‘Moana 2’ winning; ‘Kraven the Hunter’ & ‘Lord of the Rings’ bomb

SATURDAY AM: Women are in full attendance this weekend, walking over fanboys as Thanksgiving holdovers, Disney’s Moana 2 and Universal’s Wicked, are driving an early pre-holiday weekend to $90M, +19% over the same frame a year ago.

Meanwhile, Sony’s much kicked-around-the-calendar Spider-Man universe character, the R-rated Kraven the Hunter couldn’t even get any animals to attend any showtimes, let alone people, with what’s shaping up to be an $11M-$12M opening per the studio (rivals aren’t wearing rosy glasses with a $10.4M start) on this $110M production. Duly note, muscular men in leather vests do not sell in the same way that surfer girls and singing witches do.

Meanwhile, Warner Bros New Line’s thrifty priced $30M+ animated Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim is just not an event for Orc fans nor those of anime with a $5M; the movie never really teed up that way. Kraven the Hunter gets a C CinemaScore and an awful 59% positive on Comscore/Screen Engine’s PostTrak (Madame Web got a C+), while Lord of the Rings gets a B and a 76% positive.

While the industry tends to underplay this weekend, and always blames holiday activities as distractions, there are several wake-up calls here. First, great family movies have launched in this corridor consistently, therefore this weekend should never, ever be considered less than par. People do make time to go to the movies in mid December, read Jumanji: The Next Level ($59.2M), last year’s Wonka ($39M), Spider-Man Into the Spiderverse ($35.3M), etc. Therefore, the frame should be taken very seriously and only confined to those bets which can pay off and nothing less. Studios lick their lips at the 5x-6x holiday multiple, but when you open two duds with zero word of mouth, you’re as good as a tree falling in the woods with no one around.

Second, women do go to the movies if you give them an event film, and they’ll keep coming. Hello, Barbie and It Ends With Us. Many have Moana 2 and Wicked heading to a half billion at the domestic box office.

Third, Sony, it’s time to have a come-to-Jesus with your development department: You have a Marvel problem, and you need to be far more protective about shepherding such fare. Yes, all is great and good with any Disney Marvel Cinematic Universe co-productions and Lord & Miller animated movies, and we can’t ignore that the combo has reaped a massive $6.85 billion. But how do you swing from that to everything else which isn’t winning on a quality level? The numbers speak for themselves: Madame Web ($80M production cost, $100.4M worldwide box office), Morbius ($83M production cost, $167.4M WW box office), and now Kraven the Hunter. Word was, the reason why Madame Web was so disjointed was because the studio cut several pages from the screenplay before the S.J. Clarkson-directed female Spidey movie went into production, causing, you got it, act two and three problems. Something’s up on the Culver City lot and a reset is in order when it comes to non Spider-verse and non-Tom Holland movies.

Social media monitor RelishMix spotted negative word of mouth on Kraven the Hunter ahead of opening: “Many viewers are unassuaged in their apprehension to taking a C-list comic book character and giving him his own movie. Comments include, ‘He’s a super-VILLAIN!  Why does Sony want to make Spider-man’s rogues gallery good(ish)?!’ and, “Here comes Sony’s annual <expletive> of Spider-Man universe movie without Spider-Man.’ Others are turned off by the CGI: ‘Looked interesting until that tiger/whatever part, expectation changed from “cool” to “sill” pretty fast,’ and ‘Looks like the rhino didn’t finish rendering.’” RelishMix reports the pre-release social media universe stats on Kraven The Hunter are at 278.9M, running 40% below action-adventure thriller genre norms across TikTok, Facebook, X, YouTube and Instagram combined.

Sony can pom pom wave profit on Venom: The Last Dance all it wants at $473M worldwide (the movie will net some $40M after its $120M production cost), however, the movie is the least favored of the three by moviegoers at a B- Cinemascore, not to mention the movie opened at a franchise low of $51M, -43% off from Venom 2’s franchise high of $90M. Yeah, yeah, the NY Yankees-LA Dodgers world series kept masses away from theaters, but fanboys go out of their way for great movies.

Kraven the Hunter was getting comped to Jason Statham’s The Beekeeper in its opening ($16.5M) before the weekend. When does a Marvel property get comped to an action vet vehicle? That’s not good. Kraven the Hunter was sold to exhibitors as a major Sony movie to exhibitors, and shown off as early as April 2023 at CinemaCon, more than a year and a half ago.

We can’t accept the “dog ate my homework” excuses here with Kraven of superhero fatigue or the fact that it’s deep universe. James Gunn proved that deep universe does work when made emotional and epic with Guardians of the Galaxy. At a time when the motion picture studios are so precious about IP, and the only movies that can pull people away from TikTok and steaming are mega event IP titles, it’s best to have more of these scripts bake. If Kevin Feige can hold off a Blade reboot from becoming reality until it’s in commercial shape, Sony, you can do the same with all your Marvel properties. “Sony has lost Marvel fans,” one razor sharp motion picture marketing source told me recently.

Sony is limiting the blood bath here on Kraven the Hunter with only 50% of skin in the game, the other half of movie co-financed by TSG. The co-financier’s stake was bumped up from 25% to 50%. I understand that can happen twice a year contractually on Sony films.

Sony is blaming the strikes and the start and stop of production on driving the production cost of this J.C. Chandor-directed movie past its original $90M; that’s why it’s not doing well. Sorry, but Shawn Levy’s Deadpool & Wolverine also weathered a start and stop during the strike and became the highest grossing R-Rated movie off all-time at $1.3 billion.

In all fairness to Sony, they’re taking a lot of tender loving care with the next Spider-Verse animated movie with no plans for that threequel to hit the 2025 release calendar.

Kraven the Hunter would arguably have benefited from a four-day holiday, given how it was destined to be a bomb. Sony was wiser in handling Madame Web by playing that bomb over the 5-day Presidents Day weekend, getting it to at least a $23.5M opening (the pic finaled at $43.8M). Superhero movies are always about their first weekend before nosediving in weekend 2. Therefore, why put a lackluster superhero property in this weekend if it’s only going to hit a buzzsaw with Sonic the Hedgehog 3? If anything, Kraven the Hunter should have been on a 4-day weekend, like originally planned (it was first scheduled for MLK 2023 weekend). Funny enough, Kraven the Hunter was originally set to open before Madame Web which had an initial release date of July 7, 2023.

As far as Warner Bros. goes, no, it’s not good to see major property fall greatly short at the box office. At a $30M production cost and $5M estimated opening, those are Lionsgate’s numbers on Lord of the Rings. There won’t be as much bleeding going on with Rohirrim like Kraven. As we reported, the project was put into motion by the previous Toby Emmerich administration at Warners with the intent of keeping the film rights in the studio fold. Per the contract with Rings holder Embracer Group, features need to be made every so many years, the last being ten years ago, The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies. The decision was made to go anime so that it was a non-traditional film. However, not every anime is equal, and anime fans and Lord of the Rings fans are shrewd to spot feathered fishes. Dragonball Z, Rohirrim is not. On a single digit million P&A spend, you can actually work wonders with an anime film, but sources say you have to be really targeted with how you spend it, and who you hit. There was nothing that screamed event on this movie (Warner Bros TV Animation made the movie, not the feature division) and that was most likely due to the budget, and the fact that there wasn’t a lot of money on the line. Warners did try to win over fanboys at NY Comic-Con with a panel that included candid voiceover actor Brian Cox. When it came to the previous Warners administration’s slate, whether they were potential hits (Barbie) or misses (Furiosa, Aquaman 2 and The Flash), the current motion picture administration of Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy didn’t orphan them. They took these movies seriously, even though they didn’t originally greenlight them; shaping them in post and pumping them as best they could (i.e. Furiosa received a big premiere at Cannes despite tanking).

Specialty shoutouts:

Paramount’s awards season surprise thriller September 5 booked at seven locations in NYC, LA and Toronto posted $25K yesterday, for a projected 3-day of $85K. The Tim Felbaum directed movie about the nail-biting ABC Sports TV control room at the Munich Olympics is up for Best Picture Feature Drama at the Golden Globes.

Amazon MGM Studios’ Nickel Boys at NY’s AMC Lincon Square and Angelika NY had solid numbers with $20K yesterday, a $54K projected 3-day for a $27K theater average. The RaMell Ross directed and co-written movie is up for Best Drama Feature at Golden Globes and five Critics Choice noms.

Roadside Attractions’ AMC Century City 7PM showtimes for Gia Coppola’s The Last Showgirl were sold out with the director and star Pamela Anderson showing up for Q&As. Total Friday plus previews are north of $20K. The TIFF acquisition has a qualifying run this week for Oscars before opening on Jan. 10. The pic includes two Golden Globe noms for Anderson in Best Actress Drama and the movie’s original song from Miley Cyrus.

