3rd Update, Friday PM: “How were we to know weeks out this was suppose to work?”
That was one major producer’s marvel today about Universal/Blumhouse’s surprise weekend hit Get Out which is looking at a three-day that’s close to $28M, making it the fourth No 1 opener for the studios’ partnership together after The Purge, Ouija and last month’s Split.
Some estimates tonight even indicate that Get Out could creep past $30M for the weekend. In addition, box office analysts currently believe that Jordan Peele’s feature directorial debut isn’t frontloaded like other horror pics, but could see a 5% gain on Saturday over Friday’s $10.5M.
Also, get this — Get Out gets an A- CinemaScore which is largely unheard of for a horror title. Typically these movies are lucky to earn a B or B+, and that’s considered awesome, but Get Out is in rare air alongside The Conjuring 1 and 2 which both received A- grades.
Seriously, consider for a minute how much of an anomaly Get Out is: It’s a horror film from a first-time filmmaker who is known for his Emmy-winning comedy work on Comedy Central’s Key & Peele. The movie doesn’t star any marquee draws, in fact, it’s the first major studio film for Girls’ Allison Williams. The director himself, Jordan Peele, given his TV work, is arguably the biggest draw on the one-sheet…and he doesn’t even appear in the movie. Even more amazing, Get Out is going to make more in its opening weekend than Peele’s Keanu ($20.6M), which was his first on-screen appearance following the mammoth success of Key & Peele. Blumhouse, once again following Split, demonstrates that when it comes to great horror films, it’s best handled by auteurs on a shoe-string budget.
“Horror and comedy are very linked to me,” said Peele at the Sundance secret screening for Get Out, “They’re about getting a physical reaction and pinpointing when that physical reaction happens. You need to know where your audience is. One is a laugh, and one is a scare. In truly scary scenes, you can get someone to laugh.”
Critics have warmed to Get Out given the real horror it exhibits: That racism unfortunately continues to exude strongly in our society.
During his Sundance post-screening Q&A, Peele added that Get Out “was a missing piece in the genre. One of my favorite movies is the Stepford Wives and the way it dealt with social issues in regards to gender. I just thought, that’s proof that you can pull off a movie about race, that’s a thriller and entertaining and fun.”
Peele hatched the story idea eight years ago “when Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were up against each other for the Democratic (presidential) nomination. All of a sudden, the country was focused for a second on Black civil rights and the women’s civil rights movement and where they intersect and who deserves to be president more, and who has waited long enough. It’s an absurd thing that civil rights were divided. That was when the germ of the idea hit me. It marinated for a long time and I wrote the script three years ago.”
He pitched the idea to QC Entertainment’s Sean McKittrick who said “I’ve definitely never seen this movie before.”
Added Peele, “Here’s a movie that’s never gonna get made, and by the end (of our coffee), Sean was like, ‘Let’s make it.’”
The duo eventually made there way to Jason Blum who was quick to embrace. “I like a movie that uses horror to smuggle a social issue to a ton of people. That’s what I responded to in this script. That’s what resonated with me in The Purge: It’s really a movie about gun control gone crazy, the other way. It’s a cautionary tale. There’s a similar thing about a different issue in this movie,” said the Blumhouse chief at Sundance.
Further expounding on his inspirations for Get Out, Peele also said at the fest, “We had this Black president and we’re living in this post-racial lie. This whole idea that we’ve passed it all. For me, and many Black people out there, there’s racism. I experience it on an everyday basis. This movie was meant to reveal that there’s the monster of racism lurking underneath these seemingly innocent conversations and situations. It’s been fascinating watching the last few years develop, because now the movie is coming out in a very different America from where it began. I think it’s more important now, and far more interesting now. I respect Universal for having the F***king balls leaning into this kind of shit.”
“It was very important for me for this movie not to be about the Black guy going to the South and going to a red state where the presumption for a lot of people is that everyone is a racist there,” added Peele, “This was really meant to take a stab at the liberal elite that tends to believe that we’re above these things.”
Following the Sundance secret screening, some of the promo stunts that moved the needle for Get Out included Uni hosting a social influencer screening/ Q&A with Chance the Rapper followed by a high-profile Grammy spot that was supported by promoted tweets and ads through Snapchat’s Grammy Awards Live Story. The Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York curated a series of movies that influenced Peele while making Get Out. In addition, there were numerous TV spots that aired on ESPN, Comedy Central, BET, Fox and CBS as well as during NBA Basketball games.
