NO HARD FEELINGS opening | ASTEROID CITY opening | Romantic/sex comedies | June 23 to 25, 2023 weekend
NO HARD FEELINGS opening | ASTEROID CITY opening | Romantic/sex comedies | June 23 to 25, 2023 weekend
Opening weekend box office, charts and commentary
The current weekend: June 23 to 25, 2023
1) No Hard Feelings opening
- This is a good opening for an original romantic/sex comedy, at above average levels for the genre. Romantic/sex comedies are crowd pleasers, not critics’ darlings — audience scores for the film are very good, while critics reviews are good-not-great.
Domestic multiples are strong for these movies (average is 3.1x). In this case, competition is arriving in two weeks with Joy Ride, another sex comedy told from the female characters’ perspective. Two weeks apart is not a lot of separation for a pair of titles like these aimed at similar audiences:
- No Hard Feelings wasn’t cheap to make at $45m before marketing costs — that’s a big number considering the scale of the production and these BO levels. (More on romantic/sex comedies below.)
2) Asteroid City opening
- This is a very good opening for a specialty independent comedy. The weekend figure is more than double the average for the genre, and it's Wes Anderson’s best opening since Moonrise Kingdom ($11.8m in October 2012). Reviews are very good, although a bit below par for Anderson:
Wes Anderson, David O. Russell and Noah Baumbach are the most prolific filmmakers in this sub-genre sometimes called “American eccentric cinema.” This is Anderson’s 11th film and 7th wide release (on 1,000+ domestic screens). What elevates these movies are the casts, which are especially helpful overseas.
Asteroid City stars Tom Hanks, Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Jeffrey Wright, Edward Norton, Steve Carell, Bryan Cranston, Maya Hawke, Andrien Brody, Matt Dillon, Liev Schreiber, Stephen Park, Hope Davis, Grace Edwards, Hong Chau and Jake Ryan, with cameos by Margot Robbie, Tilda Swinton, Rupert Friend, Tony Revolori, Willem Dafoe, Bob Balaban, and Jeff Goldblum. That’s impressive, and the budget was a reasonable $25m. This film is going to make money because it's going to have a very long ancillary life.
3) Romantic/sex comedies
- After a long decline between 2015 and 2022, romantic/sex comedies are growing again. We count seven titles currently on the 2023 release calendar (including Barbie), and we expect one or two more to drop in before the end of the year. On average, these movies earn around $80m worldwide at the BO.
15 years ago, this was a workhorse genre, with more than one title per month, but those days are over — you can see it below. It's healthy for the industry to have them growing again. The remaining releases in 2023 have very good potential:
- Next weekend we'll have June domestic box office figures with pre-pandemic comparisons. June has been a roller-coaster ride, but in total, the month should finish down approx. -11% compared with 2019/2018/2017 — not bad.