Dear critics from “Tár” to “The Fabelmans” will show us if the industry will ever fully recover from the pandemic.
While none of the fall festival films will do what this winter’s big blockbuster sequels are expected to win, the overall box office depends on several of these arthouse films drawing moviegoers in droves. comparable to the pre-pandemic era. And that remains a big question for everyone in the independent film world.
“We know that older audiences are returning to theaters. ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ and ‘Elvis’ proved it,” a head of distribution told TheWrap. “But honestly, I don’t know if there’s still a theatrical audience for many of the Oscar-nominated movies. I’m not talking about ‘Moonlight,’ but movies like ‘Moonlight’ weren’t making that much money before the pandemic. Will they still make money now, or do people interested in those movies no longer feel the need to drive to the theater to see them? (Winner of Best Picture 2017 of A24 grossed $27 million in theaters.)
There are also fewer places to screen arthouse films due to the closure of theaters in key cities that have permanently changed the landscape of specialties. Without Landmark Pico and Arclight Hollywood in Los Angeles, several distributors say they will rely on major theater chains like AMC, which has multiplexes like New York’s Century City 15 and Lincoln Square 13, to show prestigious movies in the big venues that Arclight used to provide.
Specialty chains like Laemmle, Angelika and Alamo Drafthouse have moved in to fill the void left by Arclight’s closure, while Landmark Theaters has taken over Playhouse 7 in Pasadena. Everyone is trying to attract indie-loving crowds in Los Angeles, New York and other major cities, but the numbers have shown that this audience has dwindled.
In the 2010s, fall award contenders like “Green Book” and “Argo” delivered strong box office performances in October and November, attracting audiences uninterested in blockbuster, Halloween horror offerings. or family Thanksgiving movies.
In the post-holiday period, movies like “American Sniper,” “La La Land,” “Hidden Figures” and “1917” would join holiday franchise blockbusters like Disney’s “Star Wars” movies. to maintain gross receipts during a time when few, if not any major releases hit theaters. Last year, overall weekend grosses sank as Sony’s December box office “Spider-Man: No Way Home” leveled off. The Best Picture Oscar nominees playing in theaters alone grossed a combined $10 million between nomination day in early February and the March 27 Oscar telecast.
Distributors are concerned that this year will see a repeat of that kind of underwhelming performance for arthouse films compared to previous years. “There would be a handful of fall movies that would fetch theater averages of $50,000 or more during that limited opening weekend. We’ll be lucky to see one this year,” an arthouse film executive told TheWrap. “Everything has changed so much with release windows and nationwide releases that I wouldn’t bother comparing this fall to pre-pandemic. We just have to do better than last year.”
Due to its wide range of tones, key demographics, and release strategies, no single film will tell the full story of whether the prestige market is recovering. But together, they will tell a larger story about how different kinds of specialty films are making a comeback.
On the one hand, there are the true arthouse movies, the ones that don’t try to reach a wide audience and instead find those looking for a more thought-provoking story. This year’s festivals have plenty of those, including Focus Features’ “Tár,” a Todd Fields drama about the rise and fall of one woman from the top of the classical music world. The film has propelled leading star Cate Blanchett to the forefront of the Oscar race after critics in Venice and Telluride raved about her performance.
Movies like “Tár” predominantly make up the special lineup for October, with other releases including MUBI’s Korean thriller “Decision to Leave,” Searchlight’s Martin McDonagh dark comedy “The Banshees of Inisherin,” and MGM’s historical drama “ Till”. Neither of these movies will be a major player at the box office, but they’re trying to get a better share than fall 2021 movies like “Spencer” and “Belfast,” which failed to break $10 million in North America despite widespread acclaim.
The box office’s best shot at a prestige winter hit in the style of “Green Book” or “La La Land” won’t come until the Thanksgiving and Christmas season. Universal will release “Fabelmans” in select cities on November 11 as a counter-programming to Disney/Marvel’s “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” and then extend through Thanksgiving weekend. “Green Book” will be the closest compilation here, as both movies are Universal November releases that won the TIFF Audience Award, a major festival of honor that has gone to an eventual Best Picture Oscar nominee in all but one year since 2008.
“Green Book” earned a $7.4 million Thanksgiving weekend extended opening and then ran through March for a domestic total of $85 million. If “The Fabelmans” comes close to that, it would be a great sign of hope that big-shot prestige dramas, the kind Spielberg has done for decades, can still make a good deal of money in theaters while proving that the box office flop. from Spielberg’s “West Side Story” last year could be blamed on COVID-19 keeping its core audience at home.
As for “Babylon,” Paramount is bringing back a tried-and-true release strategy that was shelved for the past two years by COVID: a Christmas Day release in New York and Los Angeles before expanding on January 6.
While the initial turnout for “Babylon” will likely be driven by older audiences uninterested in more populist titles like “Avatar 2” or the Whitney Houston biopic “I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” Paramount is confident the movie is wild and partying. -like nature and an all-star cast led by Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie will create word of mouth that will allow it to stretch into January when fewer major movies are released.
The box office may not need to rely as heavily on “Babylon” to maintain January grosses, as there will be a wider range of releases to get more moviegoers interested. But if both he and “The Fabelmans” don’t have a significant chart presence to start 2023, then overall box office grosses over the winter are far less likely to consistently hit pre-pandemic levels unless a “No Way The home blockbuster is on the slate.
But whether these movies are art house movies with a capital C or have a household name like Spielberg attached to them, a common thread from distributors is that they no longer trust a movie’s award potential to drive audiences to see a movie. On cinemas. While Oscar-nominated films in decades past could count on some turnout from moviegoers who wanted to catch up before Oscar Sunday, the steep drop in ratings for the awards has left executives skeptical about the influence of the Golden Globes and the Academy Awards at the box office. (And the Globes themselves have become a tarnished showcase for awards since before the pandemic.)
“Perhaps people will hear offhand that a movie has won a few Globes or is nominated for a bunch of Oscars, but that’s not something most people are actively looking for anymore,” one distributor said. “We just focused on marketing the film on its own merits.”
