Earlier this year, movie theaters were freaking out, right?
Cause after COVID and then kind of like we had just started
recovering from COVID and the theater business,
when they had the writers and actor strike last year,
which proceeded to completely gunk up the release schedule
and things like that.
So the first part of this year,
with the exception of Dune 2, was kind of like a desert
for new films, right?
And people were really freaking out for a while.
And things kind of took a turn in July
with the release of Deadpool and Wolverine
and Inside Out 2 earlier that summer,
did really, really well.
Well, this weekend, they set a record, right?
This is the highest grossing Thanksgiving weekend in history.
It beat the weekends where Endgame was out in theaters
for Thanksgiving, right?
It beat a bunch of stuff.
It was a big, big weekend for the theaters.
Let's jump over here to the thing and we can show you.
So here you go.
This is from good old box office mojo.
Moana opened with 139 million this year, this weekend, right?
Wicked made another 81 million, right?
Which is only a 30% drop, which is huge.
Huge for, that's a very, very small drop for box office,
especially when you have a 100 million plus opening weekend.
Gladiators still didn't have a huge drop.
31 million, Red One made 12.
They made a buttload of money this weekend.
The theaters were packed over the holiday weekend.
And again, Moana 2 just straight out the gate.
Just blast off to 139 million.
For a total gross so far of 225 million.
Wicked is at 263, Gladiators at 111.
So what do you think, Jay?
I mean, have we finally gotten over the hangover?
Like our movie theater's back?
Yeah, I mean, I would say it is.
I mean, it's kind of sad that we're not coming out
with those Dune and Pumpcorn buckets.
Maybe that's why people finally get tired of those things.
So they're going back to the movies.
We had the Deadpool and Wolverine one too.
The Wolverine one I forgot about, yeah.
Oh gosh.
Yeah, I think they're back.
I mean, and this is great.
This is, you can always tell that your society
is moving up a level by the quality of movies
that are being released in the theater.
When they're very high, like Moana's playing,
people aren't going to get assassinated on the street,
anything like that.
So I mean, but no, this is great.
And I do think like the movie kind of businesses back.
And the AMC stock is also, I've noticed,
kind of on a upward trend right now.
It's ticking up.
I actually had my wife, I said,
should I buy some more AMC stock?
I was like, yes, this was right before Thanksgiving.
I was like, yes, buy it now.
Because they're going to have a great fourth quarter.
Because we also got stuff coming.
That Mufasa movies coming out soon.
Oh yeah.
Right?
Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is coming out soon.
Yeah.
Right?
With Keanu Reeves as Shadow the Hedgehog.
I'm sorry.
What?
Yes.
I did not know that.
Oh yes.
Keanu is Shadow the Hedgehog.
That's epic.
OK.
And I don't know, have you seen the first two Sonic movies?
Yeah.
They were, I thought they were solid.
Not like, this is the greatest movie,
but they're just fun, solid.
And I think they captured the spirit of Sonic the Hedgehog
very, very well.
Did you watch the Knuckles series?
I did.
OK.
I have not.
I thought it was, it's not as good as the films,
but it's well put together.
And Idris as Knuckles is great.
Thank God for Idris Elba.
I did see, I did take my little one to see Moana 2
over the weekend.
It's a solid film.
Once again, Dwayne The Rock John said, just kills it as Maui.
OK.
Like he was born, and they're doing the live action.
They're actually filming the live action right now
with him as Maui for the original.
The music was not as good as the first one,
but also it wasn't written by Lin-Manuel Miranda.
So take that for what it's worth.
Glad Eater 2 is a solid film.
I haven't gotten around to seeing Wicked yet.
It's not really, it's not really in my wheelhouse.
And it's a long movie.
It's two hours and 40 minutes.
Yeah, but I mean, like it's not that long.
Dude, that's a long time.
That's a long movie.
I don't know.
I think you're just like, just, you know,
psyching yourself out.
Yeah, somebody in the chat brought up,
I want to see Wicked, but knowing it's
have the musical and they plan on doing a second movie, met.
That's a thing.
It's a risk.
It's a risk to do part one, part two, right?
You saw it with Lord of the Rings.
