On today’s episode of “Daily Variety” podcast, in our Box Office segment, Variety’s Rebecca Rubin weighs the opening weekend of Steven Spielberg’s “Disclosure Day.” And Todd Spangler breaks down the surprise news of Fox Corp.’s acquisition of Roku.
On the performance of “Disclosure Day,” Rubin noted that Spielberg’s stronghold is the Gen X fans who grew up with his films.
“When you look at the turnout domestically of audiences, 60% were above the age of 35. It’s suggesting that older audiences were the ones who really turned out in force. Those are the people who grew up on Spielberg’s films. And just consider him one of the greatest directors of all time. And so it’s going to be interesting if they can expand the movie to younger audiences,” Rubin says. “It had a B grade on CinemaScore. And so it’s sort of middle of the line. It’s not a clear slam dunk, but it wasn’t rejected either. One thing to note, though, is Spielberg’s movies tend to have pretty decent box office staying power, and so it would be surprising if ticket sales just completely dropped off.”
As for the box office, the summer season to date is pacing very close to 2019 numbers — the last pre-pandemic summer period that has become an important benchmark for the film industry. With “Toy Story 5” arriving this week, box office watchers are cautiously optimistic.
“The next few weeks should be keeping up momentum,” Rubin says. “If something like ‘Toy Story 5’ is really able to smash expectations, it could close that gap even more. “And ‘Toy Story 5’ is going to be followed up with the ‘Despicable Me’ spinoff ‘Minions and Monsters.’ There’s also ‘Supergirl,’Christopher Nolan’s movie ‘The Odyssey,’ ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day.’ And so there are a lot of heavy hitters in the back half of summer that could propel this to record breaking status.”
On the Roku front, Todd Spangler, Variety‘s business editor, breaks down Fox‘s reasoning for commiting $22 billion to buying the digitial channel aggregator. It’s a subscription business rooted in areas that Fox knows well.
Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch says the deal “is going to be transformative,” Spangler says. “Roku is used in more than 100 million households. That’s a very strong nexus point for them to capture eyeballs in terms of selling ads on the content that streams over the Roku platform and getting a cut of the transactions that occur on the Roku platform as well.”
(Pictured: “Disclosure Day”)
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