Photo credit: Ketchup Entertainment.
It’s another week at the Box Office Report, and it’s another week where Spider-Man: Brand New Day and The Odyssey are breaking records, but there’s a far more interesting story for the Report.
The two films finished at first and third at the Box Office, respectively. Spider-Man, making $22.5M domestically this weekend, is about to become the third highest-grossing film of all-time, and The Odyssey overperformed its tracking, making ~$14.3M, to the point where it’s now projected to become the highest-grossing film in the history of Universal. These are massive box office stories and massive box office performances, but they’re also films we’ve been talking about ad nauseam, that there’s nothing much new that we can add to the discourse that hasn’t been said in previous Box Office Reports. Naturally, the two films to circle this week are new releases: Coyote vs. Acme and The Dog Stars.
We said last week in our DSR BOR that Coyote vs. Acme was likely to underperform. The story of the film, however, is so much more than that. The Warner Bros office that shelved the completed film was always likely to be proven right, but the ability of this film to take on a life of its own has given it sort of stuff of legend. The film itself is very well-done, kind of a Who Framed Roger Rabbit? meets My Cousin Vinny with Looney Tunes characters. John Cena has terrific comedic timing and if you thought he was born to make championship belts spin, it pales in comparison to what he can do opposite cartooon characters. Its gag rate is top notch, it hits every nostalgia beat while still accomplishing a wholly original feel, and the crux of it all comes in the fact that they made you care about not just Wile E. Coyote and his desire for homicide in the most violent of manner, but ultimately the gamesmanship and camraderie he feels with the Roadrunner. The movie itself is a winm, and in an era where the theatrical experience is seeing a major comeback because of the response Gen Z is taking against the rise of artificial intelligence, everything we’ve come to know about algorithms, the lack of shared third spaces, and a variety of other issues facing their generation, the human expression in good art is something that’s very important to the generation now. In a way, this film reached cult status before it released because of how, to steal a phrase from Daffy Duck, despicable the handling of the film is.
Regardless, at a $70M budget this film would have had tomake around $175M to breakeven for Warner Bros. It was never going to do that, but it did finish second at around $16M domestic. The thing that makes this a massive success is that the last Looney Tunes theatrical venture, The Day the Earth Blew Up, made less than Coyote vs. Acme’s opening weekend its entire global theatrical run. Ketchup Entertainment saved both films to distribute, but the previous had always been earmarked for streaming whereas this one was earmarked for erasure. Warner Bros is the evil Acme corp in this scenario, and we all are Wile E. Coyote.
This won’t be, on paper, a massive hit for what Warners standards would have been, and the problem is budgeting a Looney Tunes film at $70M this decade in the first place. Realistically, how many people of the current generation hear ‘meep meep’ and know what you’re talking about? But that doesn’t mean it isn’t a beloved generational franchise, and while it certainly made more because of the only controversy that wouldn’t have been there if Warner had released it as planned, this is a massive win for a small distributor like Ketchup, because their financials are different than a big conglomerate. For Ketchup, this does three things:
Their acquisition cost wasn’t $70M. They spent around $50M to acquire, $10M to market rather than that of a big studio that traditionally spends its budget on marketing primarily because they don’t necessarily have it, but they also didn’t need to do as much marketing for the film that already had such a robust online reputation. Factoring in the fact that they reportedly sold the overseas distribution rights for $20M, that offsets the $60M they spent and had made back a third of the operating costs before it even hit theatres. If this can make $30M domestic over its life in theatres, and it’s already more than halfway there, then they’ll likely make a profit as seeing as they haven’t made a deal with a streamer. Unlike their previous Looney Tunes film, this isn’t a distribution license, it’s a rights ownership, meaning they can shop it and create a bidding war on the ancillary markets.
People are now far more familiar with ‘Ketchup Entertainment’ as a brand because of the good public relations they’re receiving as patrons of the arts. The average person didn’t go see Goodrich, because Flash jokes aside, Keaton walkups weren’t really a thing in 2024. This is their first major film and it’s creating a buzz about a franchise a majority of people alive watched growing up.
