Universal and DreamWorks Animation have tweaked their 2021 release schedule, moving the sequel The Boss Baby: Family Business from March to September. The shift to the new release date, September 17, had been the spot for DWA’s The Bad Guys, which is unset for now and will get a 2022 release. Universal made the announcement
Universal
As pollyannaish as it sounds, especially as the domestic 2020 box office crumbles to a historic all-time low of $2.27 billion due to the coronavirus pandemic, the global theatrical business is poised for a comeback in 2021. However, it might take a few months. How in God’s name can such a ridiculous projection be forecasted?
Refresh for more analysis, chart, etc. Even in a normal, healthy economy, the major studios are typically skittish about opening big movies before Christmas with many busy with holiday activities, so it comes as no surprise during a pandemic where just north of 40% of all 5,500 domestic movie theaters are open that there wouldn’t
Universal’s release of DreamWorks Animation’s The Croods: A New Age stayed on target from what we saw yesterday with an opening Wednesday of $1.85M in a very broken exhibition landscape where there’s only 2,650 theaters open right now out of national footprint of 5,5K. Croods 2 is booked at 2,211 theaters. Five-day projections are unpredictable as we
EXCLUSIVE: Despite the severe ratcheting down of movie theaters during the pandemic in recent weeks, Universal is standing strong with a robust global promotional campaign behind its DreamWorks Animation sequel The Croods: A New Age which opens today at 2,211 theaters. While the marketing spend on domestic wide releases has been in the single-digit range
SUNDAY AM UPDATE, refresh for chart and more analysis: The weekend before Thanksgiving is one of the most lucrative ones on the calendar, last year bringing in $204.9M off the opening of Disney’s Frozen II which posted November’s fifth best domestic opening of all-time at $130.3M. Who would ever think that the domestic box office would sink
Universal’s domestic release of Simon Kinberg’s directorial The 355 is jumping from its MLK 2021 weekend release to MLK weekend Jan. 14, 2022. While Universal has committed a number of fresh wide releases during the pandemic to exhibition during Q4, i.e. Focus Features’ Come Play, Let Him Go, Blumhouse’s Freaky, Dreamworks Animation’s The Croods: A New Age and Tom Hanks’ News of the
Universal has just inked another multi-year shortened theatrical window/Premium VOD share deal, this time with Canada’s biggest exhibitor Cineplex. The deal comes on the heels of Uni’s recent pact with No. 3 U.S. chain Cinemark. To date, Cineplex becomes the third exhibitor to agree to Uni’s truncated theatrical window terms since AMC first signed on
It should come as no surprise to hear that Cinemark and Universal have hammered out their own truncated theatrical window and PVOD share deal in the wake of the one which AMC inked with the Hollywood major studio at the end of July. Cinemark CEO Mark Zoradi, a former President at the Walt Disney Motion
SATURDAY AM UPDATE: Universal/Blumhouse’s genre body swap comedy Freaky starring Vince Vaughn took in $1.45M yesterday, including Thursday night previews ~$200K, on what looks to be a $4M opening at 2,472 theaters. Universal, the only major Hollywood studio putting out consistent fresh wide product during the pandemic, can claim a three-week streak at No. 1 between Focus’
EXCLUSIVE: Universal has set changes to its leadership teams for Germany/Austria and the Netherlands as Paul Steinschulte, Managing Director for Germany and Austria, has decided to retire at the end of the year. A 31-year veteran of the studio, he joined in 1989 as part of a joint venture between Universal and Paramount. Universal’s President
Universal, which already had July 22, 2022 already RSVP’ed on the theatrical release calendar, is designating that as the day to open Jordan Peele’s next horror event title. Between the Oscar-winning filmmaker’s Get Out and Us, his directed genre fare has minted a combined $510.5M WW for Universal.
Universal Pictures’ Jennifer Lopez music fueled romantic comedy Marry Me is moving from Presidents Day-Valentine’s Day weekend on the theatrical release calendar next year, Feb. 12 and going to May 14, 2021. Marry Me will take the place of DreamWorks Animation’s Untitled Spirit Riding Free movie which has now been title Spirit Untamed. That animated pic will now open on
Universal is protecting one of its biggest assets from the pandemic and moving Jurassic World: Dominion from June 11, 2021 to June 10, 2022. Uni had the latter date already on hold for an untitled event movie. I hear this has nothing to do with the production, which is about three weeks from wrapping in the U.K.,
MGM’s No Time to Die is officially heading to April 2, 2021, Easter weekend, and vacating its Nov. 20 release date. “MGM, Universal and Bond producers, Michael G Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, today announced the release of No Time To Die, the 25th film in the James Bond series, will be delayed until 2 April in order to be seen by a worldwide theatrical audience. We
Universal said Friday that F9 is moving to May 28, 2021, which is Memorial Day weekend. The move comes after MGM moved its James Bond pic No Time to Die to April 2, 2021 — which had been the release date of the latest installment of the Fast and the Furious franchise. Universal is handling
Universal is moving up The Croods: A New Age from its Dec. 23 release date to Wednesday, Nov. 25. This move indicates the studio’s confidence that Disney will move Pixar’s Soul out of the Thanksgiving stretch according to recent reports, that movie still scheduled to debut on Nov. 20 on the same weekend of MGM’s No Time to Die.
