Windows worked for generations because it made the pie larger. We sold the same thing to the same person over and over again. So, it's not a zero-sum game is the idea is growing the pie and making it larger. This is the Box Office Podcast. I'm Daniel Laria, the editorial director of Box Office Pro, The Pulse of theatrical Exhibition. And in this week's episode, we are joined by Greg Marcus, the chairman, CEO, and president of Marcus Corporation, the parent company of Marcus Theaters, one of the largest theatrical exhibition circuits in North America. Greg and I go over our insights and just feedback from Cineacon 2025. A long, long week in Las Vegas, but wonderful with exciting updates on the studio side. And Greg shares his thoughts on everything from the 45-day window pitch to the four to five trailer cap in the pre-show and even his thoughts on this Narnia Netflix deal going to IMAX. How, if in any way at all that benefits theaters. That's coming up on the second half of this episode. In our panel today, we've got Rebecca Paulie back from sick leave. Rebecca, welcome back.
Thanks. I got positive COVID tests the Thursday before Cineacon and yeah, there just wasn't any way for me to make it there. But I feel like luckily I know exactly where to go to catch up on what went on over the week.
Yeah. Yeah, you do have an inside line on everything. And joining me again here is Chad Kennard back from Vegas. This time healthy. I think you and I are holding up so far.
Yeah. So, we're crossing our fingers on that. Yeah. I mean, I am exhausted. And of course, I come back from like a trip where I have maybe 3 hours of sleep a night just with our deadlines. And my 2-year-old is having a sleep regression. 5 a.m. wakeups all week coming back from Cineacon. That's a new brand of torture. I am Oh, yeah. Yeah. Just take me back to the casino, please. But it's always nice to come back home to a crying infant.
And especially to a booming box office because after the worst March since 1995, that's the worst March in 30 years at the box office, out of nowhere, Warner Brothers, the Minecraft movie comes out and completely overperforms a $163 million opening weekend, bigger than Barbie, coming in. To give you an example here, guys, the March box office ended up making just under 400 million total, all titles combined domestically. Minecraft pumps in 163 million, nearly half of that, into the box office over one weekend here. And we are off and running in a recovery that we expected to come in on Memorial Day weekend. It now starts in April. And man, I always liken this industry to a heavyweight boxing match up because of course I would where one punch changes everything. You can be losing the fight 11 out of the 12 rounds. One punch at the right time, one movie at the right time, if it connects, it changes everything. And that's what I think we're looking at here in 2025. Rebecca, we got some updates from our friends in Exhibition on some of the record-breaking numbers that they experienced in their theaters.
Yeah, I mean broke a ton of records. Like you say, Cineplex pointing out that their grosses for that first weekend are more than half of what every film for them earned last month. And the same stat true for April of 2024.
That's incredible. So in three days, Cineplex, the largest chain in Canada, basically hit half their total box office of March and of April last year, which I mean, respectively, right? Not combined, but still amazing stats. This is the typical and I think welcome statistic for the industry of late. Premium formats really overindexing for this title. 33% of the opening weekend audience for Minecraft at AMC theaters came from premium auditoriums of some sort. This comes right in line with AMC's Cinecon announcement of really expanding their footprint in terms of Dolby, IMAX, ScreenX, 4DX auditoriums in the United States. So definitely meshes together. Cinearth also had its highest grossing weekend ever in a D-BOX motion seating auditorium format release. So, always great to see that.
That's the one that I've never had an opportunity to try because they don't have any like posts here in New York.
Yeah, you have to find your way to a D-BOX Auditorium. I actually made a point to go see our friends there at their booth at Cinecon because they, I don't know if you know this, D-BOX does the motion seating integration for a number of racing teams. So, when it comes to like a racing simulation, in my opinion, there's no immersive seat that's better. So, I can't wait to see F1 specifically in that format. But it's great to hear that you don't need car races. Minecraft blocks are just as good. Record opening for Cinemark in this format.
Yeah. And Cineplex as well. 64% of opening weekend ticket sales for Minecraft movie coming from all premium experiences combined. We're seeing records being broken at chains across the board. And of course, that momentum doesn't stop on the premium format side. Chad, looking at the daily splits here, it looked like Saturday ended up overperforming significantly compared to the other days of the weekend.
Yeah, Saturday estimated 60 million, Friday 58 million, and then Sunday 39 million. Incredible results here. It's very rare to see a Saturday gross come in ahead of the combined Thursday previews and Friday total. We had this, I think, just reflecting the family nature of this title, a $313 million global launch for a Minecraft movie. Again, just incredible results here. Looking over at the top overseas markets, we had a $19.3 million opening in the UK, making it the top overseas market on the weekend. In second place was China with 14.5 million. Third place was Mexico with 11.1 million. And fourth place was Germany with 10.3 million. That's the top four here on the overseas side.