You see it with Infinity War and Endgame.
You see a lot of that stuff.
So it's that.
Again, I'm really happy for them.
Hell, Venom even made 2 million in the theaters.
And it's like seventh week, eighth week, sixth week.
Wow.
Venom made 2 million.
Bonhoeffer, which I've seen some stuff about.
That made 2.3.
Again, Red One made 12.
It's up to 75.
It's it's not going to break even, but it's getting close.
Yeah.
I mean, like you brought, I think it is good.
I think that having shared cultural touchstones is good.
Yeah.
Core memories, core memories, stuff
that you can make inside jokes about with your friends.
Yeah.
Right.
So I never see that as a bad thing.
I will be curious to see how much Moana 2 drops this weekend.
But the fact that it came out that strong, the fact
that Wicked's still going strong, and I think
it's going to continue to go strong.
Let's take a look.
Hang on a second.
I want to look at the release schedule.
Let me see.
Changes.
What do we got?
Hang on.
Trying to find the release schedule.
So what's still coming out?
Upcoming releases.
Here we go.
So December, do we have anything big this weekend?
No.
Nothing major this weekend, which is probably good.
Oh, Craven the Hunter comes out on the 12th.
And they released the first eight minutes of it.
Have you watched?
They released the first eight minutes online.
And it's doing pretty good.
People are pretty happy.
I know that Madam Webb and Morvious were both.
But the Venom movies are solid.
I want to think that Craven's going to be interesting.
It looks so good.
I hope it's so good.
I hope it's good.
Madam Webb is probably the only Marvel movie I've never
finished.
I got like 30 minutes in and just left.
Let's be clear.
That's a Sony movie.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Totally.
That's Sony, not Marvel.
And that has to do with Marvel's, with the rights
that Sony has.
So Sony is contractually required to release a Spider-Man
movie or Spider-Man adjacent movie.
I think it's every three years.
And if they don't, they lose the rights to Spider-Man.
So even if stuff bombs, they have to keep releasing films.
December 13th.
What's that?
Who's the CEO of Sony?
Right now, Sony Pictures Group?
Yeah.
Who is this person?
Tony Vincicchiera is the CEO of Sony Pictures.
Do we know anything about him?
Let me see what I got about him.
Where did he come from?
He was a Texas Pacific group.
So hedge fund dude.
Ten years of Fox.
Not Fox, well, part of Fox News, but Fox Cable Network, Fox
Sports.
Fox Networks like the Simpson stuff.
What else did he do?
Hurst Argyle, television, CBS.
He's been in the entertainment business for a long time.
Long, long time.
Started as a station manager of WBZ TV in Boston in 1986.
So not, yeah, he's been around for a minute.
So that'll, but the Sony deal.
So when Marvel, before Marvel was acquired by Disney,
Marvel was going through hard financial times.
And if everybody remembers, they were selling off rights
to anybody who would buy them just to stay afloat.
The comics division would, right?
Which is how you ended up with X-Men at Fox,
Hulk at Universal, Spider-Man at Sony.
Now, one of the reasons, one of the reasons that Disney
Fox is they wanted their rights back and Fox had a lot of them.
Fox had Fantastic Four, Fox had the X-Men,
Fox had a few others and Marvel was like, we need that back.
Okay, you're, we're just going to buy Fox.
It's fine, right?
Sony got the rights to Spider-Man, which is again,
this is before the Sam Raimi Spider-Man, but Toby Maguire,
right, because they produced those movies, right?
And they said, we want, but that, but part of their deal
is they have to produce a new Spider-Man movie
every three years.
If they fail, the rights revert back to Marvel.
So Sony will never not release something, right?
To reset that clock, right?
Which is why you get all this stuff.
Universal has the distribution rights for Hulk,
which is why somebody was on John Campus,
they were asking him about this and he answered,
why is it there any solo Hulk films?
Because if Disney made a solo Hulk film,
Universal is the automatic distributor.
Disney doesn't get to distribute it, universal does, right?
That's why they can put Hulk in their movies,
but it can't be a Hulk movie.
Okay, because that NBC universal becomes the distributor
and they don't want that.