Universal’s Jennifer Lopez romantic comedy Marry Me will be released on Valentine’s Day weekend, Friday, February 12, 2021. The feature takes the place of the untitled Universal romantic comedy on the release schedule. Marry Me squares off against Disney/Marvel’s Eternals and Paramount and Lee Daniels’ Billie Holiday movie on its new date. As we first reported,
Word was leaking that more wide-release date changes were afoot in the wake of Warner Bros’ Wonder Woman 1984 postponing from October 2 to Christmas Day. Here’s one that went down Friday: Universal/MGM/Bron/Monkeypaw’s Candyman is moving from its October 16 date to an unset future date in 2021. All studio partners are assessing a new date,
Universal will be releasing Blumhouse’s Freaky on Nov. 13. The black horror comedy, directed by writer-director Christopher Landon (Happy Death Day, the Paranormal Activity franchise) follows a teenage girl who switches bodies with a relentless serial killer, The Butcher. Kathryn Newton of Blockers and HBO’s Big Little Lies stars as 17-year old Millie alongside Vince Vaughn who plays the
AMC Entertainment saw revenue plunge to $18.9 billion for the second quarter ended from in June from $1.5 billion the year before as it swung to the red, no surprise for the nation’s – and world’s — largest theater chain, that saw most locations shuttered completely for the entire three months. The company swung a
On today’s earnings call for the No. 1 financially challenged exhibitor AMC, CEO Adam Aron took the high road in not damning Disney for their recent seisimic-shifting choice to take Mulan to Disney+ instead of theaters where the streaming service is available. “You might thing I’m disappointed that Mulan is moving, but AMC has no bigger friend
Cinemark CEO Mark Zoradi weighed in this morning on all the noise that Universal and AMC stirred up last week with their plan to crunch the theatrical window to 17 days. “Consistent with our past practices, Cinemark does not comment on the actions of our competitors. That said we believe an exclusive theatrical window is critically
The CEO of the nation’s fourth-largest exhibitor warned studios not to “leave a good party in pursuit of a bad one” but called the debate over PVOD overblown. Greg Marcus, chief of Marcus, said consumers are likely to drift away from watching video-on-demand relesaes when things normalize post-pandemic. “The market for PVOD may not be
AMC Entertainment announced Monday it’s officially concluded a complex, and controversial, restructuring of approximately $2.6 billion of its debt that included an exchange and fresh capital raise. The news came as iyd new distribution deal with Universal Pictures continues to roil the industry. Holders of more than 87% of senior subordinated notes participated in an
The hope for NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell in the studio’s new unprecedented 17-day theatrical window collapse-PVOD deal with AMC Theatres is to make more money in the post theatrical windows which have waned in recent years. “Movies are our lifeblood,” said the NBCUniversal pro-PVOD exec, “Over the last couple of years, it’s become more increasingly
EXCLUSIVE: Those in town assuming that one of the other big exhibition circuits will fall in line with AMC, and seek their own 17-day theatrical window-PVOD deal with Universal, will soon realize that it will be a cold day in hell. Cineworld CEO Mooky Greidinger, who oversees the world’s second largest chain, exclusively tells Deadline
After AMC CEO Adam Aron publicly threatened that he would never play Universal movies as along as the studio had a plan for simultaneous theatrical-PVOD releases like Trolls World Tour, the world’s No. 1 exhibitor and the Hollywood studio have broken bread with the following multi-year agreement: Universal and Focus Features releases will play at
Update, July 9: Universal is opening its Bob Odenkirk action thriller Nobody a week earlier on Feb. 19, 2021 instead of Feb. 26, 2021. The pic is now the only wide entry on that date, moving away from a weekend where Paramount put their Michael B. Jordan-Tom Clancy movie Without Remorse. PREVIOUS, April 7: Universal Moves Bob
Watch teaser for Halloween Kills below: Universal is moving a group of Blumhouse titles deeper into the theatrical release calendar including Miramax-Trancas International co-productions Halloween Kills and its sequel Halloween Ends, and The Forever Purge. In addition, MGM-Bron Creative-Monkeypaw’s Candyman is moving three weeks later. David Gordon Green’s Halloween Kills, which is in post, moves from Oct. 16 to Friday,
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