It's great to see this momentum in the industry. And after all of the titles we saw last week, I don't know about you, Chad, but I'm feeling really, really positive for a change. The weather's getting warmer, like flowers are blooming. Forget about my child waking up at 5:00 a.m. The box office is clicking. Gen Z is coming back to the movie theaters. That's what we needed, Rebecca.
Yeah. And we've seen how the success of one title can help that momentum leading into what promises to be a big summer.
Yeah. And I think that's something that the industry really needs to capitalize on. And that reminds me on a press release that we got from Cinema United's Cinema Foundation last week, Chad, where an initiative that was teased during Cinecon on a trailer program of upcoming footage of a film slated for later this year is going to make it over to moviegoers nationwide. Can you tell me about this at the movies initiative? When is it? What is it? How much does it cost?
Yeah, the Cinema Foundation rolling out the announcement of the sneak preview showcase, which is going to give some trailers, some behind-the-scenes looks, things that we saw at CinemaCon, but bringing that to moviegoers everywhere. It's happening April 22nd and April 24th, I believe, at 6 p.m. local time. The tickets are $3, but that is funding that's going to go to industry charities. Variety of the children's charity, Will Rogers Motion Picture Pioneers Foundation, and the Cinema Foundation. So, you can find more out at at the.co and it'll be interesting to see what they choose to reveal. All five of the big studios. We've got Amazon, MGM, too. They're throwing in there as well.
That's great to see them included in this, too. A really good initiative. We've been saying this for years. It's great for us in the industry to check out all this upcoming footage and get excited about movies, but imagine the value of this being available to moviegoers and that's going to be happening as Chad mentioned on April 22nd and 24th. So Rebecca, you missed Cinecon, but you can experience a 70-minute version at the movies.
I'm getting such trailer FOMO. Just before you hopped on, I was just quizzing Chad about like what did we see for Predator Badlands?
Oh, we saw we saw Predator. Not the whole thing, of course, but we saw enough to get really excited. Dude, that looks so good.
Oh, I mean, not that I miss seeing everyone I know at CinemaCon. I don't miss those staying up until midnight to record evenings, but yeah, it kind of it's a little bit of absence makes the heart fonder situation this year.
I got to say, three bucks a theater near you and you're good. Yeah, we really did get to see, I think, a lot of exciting movies and I really hope that audiences do turn out for this initiative from the Cinema Foundation coming up later this month. I'm not sure they'll be able to see the extended grizzly footage we saw from the new Final Destination, Bloodlines.
Yeah. Yeah. I don't think that's going to make it out there. You might have to break that R. That's a hard R if you do that.
Yeah, cuz that's the whole point of going to see the movie. So, I don't want to be spoiled on it. I'm seeing it anyways. I have to say I had a lot of reactions obviously at Cinecon and you can listen to all of those reactions in any of our daily episodes from our podcast that we recorded last week. But Chad, that was probably the most popcorn moment of all the footage we saw. Guessing how that kill scene was going to go. It was grizzly. It was kind of gross. It kept you guessing. It's just there's a very fun year at the movies for folks out there and I'm glad that it's already started. I'm glad there's already packed audiences with this Minecraft movie. I don't know if you saw in Antwerp, Belgium, we ran this story on our website. There is a Minecraft themed 4DX auditorium where they just decked out the entire auditorium Minecraft style. I would love for these themed auditorium concepts, especially on the PLF basis, right? Because you're just playing that one title for one, two, at most three weeks. Just deck that out in a different theme every time. Make it a little bit more immersive wherever you can. Those little details go a long way. You can check out that story on our website, boxofficepro.com. And really beyond that, I don't want to distract from the good news. We're back. We're making money. There's movies coming out soon. And this whole industry, I think, is more committed than ever in making this year a success. And to speak more on that is Greg Marcus, the chairman, CEO, and president of Marcus Corporation, the parent company of Marcus Theaters. Joining me in a conversation with his insights and feedback from Cinecon 2025 that is coming to you right after this word from our sponsor this week, Arts Alliance Media.
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Well, Greg, welcome back to the podcast. Always good to talk around the Cinecon season. I don't want to get too familiar here, but it's a tradition by this point. I feel it's a nice catch up to get your thoughts and insights on everything that happened in Cinecon.
