Last weekend, the new film "Sonic the Hedgehog 2", which cost about $100 million to make, entered 4,234 North American theaters and finally earned $71 million at the box office.
Family-friendly movies have a big market
The reason why "Sonic the Hedgehog 2" has become the best-grossing animated film since "Frozen 2" in 2019, in addition to its high quality, is also because it has entered North American theaters in nearly four months. The first family movie for small audiences, and it has a 45-day window period, and it will land on the Paramount+ streaming platform after a month and a half.

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 poster

Because of Disney's "willingness" to refuse to let "Transformation of Youth" enter the theater, American audiences have not been able to see such family-friendly films in theaters for a long time. The last similar theatrical film can be traced back to "The Voice of Joy", which will be released at the end of December 2021. In the end, the film also won a North American box office of 161 million US dollars, although it is far from the first North American box office of 270 million US dollars released in 2016, but after all, it is in the era of epidemic, and it is itself a sequel. Overall, it is quite good. score.
More importantly, in the US$161 million North American box office of "The Voice of Joy 2", after careful calculation, nearly 40% were harvested after January 7. Why the emphasis on January 7th? Because starting from January 7, the film has landed on three streaming media platforms of Apple, Google and Amazon. The fact that it can still get a good box office after this shows that the confidence of American families to get out of the epidemic and enter the theater is slowly recovering.
It is precisely after seeing the box office performance of "The Voice of Joy 2" that Paramount has more confidence in releasing "Sonic the Hedgehog 2" this time. Like the industry, they had expected the film to earn more than 50 million at the opening box office, and the final $71 million really surprised everyone.
Of course, the audience of the "Sonic the Hedgehog" series is not entirely children, and half of the young and middle-aged Americans who have a game complex also account for it. At the beginning, it was their strong protest after watching the first trailer, forcing Paramount to modify the original settings in various ways. As a result, they made a lot of publicity for the film. In the second part, two new characters, Miles the yellow two-tailed fox and the red echidna Klus, which are very popular in the game, were added, which also attracted many loyal audiences of the previous part to continue to support.
The first "Sonic the Hedgehog", which was released in mid-February 2020, happened to be stuck before the outbreak in the United States and received a $58 million opening box office. This not only set the North American opening record for a video game IP movie, but also the last work that opened a box office of more than 50 million US dollars before the outbreak of the epidemic. Now, after a lapse of two years, the second film has debuted magnificently, and the box office has also improved to a higher level. Whether it means that the American film market has fully recovered from this, it may still need follow-up data to do support.
"Desperate Ambulance" has the potential to be a blockbuster but not a blockbuster
Released on the same day as "Sonic the Hedgehog 2" is the new film "Ambulance" from action film director Michael Bay. The film's word of mouth is not bad, with an A- rating from the audience and a 68% praise from critics and 88% of audience praise on the film review website "Rotten Tomatoes". But after its release in 3,412 theaters, it only took in $8.7 million at the box office, not even as good as "Dr. Night: Mobius" and "Lost City" which have been in theaters for a while.

"Desperados" has a 68% review rating and an 88% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes

Such an achievement is worse than Master Bei's 2005 "Escape from the Clone Island", which opened at the box office with $12 million, and has already set a new low in his nearly 30 years of acting. Although the production budget of "Desperate Ambulance" is only 40 million US dollars, such opening results mean that "Desperate Ambulance" must perform well in overseas markets to ensure that the distributor Universal Pictures does not lose money. The film has been confirmed to hit theaters in mainland China on April 22.
According to American box-office analyst Scott Mendelsohn, on the surface, "Desperate" has at least four of the five so-called blockbuster indicators: big-name directors, star cast, and storytelling (sympathetic ones). Bank robbers stopped an ambulance carrying a patient), the approval of film critics, it is only because of the plot that there is a lack of solace for the audience to talk about and escape from the world.

"Desperate Ambulance" set for April 22 in mainland China

But today's movie market is probably like this, and audiences are only interested in IP movies and series. Or rather, audiences are only willing to pay for such films. As for non-IP movies, even if the filming is not bad, even if it has the above-mentioned sales indicators, people can sit at home and wait for on-demand in the future. Therefore, even a well-known director like Michael Bay can only rely on IP works like "Transformers" to achieve box office success in recent years, while original works like "Desperate Ambulance" and "13 Hours of Crisis" The work, if not good, will fail at the box office.
Originally, the comic book "Dr. Dark Night: Mobius" had a bad reputation, and the industry generally believed that this would leave a good living space for "Desperate Ambulance". And after that, the next work of the same nature will be The Northman, which will not be released until April 22. Those American audiences who love to watch action movies, if they come to the theater at this time, there is not much choice. The box office of "Desperate Ambulance" should not be bad. It is more popular than the original film with a good reputation. In the long run, it's hard to say whether it's a good thing or a bad thing for the American film industry.
Warner and Discovery officially merge
Last week, the biggest news in Hollywood, apart from Will Smith's 10-year ban from the Oscars, was that WarnerMedia Group, which originally belonged to AT&T Holdings, officially completed its divestiture and merged with Discovery Media Group.
The entire merger, which started about a year ago and was officially completed on Friday, will create a new company called Warner Bros. Discovery, with Discovery Channel CEO David Zaslav continuing to lead the charge. , intends to attack the current three major streaming media giants Disney, Amazon and Netflix by integrating the two streaming media HBO Max and Discovery+.
In Zaslav's view, the advantage of the newly established Warner Bros. Exploration is that there are not only those wonderful film and television dramas on HBO Max, but also various original works of Exploration and Communication, including Discovery Channel, Animal Planet Channel, and Travel Life Channel. Ecology Documentary. "Being able to provide the most engaging and complete content...enough to super-serve every member of the family, everyone."
At present, Discovery+ has 22 million subscribers worldwide, and HBO and HBO Max have 74 million global subscribers, for a total of 96 million (of course, it is not excluded that many of them subscribe to both services). Netflix currently has nearly 222 million global subscribers, and Disney+ has nearly 130 million. Regarding the number of subscribers in the future, Zaslav, who took office as the new official, is very optimistic. He believes that the merged Warner Bros. Discovery Streaming Media Platform will also have 200 million, 300 million or even 400 million subscribers. The ambitious New Yorker even bought the Hollywood mansion of the legendary Paramount Pictures tycoon Robert Evans, who died in 2019, as his home base, hoping to make a big name in the film and television industry. Exhibit macro.