KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON opening | Awards | Where we are now | October 20 to 22, 2023 weekend
Opening weekend box office, charts and commentary
The current weekend: October 20 to 22, 2023
1) Killers of the Flower Moon opening
- This is a very good opening for a Martin Scorsese crime drama. The weekend figure is above average for the writer/director's last five genre films. Mr. Scorsese’s movies tower above other original crime dramas. Critics reviews and audience scores are superb. And Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro are strong draws overseas — Killers should do well abroad.
The writer/director’s films average an outstanding 4.9x domestic multiple, that is, the domestic BO finishes at 4.9 times the opening weekend BO. These movies have legs. Between word-of-mouth, press coverage and eventual awards nominations, the picture is set up for a strong run now:
- Killers of the Flower Moon is an important movie for two reasons:
Some filmmakers and audiences believe this is "real cinema," and better cinema. Martin Scorsese is a master storyteller. A Scorsese movie is good for the industry, and Killers has been extremely well-received;
The production and distribution of Killers is breaking new ground. The movie was made and marketed by a streamer, Apple+, without their own theatrical distribution infrastructure. Paramount is handling distribution. If "flexibility" is the new mantra of the theatrical movie business, then this is a significant success — it establishes a viable option for the companies.
- (Apple will release Ridley Scott's Napoleon, starring Joaquin Phoenix and distributed by Sony Pictures, on November 22. Apple also has Matthew Vaughn’s Argylle on February 2, distributed by Universal.)
- Killers cost around $200m to make. This release is going to generate excellent theatrical income, and then it's going to substantially increase the film's value in every ancillary window that follows, however that value is realized — in a digital purchase, in a foreign distribution sale, as part of a streaming programming budget, or from a streaming subscription sale.
2) Awards
- Below is our current awards-contenders table. Killers is going to contend in every category it qualifies for:
3) Where we are now
- The studio-labor standoff is hurting the business. The box office is getting by on exceptions: Barbie and Oppenheimer opened just in time; horror movies are less susceptible to limited cast publicity; Taylor Swift is once-in-a-generation; a Martin Scorsese movie is important enough to open well anyway. But most films are negatively impacted.
With actors unavailable, the publicity engine that gives moviegoing its immediacy — that says “it’s happening now” — is not getting what it needs to run at full strength. Two more movie delays were announced this past week. The industry is not itself right now. The loss of actors is taking its toll.