The Little Things leads US box office despite HBO Max debut

Los Angeles

WOULD audiences pay to see a new movie on the big screen if they could watch the same title at home from the comfort of their couch?

Prior to the pandemic, the response from theatre operators and cinema purists would have been a resounding "no". Yet Hollywood is finding that, at least while a plague of Biblical proportion rages, the answer is: sort of.

The Little Things, a crime thriller starring Denzel Washington and Rami Malek, topped the US box office charts, debuting to US$4.8 million from 2,171 venues in North America.

At the same time, it was available to HBO Max subscribers for a monthly fee that's less than a single movie ticket in some parts of the country.

The Little Things is one of 17 films from Warner Bros that will premiere simultaneously in cinemas and on the HBO Max streaming service.

In normal times, those box office receipts would spell disaster. But today, it actually ranks as one of the stronger Covid-era opening weekends. HBO Max did not report how many viewers opted to stream The Little Things.

However, Warner Bros. and its parent company WarnerMedia said the film "immediately shot up to No 1" on HBO Max. It's unclear what that benchmark means.

"We are absolutely thrilled by how Warner Bros' The Little Things is performing on HBO Max - it immediately shot up to number one, where it currently remains," said HBO Max executive VP and general manager Andy Forssell.

"Following the breakthrough success of Wonder Woman 1984, The Little Things shows the insatiable appetite our audience has for high quality, feature films."

John Lee Hancock directed The Little Things, which centres on two police officers trying to catch a serial killer.

Overseas, where HBO Max is not yet available, The Little Things kicked off with US$2.8 million from 18 countries. The R-rated action film had the strongest showing in Russia with US$1.1 million in sales, followed by Saudi Arabia with US$871,000.

Bleak times

Still, these are bleak times for movie theatre operators. Any film exhibitors hoping that ticket sales could return to pre-pandemic levels in 2021 were stymied by another round of release date delays.

Earlier in January, MGM postponed the James Bond sequel No Time to Die from April to October. That prompted rival studios to once again push their films scheduled for early 2021, such as Morbius, Ghostbusters Afterlife, Cinderella, and A Quiet Place Part II.

It's also widely expected that Universal will delay Fast & Furious instalment F9 (set for May 28) and Disney may bump the Marvel adventure Black Widow (set for May 7), which would clear the film calendar until at least June.

Should that come to pass, it would be devastating to those in the business of showing movies on the big screen.

By this summer, it will have been over a year since theatres have operated at normal levels. Most US venues have already gone 10 months without much - if any - revenue.

In some ways, the theatrical market is equally as impaired as it was last March when theatres were entirely closed.

As of late January, around 65 per cent of cinemas remain shuttered and those that reopened have been running at limited capacity.

It seems that conversations about reopening theatres in major US markets such as New York City and Los Angeles have been all but abandoned.

A botched Covid-19 vaccine rollout, combined with new strains of the virus, have only further complicated plans to get people back to the movies. Box office analysts predict the theatrical business will get back to normal in 2022.

David Gross, who runs the movie consulting firm Franchise Entertainment Research, says that timeline is based on "healthy demand for quality, reasonably priced, out-of-home entertainment".

Optimism in the spring

"The vaccination process will pick up through the spring as the supply bottlenecks open up," he said. "The government will spend whatever it takes to make the vaccination campaign successful, including overcoming the new Covid-19 variants."

Elsewhere at the US box office, Universal and DreamWorks Animation's The Croods: A New Age collected US$1.84 million in its 10th week of release, enough for second place.

Those ticket sales represent a 2 per cent increase from last weekend, which is impressive because the animated family film has been available to rent on home entertainment for almost two months.

It has made US$43.9 million in North America. Overseas, The Croods sequel made US$1.3 million, bringing it past the US$100 million mark for a global total of US$144.4 million.

Wonder Woman 1984 came in third place with US$1.3 million from 1,864 locations. The Warner Bros superhero adaptation, which premiered concurrently on HBO Max, has brought in US$39.2 million after six weeks in North American theatres.

To illustrate how depreciated the box office is, the original Wonder Woman grossed US$38 million in its first day in theatres in 2017.

Internationally, Wonder Woman 1984 added another US$1.1 million, bringing box office receipts to US$112.8 million overseas and US$152 million globally.

Liam Neeson's action thriller The Marksman plunged to the No. 4 spot after leading the box office the last two weekends.

It made US$1.25 million in its third outing for a domestic tally of US$7.8 million. The movie is currently playing in 2,018 theatres.

Rounding out the top five was Sony's Monster Hunter with US$740,000 in its seventh week of release. The film, an adaptation of a popular video game, has generated US$11.1 million to date. REUTERS