On the downside, the Twisted Pictures co-production, Jigsaw, is coming in at an estimated $17.4M, after a $7.5M Friday, which is the lowest opening ever for a Saw movie. In all fairness to Lionsgate, they saw their eighth Saw movie posting in the high teens. Rivals were bullish. Still at a responsible $10M production cost and the ancillary vibrancy of this franchise, there can’t be too much red ink bleeding here, in fact insiders believe the pic will be profitable. More money in the bank for Lionsgate’s Saw franchise which through seven films stands at $874M worldwide. However, Jigsaw‘s lower-than-expected turnout speaks to the challenges with age-old horror franchises on the big screen. Today’s horror aficionados have uber-high standards in this It era ($323.6M projected through Sunday), are keen to originality and follow reviews. Jigsaw has a knife in its back from critics who gave it a 42% Rotten score. Also dulling down Jigsaw is the fact that there are three other Halloween-theme films in the market: Lionsgate’s own Madea (which chiefly draws older females), Happy Death Day and It. Still, a better turnout by Jigsaw here than Paramount’s Rings ($13M opening) and Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension ($8m opening), which in all fairness had its legs cut-off by exhibitors with its experimental PVOD rollout.
Men outweighed females, 58% to 42% last night in ComScore/Screen Engine’s PostTrak, but it’s the under 25 women (21%) and older males (30%) who loved Jigsaw the most respectively with a 76% and 70% overall positive score. Most demos are giving the Spierig-directed movie its best definite recommends. We’ll see soon what CinemaScore audiences file, but looking back Saw II earned the best grade in the franchise with a ‘B+’, while Saw V earned the lowest CinemaScore with a ‘C’.
Lionsgate built a campaign with the theme “Jigsaw is everywhere”. They highlighted that in such activations as a virtual-reality-enabled Escape Room at New York Comic-Con, a Halloween horror nights Saw maze, and in its outdoor campaign which featured everyday people with face make-up inspired by the film’s Billy the puppet.
Lionsgate touted an online socially conscious ad campaign called “All Types Welcome” with eight social media stars who had large gay, bisexual and transgender fan bases which encouraged people to donate blood across 25 cities. Created by Liongate’s chief brand officer Tim Palen, the blood drive doubled as a protest against the donation regulations set by the Food and Drug Administration that prohibit most gay or bisexual men from donating, unless they’ve foregone a sexual encounter for at least a year. 125K pints were collected.
Among those stunts moving needles on social, there was a Friday the 13th-timed digital roadblock which generated over 120M impressions across a custom Jigsaw Snapchat Lens, Twitter Trend, VEVO Playlist Sponsorship, and IGN Evil Dead 2 video game takeover.
Boo 2! A Madea Halloween is looking at $10.3M in weekend 2, -53% for a running 10-day total of $35.8M. Boo! A Madea Halloween fell 40% in its weekend 2 for a No. 1 take of $$17.2M, but didn’t have any Halloween competition a year ago with Ron Howard’s Dan Brown feature adaptation Inferno failing to ignite fire in older adults.
Older adult wide entries that hoped to vie for awards contention — DreamWorks/Universal’s Thank You for Your Service and Paramount/Black Bear’s Suburbicon are dying at this point in time with respectively $4M and $3.1M, the latter an unfortuante major low for Matt Damon among his movies that have opened north of 2,000 theaters. While critics warmed mostly to Thank You for Your Service at 77% fresh, they have turned their backs on the 1950s suburbia thriller comedy by director George Clooney with a 27% Rotten rating. Clooney had a similar B.O. disaster two years ago with his produced political comedy Our Brand Is Crisis ($3.2M opening $7M domestic B.O. off $28M production cost).
While Thank You for Your Service was made for a modest estimated cost of $20M with targeted P&A toward the Red States, it’s not bringing in its faithful in an American Sniper type of way even though the pic was directed by that pic’s Oscar-nominated screenwriter Jason Hall. American Sniper was fueled by Clint Eastwood and Bradley Cooper’s wattage, not to mention late sniper Chris Kyle had a respected following. That movie literally thrusted you into Kyle’s suspenseful POV, and the polar moral choices he had to make in a flash second. Thank You for Your Service is a serious drama that deals with soldiers’ PTSD when they come home from war, and that’s a heavy subject for moviegoers despite the feature’s earnest attempts. We saw a similar box office fate last weekend with Black Label/Sony’s Only the Brave whereby truly, gut-wrenching drama kept audiences at home. Universal reached out to the military and veteran organizations and toured the pic’s talent and filmmakers at screenings in Washington D.C. with the Department of Veteran Affairs as well as in, Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas, St. Louis, Denver and Phoenix.
On social media, RelishMix observed in advance a divided reaction to Thank You for Your Service:”Moviegoers are praising what appears to be an accurate portrayal of military life and delight in a film that shows veterans in a positive manner. However, many who have a personal connection to the war or troops who served, expressed finding the story heavy. Many are divided of the topic of warfare which could confirm this is a politically charged film.”
In addition RelishMix calls out the Shania Twain song “Soldier” heard on the pic’s soundtrack as a huge miss in regards to hooking a bigger crowd. The song was #1 on the charts a few weeks prior. “In a featurette, Shania spoke – off camera – about the song. Prior to the release, Shania also had a message that played before the trailer featuring the song in some theaters…That said, it’s good that the campaign benefited from this music video posted to Shania’s VEVO channel on YouTube (drawing 211K view). However, it’s a considerable miss for the campaign that Twain did not talk about the film specifically on any of her official pages, nor did the official FB page post her clip.”
Source: deadline
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