2018 Off To A Great Start

Living up to all of its hype, 'Black Panther' grossed an astounding $340m in N. American over the 4 day, President's Day Holiday weekend.

Starting 2018 Off Right

The movie carries a $200m production cost and an additional $85m in marketing so Disney/Marvel always considered it a tent-pole title - but they didn't expect the grosses the 'Panther' generated (its total gate for the weekend was over $430 globally). The movie will have good legs and carry exceptional grosses over the next several weeks.

The best news, it pushed 2018's YTD domestic gross (at $1.65b) up 6.9% over 2017's performance - not bad and we're not even through February.

The concept of a 'Black Panther' movie was originally touted by Wesley Snipes in 1992 but the project never got traction and Snipes then moved on to the 'Blade' and sequels.

Disney/Marvel was smart in marketing 'Black Panther' as pre-release they had partnered-up with the NFL, Lexus, PepsiCo, Unilever, the NBA and others. Special trailers were even produced for the Chinese market.  The movie has averaged an approval rating of 8.3 out of 10 and there were over 560 thousand Tweets on day one of release, twice the number that 'The Last Jedi' garnered. There are already several sequels planned.

So, as predicted in these pages, 2018 looks like it's shaping-up to be a stellar year.

Keep in touch,
Jim

Top Movie Franchises

Movie franchises are the life-blood of  the movie industry. Generating mega-bucks above and beyond their box office grosses these money machines have huge fan bases that purchase any and everything  franchise associated. From costumes to a vast array of collectible merchandise the biggest franchises even have their own theme parks and can last for decades with numerous sequels or prequels.

So which are the best and biggest movie franchises. According to a poll by Variety the top 15 all-time biggest franchises, so far, are:

1. Star Wars (Disney building Star Wars Land - Disneyland, CA
2. James Bond (the longest running)
3. Batman (more actors playing the lead than any other franchise)
4. Lord of The Rings (Shire theme park to open this year in Spain
5. Rocky
6. Fast & Furious (Universal's biggest with 8 and counting)
7. Mission Impossible (theme park in London to open in 2021)
8. Harry Potter (own theme park)
9. Ironman (3 with Avengers' films)
10. Lethal Weapon
11. X-Men (sequels, prequels, and reboots)
12. Pirates of the Caribbean (theme park in Shanghai)
13. Spider Man (most reboots)
14. Indiana Jones
15. Die Hard

Waiting in the wings: Avatar (already has theme park). Now, imagine a Disney-Marvel 'Super' theme park with Ironman, Spider-man, Thor, Captain America, X-Men, and Avengers attractions.

Best,

Jim

Marketing Your Cinema With Social Media

Are you marketing your cinema on one or more of the social platforms? If the answer is NO, you should take a look at doing so.

Cinemas Need To Use Social Media 

All of the social platforms: Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, Instagram, Pinterest, Tweeter, and others  offer advertising options. The best thing about advertising on a social platform is that it is very inexpensive. An ad on Facebook is about $30, so budgeting just $200-300 per month will allow for multiple ads. Comparing this to traditional advertising it is a fraction of the cost.

Additionally, social media allows you to select which demographic you want targeted. This provides you a rifle vs. shotgun approach to reach potential customers. For example, you can choose age, sex, and geographic area - therefore your ads will appear only on the Facebook pages of those particular people. That's nice because your ads will be targeting only those consumers in your  local community.

When using a social platform for advertising use both text and videos in your ads, this is important, as social platforms prefer the use of videos, pictures, and graphics. This allows you to have great leeway in who your ads are targeting.

Special screenings, concession deals, merchandise offerings, loyalty discounts, coming attractions,
the opportunities are endless for ads to promote your cinema the 'social way'. Do It!

Keep in touch,
Jim

AMC Gets Sold.... AGAIN

This week the Wanda Group, a Chinese conglom that owns the AMC theater circuit, sold a $1.2b stake in the exhib to the Alibaba Group (the Amazon of China).  No real details for the sale were given but AMC reported a $210 million loss through the 3rd quarter of 2017. Its share price has dropped from a high of $31.85 at the start of 2017 to $14.20 as of yesterday.  Alibaba may have thought that at a $14 price the investment was worth it.

In addition to decreased admissions, AMC has been in a battle with MoviePass, a subscription based cinema admission service that offers one movie ticket a day to customers which use its Red Card service for $9.95 per month.  AMC blasted MoviePass, and has been moving forward with legal action. MoviePass's goal is to have exhibs share their admission and concession sales with them because they are bringing more people into theaters - AMC views this profit sharing scheme as a non-starter.

AMC had received at least six offers of purchase over the last three months but Wanda settled upon Alibaba's offer.

Keep in touch,

Jim