MAGIC MIKE'S LAST DANCE opening | TITANIC 25-YEAR ANNIVERSARY RE-RELEASE opening | Comedy moviegoing | February 10 to 12, 2023 weekend
MAGIC MIKE'S LAST DANCE opening | TITANIC 25-YEAR ANNIVERSARY RE-RELEASE opening | Comedy moviegoing | February 10 to 12, 2023 weekend
Opening weekend box office, charts and commentary
The current weekend: February 10 to 12, 2023
1) Magic Mike's Last Dance opening
- This is a soft opening for a comedy drama sequel. After Magic Mike’s strong start in June 2012 (it opened to $39.1m), Magic Mike XXL fell sharply in July 2015 by -67%. This weekend, the drop is roughly par, and it’s doing it with an intentionally low screen count designed to set up a run on HBO Max. Three episodes is generally when a comedic series winds down.
The Magic Mike series has been very profitable — this theatrical release is going to add ancillary value to all three Magic Mikes:
2) Titanic 25-Year Anniversary Re-release opening
- This is a weak opening for a re-release; it's below average for these movies. This is Titanic's second re-release in wide distribution during the last 25 years. After 10+ years, business is around one third of the first re-release in April 2012, which was very good:
3) Comedy moviegoing
- 15 years ago, comedy was a workhorse genre, accounting for close to 25% of Hollywood's worldwide box office in 2007, but like other human-scale genres (drama, cops/crime, romance), a lot of comedy has migrated to the small screen, with fewer than half the number of titles now.
Note that American-produced comedy has never been a strong performer overseas. A lot of humor is local, rooted in individual language and culture. There have been popular comedic actors who crossed borders, but they are rare (Eddie Murphy, Sandra Bullock, Jim Carrey, Sacha Baron Cohen, Will Ferrell), and there are fewer of them now than there were 10 to 20 years ago:
