July Recap. Six films were added last month. Which arrived on tracking with the best numbers?

Now that we are in August, it is time for us to look back at the films that came to The Quorum in July. In total, six new titles were added. And while they run the gamut in terms of genre, all six have Oscar pedigrees. 

Which of these arrived on The Quorum with the highest scores? We’ll get to that in a moment. First, a bit about each film. 

PREY FOR THE DEVIL (LGF, 10/28/22):

This year’s resident Halloween horror film has two things working against it. First, it comes two weeks after HALLOWEEN ENDS, which is tracking to be enormous. Second, it opens the weekend before Halloween, which has historically been a soft frame at the box office, with most people attending costume parties or other holiday festivities. What’s the Oscar connection for this one? It features Best Supporting Actress nominee Virginia Madsen (SIDEWAYS). 

A MAN CALLED OTTO (SNY, 12/14/22)

This is an American remake of the 2017 Swedish film A MAN CALLED OVE, which was, in turn, based on the book of the same name. The original movie, which earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film, was released on Christmas day in Sweden. The US version, starring two-time Best Actor winner Tom Hanks, will also target holiday filmgoers when it arrives in theaters this December. 

GOLDA (BST, 11/11/22):

GOLDA not only stars Academy Award-winning Helen Mirren in the title role, but director Guy Nattiv won the Oscar for Best Live Action Short for his 2019 film SKIN. With a November release, look for this one to get an awards push through the holidays. 

BONES AND ALL (UAR, 11/23/22):

BONES reunites director Luce Guadagnino with Timothée Chalamet. The two, of course, were both Oscar nominees for CALL ME BY YOUR NAME in 2018. It was announced last week that the film will play in competition at the Venice Film Festival, which is a sure sign that an awards play is in the cards. But will Academy have the appetite to recognize a cannibal love story? 

UNTITLED INDIANA JONES 5 (DIS, 6/30/22): 

This one arrives 15 years after the last INDIANA JONES movie. This is the first film in the series not to be directed by Steven Spielberg. Instead, the honors go to James Mangold, who couldn’t be hotter, having earned an Academy Award nominations for his last two films. He got a nod for writing LOGAN in 2018 and as the producer of the Best Picture nominee FORD VS. FERRARI in 2020. He also directed both films. 

BARBIE (WB, 7/21/22): 

No one would blame you if you thought BARBIE had already been released. We love long-lead marketing campaigns, but the level of cultural ubiquity this far before release is unusual. We know Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling topline the film, but we’re especially excited that Greta Gerwig, one of only seven female Best Director nominees, is behind the camera. And with a supporting cast that includes Issa Rae, Simu Liu, Will Ferrell, Kate McKinnon, Michael Cera, America Ferrera, and Rhea Perlman, there’s a wealth of riches that have yet to be introduced in the marketing materials. 

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So, which of these films made the biggest splash on The Quorum? Before we answer that, it’s important to note that all of these films are many months away from release. And in most cases, no marketing material has been released for any of them. What we’re essentially looking at is the starting point for their tracking run. If, for example, a studio is eyeing 50% awareness by release, a start at 25% means they have less ground to make up than a debut of 15%. 

In that light, BARBIE has an advantage over all the other new films with 37% awareness. Warner Bros. has less work to do to get people to know about the film. Compare that to GOLDA, which arrives with 8% awareness. Having said that, Bleecker Street may not need to reach the same level of awareness as BARBIE for it to be a success. The two films have very different budget and distribution profiles. At the same time, Barbie has a larger pop culture footprint than Golda Meir, Israel’s first female prime minister. In other words, context is important. 

Still, presumably, Indiana Jones has as much cultural currency as Barbie, so it is noteworthy that BARBIE arrives with meaningfully higher awareness. At 37%, BARBIE already ranks 16^th among all the films currently tracked by The Quorum, while INDIANA ranks 23^rdwith 30% awareness. All the other films are below 20%. 

BARBIE may have the highest awareness of the group, but that doesn’t necessarily mean people want to see it. It ranks 4^th among the six new films with an interest score of 4.7. 

This is where INDIANA shines. It easily tops the list with a score of 6.3, which places it among the top 10 of all films tracked by The Quorum.  

When we look at where people would prefer to watch these movies, 67% say they’d watch INDIANA in a theater. That’s an enormous number, especially for a film a year away from release. For context, only three 2022 films (DOCTOR STRANGE, JURASSIC WORLD DOMINION, THOR: LOVE AND THUNDER) had higher scores on day of release. 

The news is also good regarding the Fee or Free metric, with 79% of people saying they would pay to watch INDIANA. This is a metric that we don’t focus on all that much. How is this different than the Theater of Home metric? 

The people who fall under the “Fee” part are those who say they want to see a film in a theater (you have to pay for that), as well as those who would sign up for a streaming service to watch it at home. That’s why this number is always the larger of the two. 

We spend a lot of time focusing on awareness, but as you can see, no single metric tells the entire story. INDIANA looks just fair when it comes to awareness, but it shines in the other three metrics.