HONK FOR JESUS. SAVE YOUR SOUL. opening | August 2022 and year-to-date moviegoing | September 2 to 4, 2022 weekend
Opening weekend box office, charts and commentary
The current weekend: September 2 to 4, 2022
1) Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul. opening
- This is a weak opening for a Black comedy. The weekend figure is well below average for the genre. Black comedies are vibrant movies in the domestic market, and reviews are good, but the film is not working theatrically. During the last two years, we've seen that releasing movies simultaneously in theaters and on streaming subtracts from their theatrical box office, and that’s happening here.
- Overseas, prospects are limited, as you can see below. But this is not simply an issue of racial cultural differences. The underlying theme of Honk for Jesus. — in a mouthful, the commodification of religion — is a challenge in all its forms. We saw it with The Eyes of Tammy Faye, which featured a white Academy award winning performance and still generated only 10.2% of its money overseas:
- We'll get another look at simultaneous releasing when Halloween Ends goes in mid-October. We assume this is happening because the Peacock streaming network recently stopped growing at 14 million subscribers and it needs help. However, we continue to believe a movie brings greater value to streaming if it first succeeds in theaters. That’s especially true for a big series sequel like Halloween Ends.
2) August 2022 and year-to-date moviegoing
- Domestically, the five complete weeks of August were down -44.1% compared with August 2019. This is a sharp step down from the strong business in June and July 2022 (June+July was down -11.5% versus 2019).
- The August titles were thin compared with 2019: Bullet Train, DC League of Super-Pets, Dragon Ball Super, and Beast, versus F&F: Hobbs & Shaw, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, Good Boys and Angel Has Fallen.
- The year-to-date box office is now down -31.0% versus 2019. There were fewer wide releases last month compared with 2019, 11 versus 15, and the total movie count is off by -30% so far in 2022, which is roughly where we expect it to finish at the end of the year, assuming a handful more titles are added to the calendar for the awards season in Nov and Dec:
- The long term release schedule was scrambled by the pandemic, with a significant number of productions delayed, moved to streaming, or cancelled. The line-up is thin now, and it's going to continue like this through September. Moviegoers have shown that they are willing and able, but without big, regular franchise releases to anchor the schedule, the box office is going to drift lower, before bouncing back in the fourth quarter.