Joy Ride" are all hitting theaters. There's also Christopher Nolan's "Oppenheimer," but given that it's something of a biopic, that doesn't exactly qualify as an original. In any event, all of these movies will be competing with branded blockbusters such as "Transformers: Rise of the Beasts," "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse," "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny," and "Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One," among others. There is no clear, easy path to victory for any of these movies.
Pixar, in particular, sent several originals such as "Luca" and "Soul" to Disney+ during the pandemic, which may have hurt the brand theatrically. Comedy is tough to pull off outside of streaming, so "No Hard Feelings" and "Joy Ride" are fighting against the tide. Wes Anderson's films rarely break out in a big way, save for "Grand Budapest Hotel." Still, if even a few of these can defy the odds, there will be reason to be hopeful. If the majority of them fail? Expect more recycled ideas until there are truly no more stones left to turn over.