Can it be possible?
Is the Hunger Games sequel actually good?
The film made 44 million on its opening weekend, which was considered a proper fail. But it made 28 million on its second weekend, only a 35% drop. For comparison’s sake, another sequel, John Wick 4, dropped 60%. Even Guardians of the Galaxy 3 dropped 47%.
This would seem to indicate that Songbirds and Snakes is getting great word of mouth. But I have a theory here. And it’s a two-pronged theory. I’ll let you guys decide if I’m descending more into the conspiracy zone.
Part 1 is that Taylor Swift has a cameo in the film as an extra. With the Swiftie Army in full assemblage, I’m betting that a bunch of girls came to this film to grab a glimpse, a tiny visual nugget, of the famous singer.
Part 2 – and the bigger reason – is that I think everyone’s sick of Disney. I’ll get into this more in a second. But anything that doesn’t look like Disney right now, people are interested in. They don’t want superheroes. They don’t want space men. They don’t want live mermaids. They want something that feels new.
It’s Hollywood’s biggest blind spot. They milk the cow long after it stops making milk. They can’t help themselves. To be fair, Lionsgate, the studio behind Songbirds and Snakes, would probably do the same. They just don’t have any of those fancy properties. So they’re forced to make stuff that’s different. And, although it took a while to finally start digging into that Disney pie, apparently Thanksgiving was the breaking point for America. They’re finally telling you they want something new with their hard-earned money.
Speaking of Hollywood they’re, once again, using their tricky box office reporting practices to sell a not-so-accurate picture of Napoleon’s debut. Everyone’s touting this 32.5 million dollar opening weekend for the film, a significant box office upgrade over its primary Oscar competition, Killers of the Flower Moon, which only made 22 million its opening weekend. Until you realize they’re using the 5-day holiday take rather than the 3-day take. Napoleon only made 20 million dollars for the 3-day, less than Killers did.
I suppose you want the biggest numbers possible behind your opening weekend but everyone knows that these movies aren’t built to be giant blockbusters. Anything adult-skewing is lucky to hit 30 million on opening weekend. 20+ million is still quite good. Oppenheimer skewed everything but it was an outlier. It probably made 15 million alone that first weekend on dads being forced to take their wives and daughters to Barbie. An atomic bomb was the perfect escape route, lest they be permanently ported into Barbie’s perpetually pink universe.
I tried to get my family to come see the movie with me on Friday but there wasn’t a taker in the bunch. It was an indictment on what streaming has done to the movie-going public. The general consensus seemed to be, “Why go through all that when we can just watch something here on one of our eight streaming services?”
To be fair, it’s a hard point to argue against. Jaqouin Phoenix is one of the five weirdest people on the planet, a total wild card. Who’s to say we aren’t stumbling into another Beau is Afraid as opposed to another Joker?
Maybe the biggest surprise of the weekend is Disney’s Wish. Disney should own any holiday weekend it debuts a movie in. Especially going up against adult fare. Yet Wish found itself the stray coin, far removed from the fountain it was hurled towards—a toss so errant that the U.S. Treasury resolved to expunge its existence from the annals of the mint.
A lot of people are saying that Wish is the culmination of the 2016-2022 Disney era strategy of prioritizing social change over stories that people actually want to see. From Turning Red to Strange World to The Little Mermaid. I think the answer’s a lot simpler: NOBODY KNOWS WHAT THE F*&% THIS MOVIE IS ABOUT.
I actually liked the trailer. The villain is hateable. The lead is likable. The music sounded great. The secondary characters were funny. But it just goes to show that if you don’t get your concept right, nothing else matters. You’re building a house on a foundation of sandpaper.
Either way, Disney’s been playing with fire lately and they’ve turned their head long enough to miss the fact that the fire is now a raging inferno. Marvel is in trouble. Star Wars is in trouble. Pixar is in trouble. Disney Animation is in trouble. Disney animation-to-live-action is in trouble.
I remember writing an article six years ago about how every one of these divisions was churning out record-breaking hits. For each one of them to now be as abysmal as they are is kind of shocking. There are a lot of areas you can blame here but, whatever the reason is, they need to figure it out fast. Cause even Disney can’t keep losing 200+ million dollars a movie.
They don’t even have a strategy to get out of this. Their next Star Wars movie is being directed by the director of the least watched Marvel show Disney has ever made and starring the most average character Star Wars has ever created – Rey. And Marvel is expecting to make an Avengers film in 2025? They haven’t even filled in the empty slots that the last Avengers left. The whole reason that the Avengers worked was because it was carefully built up to over 8 years. Maybe they can squeeze Deadpool in there. He’s the only superhero that has a chance of making that interesting.
But they’re in trouble, man.
To finish off on a positive note, I keep running into people who tell me All The Light We Cannot See – the Netflix adaptation of the super bestselling novel – is awesome. They don’t even say, “It’s pretty good.” Or “It’s good.” They literally say “It’s amazing.” Or, “It’s one of the best shows I’ve seen this year.” I have been ignoring all these recommendations because it’s unheard of that I’ll like something that gets in the 20s for an RT score (All The Light has a 28% currently). But I can’t ignore this anymore. I have to watch this show.
Are you guys going to watch it with me?
I need some backup.
Feel free to opine on this weekend’s box office. And remember that Thursday we have a Logline Showdown. So make sure you enter!
