The industry is savouring the irony. Just as traditional US studios and distributors are laser-focused on driving theatrical revenues for film releases, and long to return cinemagoing to pre-pandemic levels, it is Netflix, the company least interested in box-office outcomes that scored the most notable theatrical success on both sides of the Atlantic last weekend.
As Netflix does not permit the reporting of box-office receipts, various sources estimated sing-along screenings for KPop Demon Hunters on Saturday and Sunday (August 23-24) grossed $18m, enough to have topped the territory’s chart for the weekend, potentially knocking Weapons down to second place.
KPop Demon Hunters also played for two days in the UK/Ireland, and in Australia and New Zealand. In the former market, multiplex operators including Vue, Showcase, The Light and Omniplex played the film, as did boutique chains Everyman and the Cineworld-owned Picturehouse, and independents.
However, it was the stunning success of Chris Columbus’s The Thursday Murder Club, adapted from the Richard Osman cosy-crime novel series, that is dominating conversation among UK cinema operators.
No box-office numbers have been reported on the title but Screen understands the vast majority of the 50 or so sites playing the film enjoyed very strong admissions at the weekend (August 22-24) with The Thursday Murder Club, perhaps averaging 1,000 tickets per venue.
As films competing for the best film category of the Bafta Film Awards must release in 50 UK cinemas for at least a week (or reach an equivalent number of showings) it is assumed Netflix has released The Thursday Murder Club in at least 50 UK venues – and these include 19 at Everyman, 10 at Picturehouse, three at Curzon, two at Showcase, and independents such as Broadway Nottingham, Showroom Sheffield and Tyneside Cinema.
That suggests UK weekend box office of around £500,000 for The Thursday Murder Club from these 50 or so cinemas.
This is based on an assumed average cinema ticket price of £10. While in the UK the average cinema ticket price was £7.63 in 2024, that number is diluted by child/family admissions – unlikely to be many in the case of the amateur detective caper – and tickets tend to be more expensive at boutique venues. At Everyman, the average ticket price was £11.98 in 2024.
Weekday performance is likely to be strong on an older-skewing title such as this and the film could have hit £1m in its first play week, which ended yesterday (August 28).
The film also began streaming on Netflix on August 28, although cinema operators are not anticipating box office to be drastically affected, and are holding the film for a second week.
Favourable terms
An additional upside for venues is the commercial terms offered by Netflix. UK cinemas hand over a bigger proportion of ticket price revenue on studio tentpole titles than they do on films released by independent distributors – especially in the first two weeks of release.
But since Netflix is not seeing a cinema release primarily as a revenue generator, and most of the films the streamer offers to cinemas fall into the arthouse category (in the past year including awards contenders such as Emilia Perez and The Piano Lesson), revenue splits reflect this market reality. (Altitude typically books films into cinemas on behalf of Netflix for what Screen understands is a fixed fee per film.)
“Terms are way better than the first two weeks of a studio picture, by some margin – more in our favour than theirs,” commented one operator, under condition of anonymity.
In the UK, revenue splits can vary from 60/40% in favour of the distributor in the first week for major studio tentpoles to 65/35% in favour of the cinema for arthouse titles from small independent distributors – with various other bands falling in between for film releases of different scale and reach, and marketing spends of different size.
The UK venues playing The Thursday Murder Club can count themselves lucky to be among the chosen – and they know it, especially as late August is not traditionally a strong play period for boutique and independent venues.
“It’s like manna from heaven right now,” as one put it. Another said The Thursday Murder Club is already their fourth highest-grossing film of the year so far.
It is hard to recall Netflix ever boasting about a box-office outcome – but now the streamer seems alert to their promotional value. The streamer is presently trumpeting not just KPop Demon Hunters’ success on its own platform (236 million views to date – the most-watched Netflix film of all time), but also the theatrical result.
A recent social media post on the fan-focused Netflix Tudum account boasted of the film going “all the way to the top of the weekend box office in North America”.
Theatrical pivot?
But few in the industry seriously believe the success of KPop Demon Hunters and The Thursday Murder Club augur a pivot to a more theatrically driven strategy in future for key Netflix titles. “What is the consumer trying to tell us?,” as co-CEO Ted Sarandos put it in April. “That they’d like to watch movies at home.”
While personally appreciative of the communal theatrical experience, he suggested moviegoing was “an outmoded idea, for most people”.
That philosophy stands in direct contrast to the one holding sway at Apple, which evidently believes by making a film such as F1 (aka F1: The Movie) a giant global hit at the cinema ($607m to date), this increases the value of the film to subscribers and potential subscribers to Apple TV+.
Cinema operators despair of persuading Sarandos to see the world the way Apple does. Tim Richards, founder and CEO of the UK’s Vue Cinemas, is one disappointed by the limited release The Thursday Murder Club has received.
“In the UK, as across Europe, it will play in fewer than 10% of cinemas,” Richards told Screen this week. “It is seriously unfortunate that a new film by an amazing filmmaker like Chris Columbus will only be seen on televisions at home with Amazon deliveries, phones and every other possible distraction taking away from the incredible experience of watching a great movie on a big screen with friends and family.
“Our hope is that Netflix will eventually embrace a full theatrical release model and join all of our amazing studio partners together with our new exciting partners, Apple and Amazon.”
Netflix declined to comment for this story.
Additional reporting by Geoffrey Macnab.
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