Focus films on the move

Focus has pushed two of its upcoming releases. 

DOWNTON ABBEY: A NEW ERA vacates its March 18th date and is now scheduled to open May 20th. Meanwhile, THE OUTFIT moves from February 25th to DOWNTON’s old March 18th slot. 

This gives Focus more time to build awareness and interest for these films. And, quite frankly, they could both use it. Awareness for THE OUTFIT is stuck in the low teens while DOWNTON has yet to crack 30%. 

The situation on the interest side is even direr. THE OUTFIT ranks 51st among all films currently tracked by TheQuorum, but DOWTON is second from the bottom with an interest score of 4.2.

This seems especially odd given that the first DOWNTON ABBEY film was a smash hit for Focus in 2019. It made $96M domestically and nearly $250M worldwide on a shoestring budget of $13M. So why is the follow-up struggling to build interest? 

Some of it has to do with the fact that the audience for DOWNTON skews heavily towards women. The audience for the first film was 74% female. And, we know that on The Quorum, women express lower interest in films across the board. So that alone will pull down the interest score.

Still, something about this film isn’t resonating with audiences yet. Now Focus has another two months to figure it out.