DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: HONOR AMONG THIEVES opening | HIS ONLY SON opening | March and YTD 2023 moviegoing | March 31 to April 2, 2023 weekend
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DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: HONOR AMONG THIEVES opening | HIS ONLY SON opening | March and YTD 2023 moviegoing | March 31 to April 2, 2023 weekend
Opening weekend box office, charts and commentary
The current weekend: March 31 to April 2, 2023
1) Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves opening
- This is a good opening for an action adventure that has the potential to generate sequels. Reviews and audience sores are outstanding. These movies are strong performers overseas — 70.6% of their BO comes from abroad. At a cost of $150m, foreign is where Dungeons & Dragons has to excel to be profitable and become a series:
During the last 15 years, toys and video games have become good source material for new franchise films. That wasn't always the case, but in recent years Transformers, LEGO, Warcraft, Pokémon, Rampage, and Sonic the Hedgehog, et al., have all done well around the world. In July, we're going to have Barbie.
- This a fair opening for a Christian drama. The logline is: After being called on by the Lord, Abraham's faith is tested on his three day journey to sacrifice his son. Christian dramas are a vibrant niche genre in the U.S., with healthy domestic multiples, but limited international appeal. This start is somewhat below average:
3) March and YTD 2023 moviegoing
- In March, the domestic box office was down -28.8% compared with the 2019/2018/2017 average. Year-to-date, business is now down -32.6%. 2023 continues to run well ahead of 2022 (+28.7%), but 2022 got off to a slow start — we want to get back to pre-pandemic numbers, not to 2022.
As a group, the March openings were good, with the exception of Shazam! 2. There was a healthy variety of genres, attracting different demographics and tastes (John Wick/action thriller, Creed/sports drama, Scream/horror, Shazam!/superhero, and Demon Slayer 2/anime):
- There were eight wide releases in March (on 1,000 screens or more), which is a lukewarm number, but we still see a solid 130 wide releases by the end of year, including at least 53 franchise series titles, which is a good figure.
We expect business to continue at approximately the current level through April, then the big titles arrive in May and June: Guardians of the Galaxy 3, Fast & Furious 10, The Little Mermaid/live-action, Spider-Verse 2, Transformers 7, The Flash, and Indiana Jones 5, et al.
The Little Mermaid live-action, May 26 So far this year, the industry has managed to generate solid business without a strong contribution from family moviegoing. That's about to change with Super Mario Bros. next weekend, then Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret for pre- and early-teen girls in late April, then Little Mermaid in late May.
