“It would be fair to say that opening weekends don't matter,” said Stephen Galloway, dean of Chapman University's film school. Variety in 2024. Unfortunately, Hollywood hasn't found another way yet. The economics of filmmaking dictate that most films with decent budgets should be more open to them set the tone of the speech and start the arduous march towards success on the right foot. But that structured structure may play a role in the general audience's interest. The opening weekend has become an exclamation point instead of an ellipsis for the end of films.
Box office forecasting and reporting has become a dense galaxy of its own across the film industry. It features weekend predictions, Thursday night previews, catch-up Friday through Sunday, second weekend drop-offs, home repeaters, etc. Every part of the performance is mentioned and cataloged as a paid game. We know that a wide release is largely judged in the first 72 hours. We know that marketing budgets dwindle to nothing after a release, depending. Meanwhile, smaller movies can see screen counts drop significantly after quiet opening weekends. By then, the public narrative had taken hold and weakened prematurely.
Why is opening weekend important?
Hollywood sees opening weekend as a quick sign of urgency or indifference. But really, it's more of an audience trigger. Stronger exposure leads to better WOM and more screen availability. This results in greater visibility, which supports continued box office performance. Weak openings are like fatal cascading effects: They create a negative narrative, which reduces the number of screens, which hurts the availability, which is the box office. That is not a performance measure. It is its director. It creates a self-fulfilling catch-22.
At play here is a challenging reality for movie theater owners. They prefer to reduce risk and protect against the downside rather than chasing the upside. The business is built on growing and small margins reduced screen count after covid. Short-term weekly performance stability is more important than what a film can achieve in the long run.
Tracking traditional audiences compounds the problem. The whole world is opaque. It is not designed to account for how the film tastes of the northeast and southwest may differ, or how unusual moviegoers may be attracted to theaters.
In this system, opening weekend becomes a do-or-die dart for small films hanging around for theatrical release (slowly increasing their screen count as word of mouth builds). Screen expansion is often dependent on financial performance. So exhibitors will tell small distributors that they will add limited releases if did well on opening weekend. But the limited screens make it difficult for potential viewers to catch a show, depressing demand and ticket sales. The inevitable soft opening with results wipes out any chance of an extension into the second week.
If the industry needs proof of concept, but doesn't create the environment to deliver it, then the system is set up to fail. In a healthy industry, the first film should serve as a snapshot instead of the whole picture. The leading trajectory is very important.
Anyone But You ($6 million on its way to an $88 million domestic haul), Puss in Boots: The Last Wish ($12.4 million opening, $186 million domestic), Smile ($22.6 million opening, $105 million domestic), Where the Crawdads Sing ($17 million opening, $90 million domestic), The foundation ($29.6 million opening, $154 million domestic)…There are a number of post-COVID releases that opened modestly but turned in impressive numbers. This is not just one exception. They're examples of how movies can still cultivate active interest beyond opening weekend when they're given room to breathe.
Who damaged the system?
Classics, adult dramas, movies aimed at adults, non-IP films—there are many genres and types of movies facing uphill battles resulting from opening weekend. These movies have historically been successful in slow motion expansion. Today, they are considered failures before they are given a chance to build.
As Chapman University's Galloway noted, some blockbusters carry huge costs that require huge upfront revenue to achieve any semblance of ROI. Opening below expectations can create a negative narrative that hurts films early in release, even if the quality and legs are there. Remember everything They are sinners to cover up the fiasco?
Streaming movies are also not protected. They recreate the same problem where homepage real estate, top 10 carousels, and recommendation algorithms are designed for early viewing and sampling (even though market leader Netflix prioritizes viewing within the first 90 days). There is little post-release strategy to reach and engage audiences once these titles have been replaced by the latest batch of originals. Recommender algorithms are built on viewing history. So high-interest, romantic, romantic accounts may not properly feature in the action release.
Marketing is still too focused on broad reach at the expense of the core audience. When the focus is on target demos, studios (especially broadcasters) often don't have the money and/or don't care to target a secondary audience that might also be interested. In fact, Hollywood is ignoring the rise of queer audiences, the term my company Greenlight Analytics uses to describe audiences with conflicting ideas, values or behavior that doesn't conform to categorization.
For example, there are an estimated 2.1 million what Greenlight calls “adult arthouse Republicans” in the US, or conservative voters who consume foreign or indie film, and an estimated 5.4 million R-rated viewers with family values, or religious parents who consume adult content. This is a huge audience that represents millions of lost opportunities at the box office. They are not prime targets for the opening weekend of the previous release, and there is little in the way of targeting after the first release.
The pandemic has forced Hollywood to experiment with shorter theatrical windows, violently in some cases. Still the big studios going back to staying longer in movie theaters. Why? Because the audience is there. Hollywood just needs to keep looking at the opening weekend.