It could revitalize Looney Tunes as a brand. If this does hit with younger generations, who’s to say the franchise doesn’t see a massive renaissance? If it does see that, Ketchup is now firmly entrenched in the Looney Tunes business. In a world where IP is king, becoming a de facto distributor for one of Hollywood’s greatest brands would be a massive deal for such a small, independent company.
Coyote vs. Acme isn’t going to make what it would have needed to make for Warner, but it’s a major win for Ketchup. What isn’t a major win? Ridley Scott’s The Dog Stars. The film opened to just $8M domestic, and less than $20M globally on a $110M budget for 20th Cenutry. Suffice to say, this will not make money. In fact, this century, his movies haven’t really made any money. But the thing with Ridley Scott: Blade Runner lost money theatrically and has become one of the most beloved films of all-time. This man made Alien, Thelma and Louise, Gladiator, Black Hawk Down, The Martian. Ridley is a director whose films always find an audience later in time and become beloved, and at 88, Disney can afford to continue funding Ridley Scott films and treat one of the greatest mainstream auteurs as such in his twilight years. The Dog Stars isn’t Alien good, but it is the kind of throwback film from Ridley’s heyday you don’t see much anymore, and that’s going to make it one that’s going to be fondly revisited ten years down the road. Who does this hurt? Jacob Elordi.
Hear me out. Elordi has been critically panned and every movie he’s done has underperformed outside of Frankstein, where he’s in a supporting role that exclusively utilizes his physicality. He has a great look and he’s very physical, but he isn’t very charismatic, he doesn’t emote well, there’s very little variety in his characterizations or vocalizations. There’s not much to Jacob Elordi as an actor. However, after the roaring success that was Euphoria, there’s been a lot of stake put into making him a movie star. The Priscilla biopic where he played Elvis Presley, arguably the most famous American musician to ever live, lost money. The Wuthering Heights adaptation that leaned into his sultriness opposite Margot Robbie massively underperformed. Here we are: Jacob Elordi in a big summer blockbuster with one of the most beloved directors of all-time and it opens to…$8M. At what point does Elordi slip back into supporting roles that ask very little of him to actually do, or go back to doing Netflix romance shlock? There’s a nice career to be had in independent films for him, but he’s struggling to be the leading man people expect him to be and have been saying he will be for years. He’s still under 30, so perhaps he can figure it out, but for as much as people laugh at his Euphoria co-star Sydney Sweeney, she’s objectively been far more bankable coming out of the show.
Insidious: Out of the Further made another $10M this weekend. We discussed the film in last weeks BOR, and I discussed the film on this morning’s edition of the 2:17 Horror Podcast which can be found here. My opinion on its box office performance hasn’t changed much from last week: it’ll do more than well enough to make a profit and lead to another installment, but it won’t be the breakout hit that was the most recent Conjuring film.
Buddy, The End of Oak Street, PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie, Mutiny, and Tony rounded out the top ten for this week. Outside of Buddy, all of these were discussed on last week’s Box Office Report with very little change. Buddy is going to perform well as an Indie horror for Roadside Attractions. Not much unusual for them: a low-budget film turns into a modest success. Those are the kinds of movies that may encourage a healthy box office, but unfortunately doesn’t encourage a lot of words from me. Tony still being able to make $2M this weekend despite its low theatre count and low total last weekend is an encouraging sign for Dominic Sessa, who is still somebody we are very high on at DSR/CBC after how incredible he is in not only Tony, but The Holdovers a few years ago.
Next week is a smaller scale week at the box office. Very action heavy for new release with Fall 2, By Any Means, and Onslaught. There’s also a new Tom and Jerry movie, but that’ll be interesting to see how it performs for similar reasons as to why a movie like The Day the Earth Blew Up didn’t work for Looney Tunes, but also that it changes the animation style and from the previews, hurts the feel of the franchise. However, we’ll have to discuss it in two weeks because I will be out of town next weekend, and thus the BOR will be taking a week off.
Jameus Mooney is an entertainment writer for Comicbook Clique, having covered the entertainment industry for years. You can follow him on Twitter here, and Letterboxd here. You can also listen to his horror podcast, The 2:17 Horror Podcast, at the DeathArts XIII YouTube channel.