So that's why we get a lot of Hulk, but no Hulk films,
not since the Edward and Incredible Hulk,
which is I think the only one they did under that deal
and that Disney was like, screw that,
we're not doing that anymore.
And then of course Marvel and Sony have the deal
to allow Spider-Man to be in the MCU
and they have a fun sharing deal.
So all the Spider-Man movies with Tom Holland
that are produced by Disney, they have a deal
where they share the production costs
and then each of them get a cut of the box office.
And the box offices on those have been so good
that Sony's just like, dope.
We're happy, right?
I will say their Spider-Verse films have been amazing.
Oh yes.
The two Spider-Verse films have been great.
The third one's in production now.
I have every faith that Lord Miller
are gonna knock that third one out of the park, no doubt.
Again, the Venom trilogy has been pretty solid.
I think they've kind of been a mild step down,
but I think Tom Hardy has really,
he cracked the code with Venom.
Yeah.
But yeah, we have a lot to look forward to.
Oh, here we go, what else is coming?
War of the Raheerum, this is one I'm really looking forward
to.
The Lord of the Rings, War of the Raheerum,
which is an animated film in Lord of the Rings universe
that's about something, the War of the Raheerum
that happens before then.
Then we have Sonic the Hedgehog and Mufasa,
which I am really looking forward to.
Weirdly, we don't really have a lot on Christopher Stade,
Nosferatu being the most,
the big one there.
And that brings us to the end of the year when,
we get to the beginning of the year again
where people stop releasing stuff
because we're into Oscar season and we're done.
Until February, which is when Captain America comes out.
Right?
So,
do you prefer movies in the theater, Jay?
Oh, heck yeah, 100%.
They just hit better.
What was the last movie you saw in the theater?
Last movie.
I'm pretty sure it's Wicked.
You saw Wicked?
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that was the last one
because...
Well, it was only two weeks ago, yeah.
Yeah, I did the screen unseen Monday,
that Monday, it turned out to be Gladiator 2,
so then I had to cancel my Gladiator 2 tickets.
Then I went and saw Wicked, I think that Saturday.
So see, all you gotta do is go get you some Moana 2
sometime this week,
and you'll have the top three movies and theaters right now.
Yeah, maybe this week and I'll go.
I have to see it.
I think it's a solid, again,
I think it's a solid movie, again, it's fun.
Did you watch the first one?
Yeah.
So there you go.
So yeah, here's to hoping the movie theaters are back.
We like movie theaters.
They're so...
They just hit different, I think, in the theaters.
Like Gladiator or Star Wars or stuff like that.
Like I think seeing it in the theater is different
than watching it on your couch.
Yeah, I think...
And maybe this is just me,
but when you get outside of your house,
it becomes like an event, right?
Especially after COVID.
And then if I'm on my couch,
there's a million things to distract me.
My dogs could come up and be like,
look at what I decided to eat today,
and I'm like, cool, or they need to go outside.
People are texting me on my phone.
Like I don't...
Like movies aren't probably getting 100% my attention.
But when I go to a movie theater,
I'm like locked in, right?
Or at least I hope I am.
So actually that brings up something to talk about.
So I was actually talking to a friend about it the other day.
So I know you have A-list, right?
Yes.
Right?
And then my other buddy, Chris, has A-list
and we were talking to our friend Colin,
and he was like, why do you guys have this A-list thing?
And I'm like, three movies a week for $21, right?
And here's the thing,
somebody in the chat brought up the cost of movie tickets.
The reason I have stuck with A-list, right?
And I think you'll back me up on this is,
if I average two movies a month, I've paid for it.
I've paid for my A-list subscription.
And unlike Regal, AMC does not charge you an upgrade fee
for IMAX or Dolby.
So if you're going to like the Dolby Prime
or the IMAX screenings, they don't charge you extra.
It's still one of your free tickets.
You get a free upgrade from medium to large
on popcorn and drinks.
You get a free birthday popcorn, free birthday drink,
and you still rack up your points for all your concessions.
So I generally have 10 or 15 bucks a month
in free reward stuff.
Yep.
The other cool thing that we've now used a couple of times
is if you have multiple friends with A-list,
you could do a thing called entourage
where you book all the seats and I'm like,
hey, I'm booking this for my entourage.
