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Release Schedule
Deadline: Ishana Night Shyamalan’s Horror Pic ‘The Watchers’ Moves Back To Original Release Date – Update
Ishana Night Shyamalan’s debut film is on the move, again. And the new date is a familiar one. Two months after Warner Bros. shuffled The Watchers back by a week to the June 14-16 Fathers Day frame, the pic is headed back to its original June 7 date.
It’ll have some action-packed company that Friday, going against Sony’s Bad Boys: Ride or Die, the long-gestating fourth film in the nearly 30-year-old franchise. Lionsgate’s The Crow remake also was set for June 7, but that pic flew away from the date about three weeks ago and now is set for August 23.
Deadline: DreamWorks Animation’s ‘The Wild Robot’ Will Go One Week Later In The Fall
DreamWorks Animation’s The Wild Robot will now go on Sept. 27 instead of Sept. 20.
The move comes in the wake of Paramount’s animated Transformers One parking on Sept. 20 (instead of Sept. 13) as the studio needed to get a foothold on Imax auditoriums.
We heard that Transformers One was moved to get further away from Beetlejuice Beetlejuice as that Warner Bros Tim Burton directed, Michael Keaton starring sequel is expected to scare up a ton of September cash; that movie opening on Sept. 6.
Streaming
The Hollywood Reporter: Peacock Quarterly Loss Narrows to $639M as Streamer Hits 34M Subscribers
Peacock, the streaming service of Comcast’s entertainment unit NBCUniversal, grew its first-quarter revenue and narrowed its loss to $639 million from $704 million in the year-ago period, and $825 million in the fourth quarter of 2023, despite higher programming costs. The streamer ended March with 34 paying subscribers, compared with a year-end 2023 figure of 31 million, the company also said on Thursday.
“Peacock paid subscribers increased 55 percent compared to the prior-year period to 34 million, including net additions of 3 million in the first quarter,” Comcast highlighted. “Peacock revenue increased 54 percent to $1.1 billion.”
Variety: Imax Q1 Revenue Drops 9%, Earnings Beat Wall Street Estimates on Lift From ‘Dune 2’
Imax fans turned up in droves to see “Dune 2” on the really big screen, helping the company top analyst earnings estimates for the first quarter of 2024.
Despite the sandworm bump, it was a tough compare with the year-ago period when Imax benefited from the blockbuster success of “Avatar: The Way of Water” in 2023 to deliver its highest-grossing Q1 to date. Revenue in the first quarter of 2024 was $79.1 million, down 9% year over year, while net income was $3.3 million (an adjusted 15 cents per share), up 33%.
During the most recent quarter, Warner Bros.’ “Dune: Part Two” became one of the Top 10 Imax releases of all time. The Denis Villeneuve-directed sci-fi epic has garnered more than $143 million at the global box office to date on Imax screens — representing 21% of the film’s total gross receipts.
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Marketing
Variety: Movie Marketing Chiefs Talk ‘Barbenheimer’ Effect, Handling Reboots and the Primacy of Trailers at Variety’s Entertainment Marketing Summit
Goldstine noted the ante for theatrical films has been raised by “an extra $100 billion worth of streaming content that has entered the marketplace” since about 2017. Dwight Caines, president of domestic marketing for Universal Pictures, concurred: “Our movies have to be undeniably an event — big screen, immersive experiences that get you off the couch.”
So did Marc Weinstock, president of worldwide marketing and distribution for Paramount Pictures. “You got to be so undeniable that the infrequent moviegoer says, ‘Yeah, I wasn’t thinking about this, I hear it’s really good. The reviews look great. It’s everywhere in culture.’”
[SUBSCRIPTION] The Ankler: Marketing Mojo! 5 Studio Stunts that Struck Gold
The battle of Hollywood is no longer just about dividing up the audience pie, it’s about luring audiences away from other entertainment choices. If this project is to continue, it’s no longer good enough to win the biggest slice of the viewers we have. You have to lure in new ones, or entice waning viewers back — find new voters, as they put it in political parlance.
And we have to keep doing it over and over and over — probably forever —because the competition from social media-led viewing isn’t getting any smaller.
