‘Sing 2’ Shows That General Audiences Don’t Care About Spoilers

Beyond just Spider-Man: No Way Home (around $629 million domestic and $1.408 billion worldwide thus far), the one bright spot for the Christmas box office remains Universal and Illumination’s Sing 2. Just as the original Sing thrived alongside Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, the animated jukebox sequel is holding its own alongside the MCU superhero flick. To be fair, it’s likely $130 million domestic finish is well below Sing’s $271 million domestic finish, but its current $150 million worldwide-and-counting cume (with lots left in the can) is thus-far just fine on an $85 million budget. Oh, and with $96 million as of today, it’ll pass $100 million tomorrow and has already passed Walt Disney’s Encanto ($92 million) as the biggest “pandemic-era” animated feature in domestic earnings. This, despite a marketing campaign that gives away the whole movie.

Sony made the right call in terms of what to reveal and not reveal in their Spider-Man: No Way Home marketing. They used the returning villains (among them Alfred Molina’s Doc Ock and Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin) as a hook so as to hide the appearances of previous Peter Parkers (Toby Maguire and Andrew Garfield) who show up in the third act to lend a hand to Tom Holland’s MCU Spider-Man. Sure, these appearances were rumored and speculated upon for the last year or so, but everyone kept quiet or lied when the subject was broached. But it wasn’t “spoiler-fever” that drove a $260 million opening weekend. The online obsession with spoilers (and what constitutes a spoiler) is not related to real-world consumption. Thanos may have demanded your silence, but he didn’t require it.

Avengers: Infinity War still grossed $679 million domestic from a $257 million opening weekend despite the “half the world dies” cliffhanger becoming public knowledge right as the film opened globally. Star Wars: The Force Awakens had arguably three plot twists (Kylo Ren is the son of Han and Leia, Kylo kills Han Solo and Rey is unofficially anointed the film’s “special”) that reviews and coverage took care not to reveal early on. That info was public knowledge minutes after the film’s $529 million global release, yet the picture grossed $2.068 billion, including a $937 million domestic cume from a $247 million opening weekend. It no more dropped dead once the secrets were revealed than did The Dark Knight Rises once we all could Google whether Bruce Wayne died at the end. Ditto Skyfall with Judi Dench’s M.

And that’s not even getting into “give it all away” marketing campaigns from generation’s past. Think Robert Zemeckis’ Cast Away. Audiences arguably wanted to know whether they weren’t going to pay to watch a 2.5-hour drama where Tom Hanks starves to death on a deserted island, so assuring folks that he eventually made it home was a viable marketing strategy. Cue a $40 million Fri-Sun Christmas 2000 opening and a $233 million domestic cume, the second-biggest of that year behind The Grinch ($260 million). The second trailer for Wes Craven’s Red Eye gave away the whole movie in essentially chronological order (including the main assassination plot failing), yet it still grossed $58 million domestic from a $16 million debut in summer 2005. Another film that gave it all away? Both Sing films.

Both Sing films were sold pretty much identically, which makes sense when your first film earns decent reviews and becomes the biggest grossing movie ever ($271 million) never to be #1 at the daily or weekend box office. $634 million worldwide on a $75 million budget means something went right. The first Sing (a “lets put on a show” jukebox musical featuring anthromorphic singing animals) featured a terrific “sell it like a drama” trailer attached to The Secret Life of Pets (a comedy that opened with $104 million in summer 2016, still a record for a based-on-nothing debut), one which emphasized the aspirational “anyone can be a music star and overcome their traumas” nature of the story. It used David Guetta’s “Without You” as an emotional through point as was frankly one of the best mainstream trailers of 2016.

It also set up each major conflict, from Taron Egerton’s Johnny not relating to his criminal dad (Idris Elba) to Scarlett Johansson’s Ash finding self-worth after leaving a toxic relationship. That’s fine, but the final trailer revealed the happy ending for almost all of the film’s core conflicts. However, the “all spoilers” marketing didn’t remotely impact the film’s theatrical box office, unless you want to argue that it helped by assuring parents that the kid-friendly toon wouldn’t end on a downer note. Likewise, the final trailer for Sing 2 (which played in early November with Eternals) both introduced and resolved its core conflicts in a single trailer. It opened with the emotional climax of the film, namely Bono’s widowed singer finding the strength to play again and taking the stage during “With Or Without You.”

It then revealed Johnny’s struggles to master dancing while offering his climactic triumph, doing likewise with Reese Witherspoon’s Rosetta and her fear of heights. Yes, there was plenty left to discover in the film, including the nuts and bolts of the sequels next “put on a show” plot. More importantly, the trailer, set to U2’s “With Or Without You,” is a potent pitch promising poignant kid-sized melodrama with the animal stars overcoming their real-world adult problems. It’s a terrific trailer, one that played great on an IMAX and/or Dolby screen, but it also contradicts online-specific narratives about audiences demanding spoiler-free experiences. It’s not that they crave knowing everything before they buy a ticket, it’s that they don’t care either way as long as the trailers, commercials and artwork convince them to see the film.

There is still value in being able to sell your movie without giving away the buzziest elements. You obviously shouldn’t sell a mystery by revealing whodunit. Fox deserved credit for selling Gone Girl with mostly the film’s first half, and Warner Bros.’ dynamite marketing campaign for A Star Is Born mostly confined its storytelling reveals to the initial “Jackson meets Ally” reels. Disney’s Frozen campaign was a master class in selling a pretty good animated comedy (one that was unapologetically a female-fronted princess fantasy) that turned out to be a spectacular animated musical which helped boost buzz and legs after a boffo $93 million Wed-Sun Thanksgiving debut. But selling (for example) The Matrix Resurrections or Blade Runner 2049 entirely on “Hey, it’s another one of those things you like” only works if people want another.

If you know that folks will show up to Spider-Man: No Way Home, Star Wars: The Force Awakens or The Dark Knight Rises, you can play it coy. Word got out about No Time to Die’s surprise ending as quickly as you’d expect, and audiences kept showing up to the tune of $161 million domestic $774 million worldwide. The notion that general audiences won’t show up or have their moviegoing experiences ruined if they know both brain-melting plot twists or even rudimentary story beats (like that Ryan Gosling is a replicant, something revealed five minutes into Blade Runner 2049) is a falsehood perpetuated by a perpetually online vocal minority. How do we know this? Well, Sing 2 is about to pass $100 million domestic despite a marketing campaign that leaves few spoilers unspoiled.