UPDATED, FRIDAY AFTERNOON: Whatever ground Disney’s Moana 2 lost to Universal’s Wicked during the course of the week will be more than made up for this weekend, with a lot of walk-up business anticipated on the way to a third frame of $26 million, -49%, with around $6M today at 4,000 locations. The Dwayne Johnson-Auli’i Cravalho animated sequel will stand at $336.9M in domestic box office by EOD Sunday.

Wicked is flying to $357M by Sunday. While it easily became the highest-grossing movie based on a Broadway musical stateside over the Thanksgiving break, it has a way to go before it topples Mamma Mia!‘s global record of $611.4M in 2008. Wicked‘s fourth weekend is $20.5M, -44%, after a $5.3M Friday. Both Moana 2 and Wicked are strong holdovers for a pre-Christmas period such as this. A year ago, Warner Bros opened the Timothée Chalamet musical Wonka to $39M.

Sony/Marvel’s Kraven the Hunter is seeing a $4.7M Friday in 3,211 theaters, including $2M from Thursday previews. The hope is that it crawls to $12M-$13M for the weekend now. Oh boy.

The fourth weekend of Paramount’s Gladiator II is seeing $2.1M today, and a three-day total of $7.6M, -40%, for a running cume by Sunday of $145.7M. By that point, the Ridley Scott-directed sequel will be pacing 18% ahead of his original 2000 movie, which finaled at $187.7M.

Warner Bros/New Line’s The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, booked at 2,602 theaters, is seeing a Friday of $2M+ and an opening of $5M-$6M.

RELATED: The Highest-Grossing Animated Films Of All Time At The Box Office

FRIDAY AM: Sony’s $110M Spider-Man universe spinoff Kraven the Hunter collected $2M in previews Thursday night, while Warner Bros/New Line’s $30M+ anime movie Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim counted $625K.

Neither is expected to wow in their openings in a weekend that will be dominated again by Disney’s Moana 2, which is eyeing a 45% third-frame ease with around $28M.

RELATED: ‘Moana 2’ Directors Discuss Expanding Identity, Raised Stakes And Original ‘Darker’ Mid-Credit Scene

Kraven the Hunter is pacing like an R-rated male action movie, expected to do around $15M a la Amazon MGM Studios’ The Beekeeper, which did $2.4M in previews for a $16.5M opening. Lord of the Rings is looking at a mid-single-digit opening. Sony and Warner Bros put these 18-34 guy-demo movies in the pre-Christmas frame given each of their challenges and to benefit off the holiday multiple after Christmas. Both are seen as counterprogramming to upcoming family-laden frame of Disney’s Mufasa: The Lion King and Paramount’s Sonic the Hedgehog 3.

RELATED: 10 Most Anticipated Movies In Theaters At The End Of The Year: From ‘Glicked’ Dual Release To ‘A Complete Unknown’

Kraven the Hunter previews began at 2 p.m. at 2,842 locations. Reviews at 14% Rotten are as bad as Sony’s Marvel bomb from earlier this year, Madame Web, which did 11%. The Rotten Tomatoes audience score for Kraven the Hunter is slightly higher than Madame Web, 68% to 55%.

The director of LOTR: Rohirrim, Kenji Kamiyama, is respected in the anime space with credits including the 2017 Gkids feature Napping Princess, the Ghost in the Shell TV series plus an episode of Disney+’s Star Wars: Visions as well as 13 episodes of Max’s Blade Runner: Black Lotus.

RELATED: ‘The Lord Of The Rings: The War Of The Rohirrim’ Review: Peter Jackson And Company Attempt Return To Tolkien Universe Through Anime

Among regular films in release, Universal’s Wicked continued to beat Moana 2 daily Monday-Thursday span, despite the sequel beating the Broadway musical on the weekends.

Wicked made $3M on Thursday to Moana 2‘s $2.2M. Why is that? Essentially, kids are in school during the week, which is why Moana 2 makes a comeback on the weekends. Wicked‘s weekdays are full of adult women. I’m told that once we get into the Christmas break period, we’ll see Moana 2 closing the gap with Wicked on a daily basis.

Wicked ends its third week with $50.8M with a total of $336.5M, while Moana 2 grossed $62.8M for a running cume of $310.8M.