This Saturday has been dubbed “national cinema dayin which theaters across the United States reduced their ticket prices to $3 in an effort to keep bringing people back to the movies. And it worked ! More than 8.1 million people went to the cinema on Saturday, Variety found, against 1 million the day before and 1.7 million the next day. National Movie Day has drawn the biggest crowds to everyday movie theaters in 2022, leading to an inescapable conclusion: people will go to the movies when movies are only three dollars. Who knew!
One thing is not necessary to put the butts back in the seats? New Movies. August was a month-long cinematic slump, the result of so many pandemic shutdowns and general supply chain issues. Tom Cruise still has the answer, though: the biggest rudeness of the day was Top Gun: Maverick, which added around $6 million to its box office over the long weekend. (Cruise and co. has kept theaters afloat all summer, in fact grossing $698 million in total since the film’s release in May.) Spider-Man: No Coming Home, which was released last Christmas, took second place at the box office. This weekend’s top-performing new movie — Honk for Jesus. Save your soul. — arrived at #14.
But the real dark horse, the shark in the water that no one saw coming, was a little movie you might have heard of called Jaws. Playing in theaters across the country, the film earned an estimated $2.6 million over the three-day weekend. That puts him 10th for the weekend, just behind Dragon Ball Super: Super heroes and right in front Where the Crawdads sing. (Like I said, this isn’t a highlight for movies.) Per Cinema, Jaws actually outperformed every other movie in theaters this weekend. Not bad for a movie that originally came out in 1975 – and only made around $7 million in its opening weekend.
it sure helped Jaws’ event that the film was shown in 3D and IMAX for the first time. The 3D experience, which stereographer Jeremy Carroll Told The Hollywood Reporter was designed to “make you feel like you’re in the water”, was get rave reviews. “We can play the stereo to make you feel like you’re really in the water with the characters and the kids playing,” Carroll said, which is about as good for 3D movies as you get. will ever do. to listen.
Even at 47, Jaws is a perfect symbol for the future of cinema. This is the movie of many credits like the original blockbuster, and was one of the reasons studios started releasing their best and most successful films this summer. It’s a much slower film than most recent big-budget hits, and I can safely say that the special effects have improved a lot over the last half-century. But the things that make a good movie don’t really change, and Jaws remains a great movie.
There’s also a lesson here for movie theaters in general, who are desperate for ways to convince people to leave their comfy sofas and huge TVs and go see movies in the cinema instead. Cheap tickets are a very compelling case. The same goes for new content: Spider-Man: No Coming Home in theaters again this weekend with 11 additional minutes of film for the enjoyment of the fans. But maybe also those occasional cultural moments, where millions of people can experience a movie they loved – or maybe a classic they’ve never seen before – in a new way. Half the fun of streaming is going through all the movies from your childhood; who said movie theaters can’t do that too?