BODIES BODIES BODIES opening | 2022 movie count and genre mix | August 12 to 14, 2022 weekend
Opening weekend box office, charts and commentary
The current weekend: August 12 to 14, 2022
1) Bodies Bodies Bodies opening
- This is a respectable opening for a 1,275 screen wide release of a horror film. After a week of strong business on six screens, the total weekend figure is just below average for the genre, but per-screen business is above average. Reviews are outstanding. This kind of horror does not play particularly well overseas. We’re including horror comedy numbers for comparison below — the story is satirical and the numbers are similar:
2) 2022 movie count and genre mix
- Currently there are 96 wide releases scheduled in 2022 (movies that play on 1,000+ screens), eight more than were scheduled earlier in the summer. The year-end calendar is filling in and the total count should finish over 100, down from 138 wide releases in 2019, and 152 in 2018.
Big franchise films are running low in the mix at 33%, versus 67% for single-episode original titles (pre-pandemic, franchise titles represented over 40% of wide releases). Even at these lower movie totals, we're missing eight or nine big series films, and those are generally money-makers:
- Overall, superhero movies continue to carry their outsized load. Horror movies are maintaining their pace. Adventure will reawaken in December with Avatar 2. Character-driven and crime/cop/suspense titles are down. Going forward, only the most outstanding of those productions are going to get wide theatrical releases.
- But the most notable hole in the schedule is family films. Sonic the Hedgehog and Minions have done well, but otherwise there's been a relative dearth of big animation releases. October has Lyle, Lyle Crocodile, Disney has Strange World for Thanksgiving — that’s a new adventure story, different from their classic musical fantasy/fairy tales, or their hyper-realistic, wildly original Pixar movies — and the year-end has Puss in Boots 2 (the first movie made $555m in Oct 2011).
- The upside to the thin schedule is that movies are opening on, and holding more screens than before, and they're playing longer to bigger domestic multiples. There's more room in the market, and each film is benefiting. But there’s no question, the total box office would be bigger with more studio releases.
For instance, in pre-pandemic August and September, we’ve had movies like F&F: Hobbs and Shaw ($759m ww), Stephen King's It 1 and 2 ($700m and $473m), and The Meg ($530m). This year won't have a big title like those. Comparing this year’s August and September to 2019 is going to be rough, and then we expect a bounce-back in the late fall and year-end.
- Two years ago, the moviegoing business narrative centered on the question of survival: Is this the end of moviegoing? This summer has crushed any last notion of that. Every genre has reestablished itself vigorously, including the toughest genres — indie (Everything Everywhere All at Once), drama (Elvis), and comedy (Dog and Jackass). What remains is to fill out the schedule and maintain the week-to-week momentum that we saw in most of May, June and July.