Summer Box Office Soared, But Now What?

Pocket change won’t buy much these days, but over Labor Day weekend consumers were able to see a movie for $3 at thousands of theaters throughout the U.S. The one-day promotion, part of National Cinema Day on Sept. 3, was unprecedented and designed both to celebrate a summer full of promise in regard to the box office recovery and to drum up interest in moviegoing amid an unusually slow August and September in terms of high-profile releases. Case-in-point regarding slim August offerings: the big winners of Labor Day were Top Gun: Maverick in its 15th weekend, a rerelease of Spider-Man: No Way Home and Jaws, a 47-year-old movie.

The marquee will heat up again in mid-October with the launch of the DC superhero pic Black Adam, starring Dwayne Johnson, among other event pics, although Halloween Ends will now open day-and-date in theaters and on Peacock on Oct. 14. While not exactly jazzed, exhibitors still expect the film to perform well. Also, Universal, which is releasing the film, has released far more movies than any other studio — including Focus Features titles — giving the studio a free-out-of-jail-card.

Rolando Rodriguez, the outgoing top operating executive at Marcus Theatres who also is board chairman at the National Association of Theatre Owners, explains the $3 pricing this way: “There is a lot of noise going on about how our industry is doing. We tend to focus on the negative narrative and a couple of chains that are in trouble,” referring to but not naming Cineworld, which disclosed major cash-crunch issues related to its debt burden. Adds Rodriguez, “We just went through one of the most devastating periods in our history — I’ve been in this business for 42 years — and the fact that so many cinemas have stood tall is amazing.”…