There's Jay and Chris and Doug.
And it just sends them their tickets.
And I don't gotta like Venmo or take a screenshot
or do anything.
It just goes here.
And then when it pops into their app,
it's like, hey, this is one of your three for the week.
Yep.
Love it.
I'll tell you, if you're planning on seeing more
than two movies, two or more movies a month,
if you can find two or more movies a month to see,
you can do it.
The other thing that was brought up on again,
another one of the shows I watch is,
and Jay, I want you to talk about the screen and scene
again in a second, is I think it's helping the movie business
in that if there's like a movie on the bubble, right?
Where you're like, do I wanna see it in the theater?
If you have A-list, right?
You're more likely to be like, you know what?
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm gonna go, I'll go catch it
because I don't have to pay any extra.
Like I saw the new Zemeckis movie here with Tom Hanks,
right?
Mm-hmm.
And like, had I not had A-list in some time,
I would, I probably would have caught that one
when it came to streaming.
But I had a moment, Jess was off doing something with Jordan
and I was like, you know what?
Eff it.
Boop.
One of my three movies that I watched that month,
but I didn't have to pay for it.
You know, didn't pay any extra, just went in and saw it.
So there you go.
And then Jay, you've seen a couple of the screen and scenes.
Explain how that system works.
Oh, it's great.
So screen and scene is a cheaper movie.
So a lot of people don't like to use their A-lister
for the screen and scene.
It's typically, I wanna say like $8,
but you do not know what movie it is.
And the movie that you are seeing is,
you are seeing it before it releases to the general Republic.
Republic, oh my God.
General public.
So it's typically like a week or so
before it actually releases.
You pay like $8.
It'll tell you the ratings.
It'll say like rated R or rated, I don't know, PG-13
or whatever you go on that.
And the runtime, they always tell you the runtime.
Well, they kind of give you,
they don't give you the precise runtime.
They change the numbers up a little bit
because then you can't,
you can kind of guess what movie there is.
Like what movie it's going to be.
Yeah.
So the runtime's not exactly correct.
And you can go on Reddit and there's like a whole,
there's a whole Reddit like just dedicated
to like people guessing what movie it is.
Now, if you are in Seattle, you have the luxury.
So you go on the app, you pick your seats,
like you typically would $8.
It's supposed to be a surprise.
You're not supposed to know until you get to the theater
and like movie starts playing and you're like sick,
I'm watching Gladiator.
But because we live in Seattle,
if you really, really, really want to,
you can actually go on to Reddit.
And the East Coast people are going to post
like two hours before Screen Unseen actually shows
in Seattle because I want to say Screen Unseen's
typically around like seven PM.
Yeah.
So you can just Google and be like,
ah, what's the Screen Unseen for today?
And then be like, okay, I don't want to go see that movie
and then cancel your tickets before it actually airs
and get your money back, blah, blah, blah.
Or get your AMC ticket for the week back.
Yeah.
But the thing I love about the Screen Unseen
is that it forces me to see a movie
that I typically wouldn't see.
So like people were pissed that Gladiator 2
was the Screen Unseen.
Which is silly to me
because you still got to see it early.
Yeah.
You still got to see it like four days before it came out.
Yep.
So I was like, oh, sick, here we go.
But a lot of people online were pissed.
I think they did that to try to drum up the talk
and the hype of Gladiator 2.
I also think some of the Screen Unseen's
have been pretty bad.
Like they're kind of indie films and stuff like that
where it's like, and people go in and they're like,
eh, or what was that one really bad horror,
the really graphic horror movie that came out this year?
Somebody in the chat helped me out.
There was one that came out this year
and they did that as a Screen Unseen
and people were really upset about it.
I like the concept.
And again, about the good reason to have A-list, right?
By the way, hashtag not a sponsor,
but AMC, if you'd like to give me some of your money,
I would take it, right?
If you'd like to sponsor the show,
we're already A-list members.
Yeah.
Okay.
So let us know what you think.
And then we'll see you in the back.
Do you have A-list?
Do you like A-list?
What do you think?
I like A-list.
See you all in theoder.