From ‘Longlegs’ to ‘Fly Me to the Moon’ — lessons from Hollywood’s summer box office so far

Is it just me or has the mood around the U.S. box office felt a bit less apocalyptic than earlier in the summer, when “The Fall Guy” and “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” struggled to put butts in seats?

Strong performances from “Inside Out 2,” “Despicable Me 4” and “A Quiet Place: Day One” helped propel momentum after a fallow period for moviegoing. Most recently, Neon’s indie thriller “Longlegs,” starring Nicolas Cage and Maika Monroe and powered by a smart marketing campaign, opened with an impressive $22.6 million, ending talk of a slump for original horror movies.

This is not meant to suggest that the theatrical film business is suddenly in terrific shape. Ticket sales in the U.S. and Canada so far this year are down 16% compared with the same period of time in 2023, according to Comscore. The numbers look even worse when stacked against pre-COVID-19 levels.

But the recent run of winners has brought some relief to theaters after the writers’ and actors’ strikes hobbled the release schedule. Next up: Universal Pictures’ “Twisters,” starring Glen Powell and Daisy Edgar-Jones, which is expected to gross about $45 million to $50 million in its domestic opening. The Regal cinema chain, which emerged from bankruptcy last year, recently raised $250 million to upgrade its locations and capitalize on the expected box office rebound.

“We’re just now going through this extended phase of momentum,” said Brandon Jones, co-founder of Cinema Lab, a theater chain with three locations including the recently opened Playhouse theater in New Canaan, Conn. “We’re at the tail end of getting a full pipeline of movies for cinemas.”

Of course, the studios have fielded their fair share of flops too.

Kevin Costner’s western epic “Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter 1” bombed with $27 million in ticket sales so far from the U.S. and Canada. Sony’s release of Apple’s “Fly Me to the Moon,” a big-budet rom-com set amid an alt-history version of the Apollo 11 mission, debuted with a weak $10 million, despite playing up the star power of Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum.

Both were ambitious, star-driven projects from genres that Hollywood doesn’t often make anymore. Not coincidentally, neither was funded by a traditional studio.

But the movie business should avoid learning the wrong lessons here. When a movie like “Horizon” or “Fly Me to the Moon” flops in theaters, it’s easy for Hollywood to blame the supposedly elusive audience of “older moviegoers.” That would be a mistake.

The problem with “Horizon,” “Fly Me to the Moon” and even the Ryan Gosling-Emily Blunt vehicle “The Fall Guy” wasn’t that their target audience was old (keep in mind, movie studios consider anyone over 35 to be getting up there). It’s that they didn’t give moviegoers a good enough reason to get off the couch. “The Fall Guy,” something of a hybrid action-comedy marketed as a rom-com, was a classic example of what studio marketers call a “feathered fish”: a movie that seems like one thing when it’s actually another.

When studios offer grown-ups a movie like “Oppenheimer” ($975 million in global sales), “Sound of Freedom” ($250 million) or even “Dune: Part Two” ($712 million), they show up in force.

It is true that older audiences tend not to rush out to the theaters as much as younger cohorts on opening weekend. So “Fly Me to the Moon” may yet find its audience, whether it’s in theaters through word-of-mouth, or on video on-demand and Apple’s streaming service. It got so-so reviews from critics, but filmgoers who saw it enjoyed it, judging by an A- rating from polling firm Cinemascore.

The problem for Apple is that it paid a reported $100 million for the movie, making profitability a reach; Sony is distributing for a fee and has no financial exposure.

Warner Bros. pulled Chapter 2 of the “Horizon” saga from its planned August release date in the wake of the original’s poor performance.

Here too, Warner’s New Line Cinema is serving as the domestic distributor in exchange for a fee. Costner and his backers put up the actual capital for the project, with the actor himself in for $38 million of his own coin. Many observers expect the second chapter to be released directly to Warner Bros. Discovery’s Max or another streaming service, though Warner Bros. still has it listed for a theatrical debut.

The studios behind “Inside Out 2,” “A Quiet Place: Day One” and “Longlegs” understood the films they had and the audience for them. The question with any movie is always, “Who is this for?”

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Number of the week

Redbox’s parent company was in even worse shape than previously thought.

Last week, Redbox owner Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy case was converted to a Chapter 7 liquidation, leaving 24,000 kiosks dark and some 1,000 employees jobless.

The move comes after the company’s lenders, led by HPS Investment Partners, refused to continue funding the operations through the bankruptcy process, having accused controlling shareholder and former Chief Executive Bill Rouhana of mismanagement that ultimately resulted in employees working without pay. A court-appointed trustee will manage the process.

Rouhana has denied the allegations, calling them “irresponsibly false and scandalous.”

When Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection this month, it looked like a fairly straightforward case of a dying business — in this case, cheap DVD rentals at drugstore kiosks — finally expiring in an age of streaming and online video on-demand.

And it definitely was that. Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment, a subsidiary of the famous book publishing and dog chow brand, took on a mind-boggling $360 million in debt to acquire the oddly nostalgic Redbox in 2022, with hopes that convenient physical rentals would somehow rebound. Or maybe it was a memestock play?

In either case, the bet went sideways.

A Chapter 11 bankruptcy is never the desired result for a publicly traded business, but it’s within the normal range of bad outcomes for companies that fail to adapt to changing consumer habits. When employees aren’t getting paid for work they’ve already performed, though, that’s often a sign that something else went terribly wrong.

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