Y’know, I talk a lot about how the female audience is underserved by Hollywood, so when something targets them, particularly older females, they turn out in droves. This weekend was an embarrassment of riches for the female audience with studios striking for the one-two-three punch of the Super Bowl, Galentine’s Day, and Valentine’s Day.
It’s always struck me as a little odd that studios deliver female-targeted films for Super Bowl weekend, simply because millions of women actually watch the Big Game. But there must be a sizeable enough percentage of women who don’t as these are counter-programming so that ladies who don’t care about football have something they can go out and do while the men watch.
And it just so happens that the following Monday is Galentine’s Day, a “holiday” that has gained popularity over the years, fueled by it being featured on the classic sitcom Parks and Recreation on multiple occasions. I’ve even seen Galentine’s Day greeting cards. The idea is that on the day before Valentine’s Day — which is mainly for couples — groups of women get together for a big day or night out to celebrate their friendship.
One movie, in particular, is actually being marketed as being “the big event” for gals — HBO Max’s Magic Mike’s Last Dance. While I never saw any of the Magic Mike movies in theaters, I have friends who did and they described the experience as a night out at the club or as a giant bachelorette party with women getting completely glammed up for their screenings. HBO actually created this movie for HBO Max, but as more and more streaming services are doing, the decision was made to send this to theaters first to recoup some of its budget and to actually build buzz before the streaming release.
Just for the record, reportedly, Channing Tatum and director Steven Soderberg were against this theatrical release, as they had envisioned this as a streaming movie and made it accordingly. But… I mean, maybe just make a good movie that works in either format? But what do I know?
However, it was only booked in 1,500 cinemas. This is similar to the limited release of Netflix’s Glass Onion. Reportedly, many cinema owners wanted to book Magic Mike 3. Due to the established limited release, they were unable to. Hopefully, this will lead streaming services to realize that they could actually make some serious bank if they just released their films in wide theatrical release before offering them, essentially for free, on streaming.
Going into the weekend, I wasn’t quite sure who the 25th anniversary 3D re-release of Titanic was for. Was it for millennials who saw this movie in theaters (multiple times) when it first came out? Was it for those too young to have ever seen it on the big screen (even though it has been re-released in theaters a few times before now)? Or was this an attempt to piggyback on the success of James Cameron’s more recent success, Avatar: The Way of Water?
Maybe… all of the above?
While both Magic Mike’s Last Dance and Titanic drew adult women, in their 30s+, another female-driven vehicle that is actually banking on an even older crowd, 80 For Brady (actually, another movie that was intended for streaming but was given a theatrical release for the same reasons as Magic Mike) continues to thrive.
Once again, older audiences, male or female, are not the folks that have to flock to cinemas on opening weekend. They take their time and stroll in at their convenience (often hitting up lower-priced matinees during the week), so these types of flicks maybe don’t take the box office by storm, but they have legs. (See: Top Gun: Maverick.) They accumulate money steadily over a longer period of time, versus the usual blockbusters that open big and often drop off fairly quickly. (Unless your name is Avatar: The Way of Water.)
What I find interesting is that looking at Magic Mike’s Last Dance, Titanic, and 80 For Brady, none of these really fits the description of a traditional “chick flick,” a term that was typically applied to romantic comedies, a genre that has fallen out of favor over the years. But this just shows that women aren’t all the same and have different tastes and will still support different kinds of movies when Hollywood makes an effort to court them.
So the big question is, how did these female-targeted films stack up?
Well, Magic Mike danced to #1, but Avatar: The Way of Water climbed back up to #2. Titanic crashed into the #3 spot, with 80 For Brady touching down at #4. The animated hit Puss In Boots: The Last Wish hangs in at #5.
You can check out the chart below:
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- Magic Mike’s Last Dance (Warner Bros.) – 3-day $8.2M/ Wk 1
- Avatar: The Way of Water (Disney) – 3-day $6.9M/ Total $646.9M / Wk 9
- Titanic (Paramount) – 3-day $6.4M/ Wk 1 (Okay that’s not really accurate as this release’s grosses will be tallied into this film’s all-time total, but this is what I have.)
- 80 for Brady (Paramount) – 3-day $6M/ Total $24.9M/ Wk 2
- Puss in Boots: Last Wish (Universal) – 3-day $5.5M/ Total $158.4M/ Wk 8
As you can see, in one of the biggest plummets in recent memory, last weekend’s #1 movie, M. Night Shyamalan’s latest thriller Knock at the Cabin fell completely out of the Top Five in its second week. Actually, I’ve been writing these Weekend Box Office recaps for, like, a decade and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie debut at #1 and just completely fall out of the Top Five in its sophomore frame. Not good. But the reactions to this movie were not good.
Granted, its opening wasn’t huge at $14.2M, and none of this week’s Top Five movies even made it into double digits. Over this past weekend, Knock at the Cabin took in $5.5M, bringing its running total to $23.4M.
As is typical, the early part of this year has been pretty slow with a few standouts. Avatar: The Way of Water and Puss in Boots: The Last Wish were released last year and have coasted quite well into the new year. M3gan scared up success. And the previously mentioned female-skewing movies have kept cinemas alive.
But now it’s time to (hopefully) kick things into high gear. Next weekend sees the release of this year’s first big-ticket blockbuster, Marvel’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Not only is this a Marvel movie, but it kicks off that studio’s Phase Five which many are hoping will give a little clarity to the future of this franchise, which has stumbled ever since 2019’s Avengers: Endgame. (Don’t blame the messenger. It’s true.)
The Ant-Man films have always been kind of second-tier as far as the MCU franchise. But this one looks to be a major entry as far as the future of the brand. But we’ll see.
Did you hit up the cinema this weekend? Or were you preoccupied with the Super Bowl or Valentine’s Day? Will you be checking out Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania on opening day?
