Channing Tatum’s Sleeper Hit ‘Dog’ Tops VOD Charts

Vudu announced that Dog, which opened theatrically courtesy of MGM on President’s Day weekend, was the top title last weekend on their VOD platform. A cursory glance at the charts this morning shows that it’s in second place behind the unstoppable Sing 2, which, again, shows that a big movie that concurrently earn solid revenue from streaming while still grossing something close to ($156 million domestic and $367 million worldwide on an $80 million budget) best-case-scenario box office. However, the Channing Tatum vehicle, co-directed by Tatum and Reid Carolin, is currently tops at Amazon (presumably playing well to the folks who spent summer 2020 devouring Kevin Costner’s pulpy/fun Yellowstone), Google and YouTube. It’s not on iTunes due to them often not counting PVOD ($20 to rent) titles, but I digress.

Dog dropped 12% in weekend four, so the VOD release isn’t a fatal blow. The $15 million flick, about a former Army Ranger driving a military dog on a road trip to get to her handler’s funeral, has earned $48 million domestic from an $18 million Fri-Sun President’s Day weekend debut, and $54 million worldwide thus far. If it keeps this up, it could end up earning more than even MGM’s House of Gucci, which earned $54 million domestic from a $22 million Wed-Sun debut last November. That $75 million Ridley Scott-directed film, starring Lady Gaga and Adam Driver, was hailed as a beacon of hope for commercially viable adult-skewing dramas for grossing $155 million worldwide. Dog, a far lower-profile flick with no Oscar aspirations, might just outgross it in North America.

Yes, in pre-Covid times, it wasn’t absurd that a multi-quadrant dramedy starring a hot movie star (Tatum) in a cast-to-type role (he’s a military man but not an action hero) alongside a cute dog would be a solid little theatrical hit. Universal’s A Dog’s Purpose got smeared by a fabricated/altered video showing what turned out to be non-existent on-set animal abuse. However, that Dennis Quaid/Josh Gad flick earned $65 million domestic and (partially thanks to $88 million in China, again rebutting conventional wisdom about what Chinese moviegoers want to see) $207 million worldwide on a $22 million budget in early 2017. A Dog’s Journey dropped hard in May 2019 (ironically opening against John Wick: Chapter 3), but $23 million domestic and $77 million worldwide on a $16 million budget is still a win.

The rest of the top streaming flicks are mostly the usual suspects. I will concede that I didn’t even know that Jennifer Lopez and Owen Wilson’s Marry Me was available on VOD already. The film. seventh on Vudu for the weekend, opened on February 18 in theaters and concurrently on Peacock. I can’t speak for the Peacock figures (I’m sure they were fine by whatever measure Peacock considers “fine”), but the film is almost a theatrical hit. The Universal rom-com has earned $22 million domestic and $49 million worldwide, or around 2.13x its $23 million budget. That’s not fortune and glory, as marketing expenses usually drive the break-even point to around 2.5x the budget, but it got closer than I expected. And yes, whatever Peacock paid Universal for the streaming exhibition absolutely covered the budget and marketing expenses.

We don’t have the streaming data yet for what were surely the two most-watched movies this past weekend. Netflix will offer up (the likely huge) global opening weekend figures for Shawn Levy and Ryan Reynolds’ The Adam Project sometime tomorrow while we may have to wait a few weeks for the past-tense Nielsen ratings for Pixar’s Turning Red over at Disney+. I’ll be more interested when we start getting, if the numbers get them into the top ten, the Hulu viewership for The King’s Man and Nightmare Alley along with the Disney+ debut of West Side Story. If folks were really waiting to catch up with those movies online, well, the proof will be there. West Side Story is currently 11th in terms of Disney+ “trending” movies, behind the “got a full theatrical window” Free Guy.