How Crood! After weeks spent beating away the competition away with its big club, The Croods: A New Age has been cut down by one of those big-ass tooth swords from Monster Hunter. Paul W.S. Anderson’s video game adaptation, his first feature since closing out the Resident Evil franchise, scared up $2.2 million in its opening weekend, allowing it to just squeak by The Croods’ comparatively robust $2 million haul. We can only assume this interest in dinosaurs and dino-adjacent creatures is due to the imminence of our own looming extinction event. Merry Christmas?
The Croods remains this depressing season’s box office MVP, however, having secured more than $27 million in the four weeks since it’s opened. As a point of comparison, note that it’s taken The War With Grandpa—still in the top 10!—11 weeks to hit $18.2 million. In a distant third is Lionsgate’s corny Fatale, which raked in $925,000 in its opening weekend. Rounding out the top 10 are a slew of holiday-themed rereleases, including Elf ($365,000), The Polar Express ($231,000), National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation ($166,000), and How The Grinch Stole Christmas ($130,000). ‘Tis the season to remind ourselves of happier times.
It’s not all doom and gloom, however. Today, after months of fucking around, the House and the Senate will vote on a COVID relief bill that has $15 billion earmarked for live event venues, independent movie theaters, and cultural institutions.
For a more detailed breakdown of this weekend’s box office numbers, head on over to Box Office Mojo.
11 Comments
This is so cursed.
Who’s risking death for these?
I wouldn’t even risk 2 hours of time.
That’s a bit of hyperbole. I think most people realize the risk is pretty darn small and they just want to live their lives.I’m not in favor of going out to movies, but I get it.The bottom line is people aren’t getting great information. On top of all the social media nonsense, if movie theaters are allowed to be open (which clearly some are) then clearly people are reasoning that it’s pretty safe to go. Otherwise the government would shut them down entirely. Right? That seems logical.I’m still going to the grocery store. Considering how many more people moving around and touching things there are at stores vs. theaters, I wouldn’t blame people for thinking it’s okay to do the latter.
Dipshits
Not defending people going to an even somewhat crowded theater, but perhaps some of these are the more “private” style screenings? The theaters around here are advertising $100 to rent out a whole theater. We know some people that have gone with like 2-3 families in the whole theater (so maybe 15 people tops….able to distance pretty well).
We’ve thought about it a few times as something that may be kinda fun, but I still struggle with how many surfaces I’d be touching. I don’t think my kids need to see Elf again that badly. Now, if they put out the new James Bond movie, I’d be there in a heartbeat (new releases are $150). I may not even invite other people. Just my wife and me.
There are still drive-ins.
$15 billion for live event venues? That’s not enough to do much is it? If that includes large arenas like the Rose Bowl (which I’m only guessing it does), I couldn’t imaging there would be enough to help my local independent movie theater.
I bet at least a third of it finds it’s way into the pockets of major sports team owners like Jerry Jones, even if the stadiums were built entirely with public money.
I’ve always figured the billions in “public relief” for venues always went to the owners anyway. It’s Reaganomics: Trickle down means the lower/middle classes pay higher taxes, then because we want our sportsball, we vote to increase our taxes again, the local and Fed get our taxes, and then they trickle down to the owner (for bailouts, because billionaires go under every day!!), who simply threatened to move the team and everyone freaked out. Owner wins, people get increased prices for tickets, and, ya know, the economy, right?
US 2019 domestic box office totals were $11 billion, and that is by far the largest dollar amount of revenue in “live entertainment” outside of professional & collegiate sports (which I don’t think are covered here). That’s inclusive of the big chain theaters who probably won’t qualify for the tranches of that money targeting “independent” movie theaters.“Relief” money intended to make sure those businesses survive until after the pandemic doesn’t necessarily have to equal to last year’s revenue, because many expenses have declined (including wages, with those employees ostensibly being covered under the pandemic by unemployment insurance boosts and Medicaid) as well.I’m sure they could use more, but all of those venues were also able to apply for PPP and can go back to the well again as well. Any bill Republicans were going to agree to was going to be a bit skimpy, but on the scale of the industyr, $15 billion isn’t nothing either.