Horror film “A Quiet Place II” scared up a blockbuster $57 million in domestic box office for the four-day Memorial Day holiday weekend with a conventional cinema marketing campaign. The messaging included “Only In Theatres” as a key copy line; “Quiet” won’t hit video streaming until 45 days after cinema premiere.
The Paramount Pictures release bettered second-ranked weekend film “Cruella” — which grossed a decent $26.5 million for four days domestically for Walt Disney Studios — and is simultaneously available via premium-VOD. That P-VOD offer is a 48-hour rental for $29.95 only to Disney+ subscribers. No word yet on “Cruella’s” P-VOD take-up.
There are an estimated 40 million U.S. Dis+ subscribers out of 121 million total U.S. TV households; Dis+ users pay $7.99 for a basic subscription monthly (any P-VOD is on top of that). So, the cinema runs are the only way that non-Dis+ households can see “Cruella” at premiere.
It would be tempting to say that the P-VOD availability undercut “Cruella” cinema performance, but it’s not clear. Disney also rakes in P-VOD revenue from “Cruella,” the live-action campy drama providing backstory to the famed “101 Dalmatians” story.
It would also be tempting to proclaim cinema-is-back after pandemic closures, but that’s not the case. Total domestic weekend box office is $96.4 million, according to BoxofficeMojo while $200 million is normal for the Memorial Day holiday (note “weekend” box-office is for May 28-31, a Friday through Monday holiday period, not the normal three-day Monday through Sunday). An estimated 30 percent of U.S. cinemas are still closed due to Covid-19, so the business is still in transition to a post-pandemic normal.
Both “Quiet 2” (which reportedly cost $61 million to make) and “Cruella” (cost north of $100 million) are audience classified with PG-13 ratings.
“A Quiet Place II” hit the jackpot after the pandemic delayed its theatrical release. In the past month, the scare flick was re-marketed with a large traditional marketing campaign.
“The title already had a substantially high profile before the pandemic, given all of its marketing, including a trailer during the 2020 Super Bowl,” writes Anthony D’Alessandro in Deadline.com. “’Black Widow’, ‘No Time to Die’, and ‘F9’ [the ninth installment of the ‘Fast and Furious’ franchise] are also in this camp of titles which have had long runways of exposure before their theatrical release. Given ‘A Quiet Place Part II’s’ marketing edge, Paramount relaunched the campaign on May 5 over a compressed 3.5 week time frame, the first item being the trailer ‘Tomorrow’ video built around the copy ‘It’s Been Quiet for Far Too Long,’ and leaning in on the film’s ‘Only In Theatres’ proposition.”
Press tours by talent generated entertainment news stores; director John Krasinski made TV talk show guest appearances including on “CBS Morning” and “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert”; a fresh linear TV commercial blitz hit prior to premiere and long after that year-old Super Bowl ad in 2020 said to be $5.6 million a 30-second spot; and a Krasinski fan event was hosted by No. 3 cinema circuit Cinemark. These are all part of the traditional campaign. “CBS Morning” and “Colbert” are ViacomCBS corporate siblings of distributor Paramount.
Putting “Cruella” on P-VOD can be viewed as a corporate necessity because the success of Disney+ is crucial to parent Walt Disney Co.’s stock price. Disney+ is perceived as one of two video streaming leaders (Netflix is the other) and one stock analyst valued Dis+ as worth $100 billion just two months after launch.
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