Universal reached out to Russell Simmons’ All Def Digital to further drive awareness for Get Out. All Def Digital was behind a successful marketing integration with Screen Gems’ Don’t Breathe and in the case of Get Out, they recruited emerging artist Rome Fortune from Atlanta. Rome composed an original song with mind bending metaphors inspired by the movie further propped by the visual designs created by All Def Digital’s creative director, Scott Weintrob. In less than one week, the music video generated north of 1.2M views across Facebook and YouTube.
Open Road
With Get Out riding atop the chart as well as three-weekend old holdovers, one of this weekend’s casualties is Open Road/IM Global’s Euro-auto action film Collide starring a bulk of talent from across the pond including Felicity Jones, Nicholas Hoult, Anthony Hopkins and Ben Kingsley. In combing through the ashes of this movie which cost an estimated net of $21.5M and is looking at a weekend opening outside the top 10 of $1.29M, we hear that IM Global chief Stuart Ford is the unsung hero when it came to rescuing this movie. Collide was in the clutches of Relativity and its bankruptcy crisis and if it wasn’t for Ford, Collide wouldn’t see the light of projection on stateside screens.
Collide was largely built for an overseas crowd, and as we saw last weekend with The Great Wall (10-day B.O. by Sunday is an estimated $33.7M), their tastes differ greatly from U.S. audiences in terms of spectacle. Tonight, those U.S. crowds who sat in the passenger seat for Collide, wanted to get out of the car, giving it a C+ CinemaScore. Open Road took a distribution fee and implemented a digital P&A in the spirit of such movies as Don’t Breathe and Sausage Party in an effort to draw a young crowd. That plan didn’t yield much, especially in the wake of Get Out. P&A was not funded by IM Global or Open Road, but by a consortium of institutional P&A investors from the U.S. and China. In financing Collide, we understand that IM Global bankrolled the movie with DMG Entertainment from China and Sycamore Pictures. The original production cost was in the high $20M range and after soft money from Germany, that fell to a net of $21.5M. Seventy-five percent of that was covered via IM output deals and foreign sales. IM Global has very little exposure in the U.S. market despite Collide‘s crash. The movie currently counts $3.2M from seven territories according to ComScore with more European and Latin American openings to follow. Of that $3.2M, $2.2M was generated in China.
Lionsgate
Lionsgate Premiere’s Rock Dog lands in ninth with an estimated $3.7M and a B+ from the families who dared watched this animated feature with the voices of Luke Wilson, Lewis Black, J.K. Simmons and Eddie Izzard. The opening is lower than last year’s Norm of the North ($6.8M) and slightly higher than last September’s The Wild Life ($3.3M). The company argues that they’re in this flea market feature toon business because these movies are service deals with minimized risks with further upside in the home entertainment market. RelishMix reports that the social conversation for Rock Dog “was skeptical” buoyed off a light social media universe that’s just under 17M across Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube (notoriously low for a family film).
La La Land
Lionsgate
However, Rock Dog‘s performance is an afterthought in Lionsgate’s weekend. Better days in the sun lie ahead for the distributor, even if it rains on Sunday, as La La Land hopes to take home its 14 Oscar nominations. Should the Damien Chazelle original musical win best picture, industry analysts believe the film’s domestic B.O. will jump another 11% from $140M on Sunday to $155M.
Below are the top 10 films for the weekend of Feb. 24-26, 2017 (Oscar weekend) per Friday night industry estimates:
- Get Out (UNI) 2,781 theaters /$10.5M Fri. (includes $1.8M in previews)/3-day: $27.6M /Wk 1
- The LEGO Batman Movie (WB) 4,057 theaters (-31) /$4M Fri. (-45%)/3-day: $16.7M (-49%)/Total:$130.7M/Wk 3
3. John Wick: Chapter 2(LG) 2,954theaters (-159) /$2.4M Fri. (-42%)/3-day: $8.4M (-48%)/Total:$73.8M/ Wk 3
4. The Great Wall (Uni/Leg) 3,328 theaters (+3) /$2.3M Fri. (-60%)/3-day: $8M (-57%)/Total: $33.7M /Wk 2
5. Fifty Shades Darker (Uni) 3,216 theaters (-498) /$2.6 M Fri. (-61%)/ 3-day: $7.2M (-64%)/Total: $152.3M/Wk 3
- Hidden Figures (Fox) 2,022 theaters (-195)/$1.5M Fri (-15%)/3-day: $5.4M(-24%)/Total:$144.1M…
