Boxoffice - May 2019

Multiple encores through Fathom Events followed.
“Between Fathom’s marketing and Warner Bros.’
marketing, we really leveraged the heck out of this
thing,” recalls Fathom Events CEO Ray Nutt.
“Only three showings did about $8 million,”
making They Shall Not Grow Old North America’s
highest-ever earner in the event cinema space. “It
really shows you the power of the event cinema.”
And that “museum run” that Goldstein thought
they might do? It instead became a limited theatrical
run, still ongoing as CinemaCon ended. As
of press time, the film has grossed just shy of $18
million domestically.
Warner Bros. could have gone for a traditional
theatrical release from the start, Goldstein notes, but
the event cinema route “just seemed like the right
choice. We thought this would be the best way to
maximize exposure and generate interest. When you
have a one-day event, it’s appointment viewing.”
Event cinema also made sense from a marketing
standpoint. “The promotional value that you get
through Fathom is very, very significant,” Nutt
says. “We advertise all our events in the trailer
space that we have available to us and the other
promotional inventory that we have.” In marketing
its successful The Met: Live in HD series, Fathom
has more than proven its ability to bring in an older
demographic, which is exactly the group Warner
Bros. believed would be most interested in seeing
They Shall Not Grow Old.
A smart choice of release date—December 17,
with potential moviegoers out of work and school
for the Christmas holidays—succeeded in bringing
in a younger crowd, including families, in addition
to the older group Warner Bros. initially aimed for.
“For the very first [screening], we did 1,100
[screens],” recalls Goldstein. “Then we did 1,000.
Then we were up to 1,300 on our third wave. And
then we went to a regular commercial break for
about 735 theaters. It swelled past that at over 800.
We’ve taken our time over a long period of weeks.”
The fact that Warner Bros. was able to go the
traditional theatrical route for They Shall Not Grow
Old, explains Nutt, is something that studios looking
to expand their event cinema offerings should
pay attention to. “This isn’t a cannibalization play,
here. We give this nice little window to premiere
and promote the content.” The promotional value
Warner Bros. got from Fathom’s network for They
Shall Not Grow Old, he argues, contributes to the
revenue earned throughout the entire life of the
film. This also applies to event cinema screenings
of classic films, which are often tied to anniversaries
and thus home video rereleases.
This is all something that Warner Bros. was
already familiar with,
having partnered with
Fathom in 2016 for
the release of Batman:
The Killing Joke, which
earned $3.4 million
in gross theatrical
revenue. This month,
Fathom partners with
Warner Bros. and DC
to bring Batman, Batman
Returns, Batman
Forever, and Batman &
Robin to the big screen
to celebrate the caped
crusader’s 80th year of
fighting crime.
Outside the
superhero arena,
Warner Bros. regularly
partners with
Fathom for screenings
of films from their
library, including The
Wizard of Oz, Gone
with the Wind, Rebel without a Cause, The Philadelphia
Story, and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
Earlier this spring, Gone with the Wind screened
as a part of the TCM Big Screen Classics series,
becoming Fathom’s highest-grossing classic film. Its
$2.23 million gross, garnered from six nationwide
screenings across three dates, breaks the record set
not two months earlier by The Wizard of Oz, which
earned over $2 million.
At Warner Bros., “We always want to bring our
movies to audiences in the best way possible. We
look at each situation uniquely on its own. We’ll
look for the right opportunity, given the right
property,” explains Goldstein. “We take risks on
how we market. We make bold choices on how we
distribute. And”—regarding their strategy for They
Shall Not Grow Old—“that’s really what this was.
Both a risk and a bold choice … We had a hunch
that this would be the right way to maximize the
movie. But it far exceeded our expectations.”
ALL QUIET ON THE
WESTERN FRONT
TOP: an original frame of
100-year-old archival WWI
film. ABOVE: The same
frame restored by Peter
Jackson’s effects team.
MAY 2019
119