‘Everything Everwhere’ Tops VOD Charts Amid Box Office Milestones

Vudu is reporting that their biggest title over the last weekend was indeed A24’s Everything, Everywhere All at Once. The A24 indie, which it turns out actually cost closer to $20 million than $25 million as initially reported, arrived on “electronic sell-through” (priced to buy” VOD) this past Tuesday. As of yesterday, it was the top title on iTunes and YouTube as well, while placing (at the moment) fourth on Google and seventh on Amazon. This is on the heels of the Daniels-directed multiverse action fantasy passing two box office milestones.

First, it passed Channing Tatum’s Dog ($62 million from an $18 million Fri-Mon President’s Day debut) to become the third biggest Covid-era original live-action earner behind The Lost City (starring Sandra Bullock and, uh, Channing Tatum and earning $104 million domestic) and Ryan Reynolds’ Free Guy ($121 million). Second, with $86 million worldwide, it is A24’s biggest global earner.

The Michelle Yeoh/Stephanie Hsu/Ke Huy Quan/Jamie Lee Curtis/James Hong crowdpleaser has earned $63 million domestic, which is A) the biggest A24 grosser ever and B) larger than any of last year’s Oscar season releases save for Dune ($108 million). That means, almost by default, that it’s likely to be a major factor in next year’s awards race. The only other noteworthy entry is Gerard Butler’s Last Seen Alive, which is a low-level Breakdown knock-off, just as Cop Shop was a (really fun) riff on Assault on Precent Thirteen and Den of Thieves was a newfangled Heat.

That’s the only title that wasn’t explicitly a wide or semi-wide theatrical release. The rest of the Vudu list, and this mostly applies to the other VOD platforms as well, is comprised of recent theatricals from March (The Lost City, The Batman), April (The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, The Bad Guys, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, Morbius) and even May (Downton Abbey: A New Era). Save for periodic exceptions, you have to go down pretty damn far on any VOD list of best-sellers to get a non-theatrical title.

Second, six of the top 11 movies at this weekend’s domestic box office are also concurrently available on VOD or (as with Firestarter) on a streaming platform. That’s a result of both the shorter theatrical window and a ridiculous lack of theatrical releases in March and May. That means, by default, that theaters and VOD platforms are partially subsisting on April leftovers.

Blame a Covid-caused post-production backlog. Blame Hollywood’s skittishness even a year after A Quiet Place part II showed what was possible. Blame Wall Street-driven streaming > theatrical priorities. Blame an entire slate of studio programmers (The Valet, The Princess, Prey, etc.) from 20th Century and Searchlight heading to Hulu at the behest of Disney. Or just say “all of the above.”

But the result is the same, namely that individual surefire theatrical releases (The Batman, Top Gun 2, Jurassic World 3, etc.) are thriving but the industry itself remains on a knife’s edge living or dying on the whims of a seasonal tentpole. However unlikely, what if The Batman had “bombed” (or merely pulled Sonic the Hedgehog 2 grosses) in early March? What happens if Bullet Train (August’s only big movie) arrives with a whimper?

When Transformers: Age of Extinction slightly underperformed domestically ($245 million) in June of 2014 (while still topping $1 billion global) amid delays for Furious 7 and The Good Dinosaur, it set the entire media industry back into “slump” chatter compared to the fully stocked summer-of-2013 slate. That was merely eye-rolling, not unlike the weekly “slump” talk in 2005 when the “business as usual” 2005 slate couldn’t match a stacked 2004 schedule which included an overperforming Shrek 2 and two huge outliers (The Passion of the Christ and Fahrenheit 9/11).

Ditto an analogous situation in early 2019 when Glass slightly underperformed (while still earning $255 million global on a $20 million budget) in January while The LEGO Movie 2 outright tanked ($191 million global on a $101 million budget) in February. Yes, How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World came through ($160 million) in late February, but the industry was still waiting for Captain Marvel to save the day in March. What if it hadn’t?

Even amid early 2019, theaters still had solid performers (in terms of seats filled and concessions sold, budget and expectations notwithstanding) from the likes of Glass, What Men Want, The Upside, Escape Room and Alita: Battle Angel. They earned between $54 million and $111 million. In the first eight weeks of 2019, there were 11 films that earned at least $30 million domestic. In 2022, there were five. In the March-to-May part of 2019, not even counting Avengers: Endgame (technically released in late April but absolutely considered a summer release), there were 11 films that earned at least $40 million.

This year, there were seven, including the indie shocker Everything, Everywhere All at Once. Not all of those 2019 flicks were “hits,” and lord knows I’ve spent years and years talking about the perils faced by studio programmers amid a moviegoing populace trained to watch non-event movies at home on their HDTVs via VOD or streaming. But even disappointing theatrical releases perform better when they arrive on streaming platforms than do streaming premieres.

Even on Netflix, the “most-watched movies” list is often filled with both Netflix biggies and third-party theatrical releases that were momentarily successful or theatrical flops. Moreover, theaters need a consistent flow of theatrical product to stay open and deliver top-tier theatrical grosses for A-level franchise titles. Even if Universal loses a few bucks in the end from Ambulance, the (very good) Michael Bay actioner becomes an A-level title on Peacock while giving theaters more breathing room to deliver blockbuster debuts for Jurassic World Dominion, Minions: The Rise of Gru and Nope.

We’re going to finally “learn” this summer that surefire tentpoles can still pull grosses on par with pre-Covid era expectations, and in some cases (Free Guy, Godzilla Vs. Kong, Top Gun: Maverick, etc.) exceed those realistic early-2020 guestimates. However, theaters need more than one or two tentpoles a month. Yes, I’m arguing that releasing more movies in theaters, even if each movie isn’t a hit, helps theaters and helps studios both by creating eventual VOD/streaming demand for those titles and by insuring theaters survive to deliver blockbuster openings for the kind of films that still need global theatrical glory.

Everything, Everywhere All at Once is a modern box office miracle. But Hollywood cannot count on such miracles to keep theaters afloat in between the tentpoles. To do that, theaters need movies, lots of movies of all shapes and sizes, even ones that aren’t surefire hits and don’t have franchise aspirations. Besides, Robert Eggers’ The Northman ($34 million domestic and $68 million worldwide) may not be a hit on a $70 million budget, but it earned more than the last Conan the Barbarian movie ($21 million/$63 million on a $90 million budget in 2011). Sometimes “risky” is more valuable than “surefire.”