Not to send everyone screaming for the exits, but it wouldn’t be out of the question if Warner Bros. moves Wonder Woman 1984 off its Christmas Day global theatrical release.
Facts are facts whether former Vice President Joe Biden takes the U.S. Presidency tomorrow night or if President Donald Trump continues: New York City and Los Angeles movie theaters are still closed, and even worse Western Europe (meaning UK, Germany, France, Italy, and a curfewed Spain) is largely closed down, those countries having repped 16% of the first 2017 pic’s $409.3M overseas box office.
I hear a meeting is underway with studio brass who are deciding what will happen next. This despite all good intentions by Warner Bros. executives to stick to Dec. 25. Last week at a Variety Power of Women Conversations, Warner Bros. Chair and CEO Ann Sarnoff said “We’ve got a little bit of time to figure that out” in regards to WW1984‘s release date change.
In fact, the studio does not.
If Warners doesn’t want to incur any lost P&A monies, they need to move WW1984 now according to several industry sources. Generally, tentpole movie campaigns fire off six weeks before their opening date. That would put WW1984 spots starting the week before Thanksgiving. And if the Patty Jenkins directed-Gal Gadot starring movie is going to stick to its Dec. 25 release date, it definitely needs to promote during Thanksgiving when everyone is home watching football (and there might be some who dare to go to the cinemas to see Universal/Dreamworks Animation’s The Croods: A New Age, which is playing on a shortened theatrical window in time for a PVOD airing by Christmas).
It’s a tough decision and a great responsibility for Warners to bear on behalf of the industry, not unlike the bravery they executed in releasing Christopher Nolan’s Tenet at a time when the pandemic wasn’t over, and box office capitals New York and Los Angeles still closed, which yielded a $20.2M 11-day domestic opening, with current running domestic B.O. to date of $53.8M (WW has been better at $347.1M). The lackluster domestic results forced other major studios to pull all their fall and holiday tentpoles off the schedule.
If Wonder Woman 1984 flees Christmas, we could further expect Disney to pull its 20th Century Studios marquee features, Free Guy, starring Ryan Reynolds, and Death on the Nile, which has Gadot doing double-duty. Exhibition is also looking forward to those movies. However, with WW1984‘s rescheduling to 2021, there in one swoop goes the year-end holiday moviegoing frame which exhibition had been eyeing to lengthen their financial runways. That type of situation could put big circuits like AMC into bankruptcy, or force exhibition to further close down (No. 2 chain UK Cineworld is closed with its U.S. counterpart Regal only open in select California and New York locations).
Until there’s a complete sense of the virus quelling, studios and distributors are opting to stick with booking low budget movies in the marketplace, titles they can target at specific demos, i.e. Open Road’s Honest Thief with men, or Focus Features’ PG-13 horror film Come Play last weekend with teens and females under 25. But if smaller distributors backfill WW1984, Free Guy and Death on the Nile with smaller lackluster fare, what good is that for exhibition? These movies have been opening to No. 1 of late in the low single digits at the weekend domestic box office.
On the upside, we hear it’s also possible that Uni will keep their Tom Hanks’ historical drama News of the World sticking to its Dec. 25 release given the PVOD deal in place with AMC, and Screen Gems’ Monster Hunter could remain on its domestic date of Dec. 30 given the fact that China and Asian markets are that pic’s big play.
Separately, we heard from exhibition sources today that Warner Bros. was flirting with the idea of a domestic shortened theatrical window for WW1984 of around 17-21 days before putting it on PVOD. Studio insiders responded no such plan is in the works for their prized DC sequel, the first Wonder Woman grossing $821.8M at the global box office.
So given all the release date changes for WW1984, how much money is it losing? Industry sources say not much as the film, should it keep its theatrical release and debut in a normal marketplace in the future, will be profitable. The pic’s P&A spend only increases for money already spent. The TV spot media buys that WW1984 has booked in the near future can easily be rescheduled, that is is unless some of it can’t (such as those spots which were bought during an upfront or an NFL buy). Finance sources estimate P&A and incurred interest costs already spent on WW1984 to stand around $20M. Interest costs began racking up on the movie during its shoot which commenced in June 2018, and if figured until the end of this year, those figures stand between $8M-$9M per finance sources. Add in $6.4M in TV spot ads that already aired per iSpot (there haven’t been any since Aug. 25 per the agency), and two online trailer drops (which are never organic eyeball views, all studios pay for the view boost) which is expected to be in the seven-figure spend range. On YouTube, I hear that paid views often go for $250K per a 10 million view yield. RelishMix tells us that studios often shoot for a 1m views an hour during daylight streaming times on YouTube. Just on the Warner Bros. U.S. YouTube channels along, both WW1984 trailers have racked up 56M views.
Promotional partner penalties are harder to account for, as it’s done on an advertiser by advertiser basis. I’m told with any studio, if merchandise or in-store materials have been delivered, and release dates changed, the studio is often charged for this. However, we’re living in force majeure times and some promo partners are forgiving studios. What’s occurred on Wonder Woman 1984 is that promotions have already been out there, i.e. a Doritos bag campaign over the summer (pegged to the pic’s June 5 release date), a Red Cross blood drive timed to the pic’s then changed Oct. 2 opening date, a Lego toy set, and bags of SweeTarts Golden Ropes Tropical Punch candies. Warners will eat this up as pre-awareness for the film. However, in such instances, it’s not expected that the advertiser will return to re-promote on the pic’s new release date as they have other obligations to meet with other studios and films.
So if WW1984 shifts, where would it go? A logical place would be back to the first weekend of June next year; that’s the same weekend where the first movie launched to a $103.2M opening in 2017. Currently, Warners has New Line’s The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It on June 4, 2021 and the former lucrative genre period of post Labor Day weekend of Sept. 10-12 reserved for an untitled New Line horror feature. It would make sense that Conjuring 3 would then float to the fall.