Boxoffice Pro—Q4 2021

BOX OFFICE
BUSTERS
GHOSTBUSTERS
June 8, 1984
Opening Weekend:
$13.5M
Domestic total
$229.2M
test screening of the movie. And it played
beautifully. But I had to wait a long time
to just sit amongst people eating popcorn
watching the movie, to hear them laugh
and cheer and gasp and be surprised. It
was worth the wait. The exciting part was,
having not seen it for a long time, I got to, in
some ways, watch it for the first time again
with them.
I hate to ascribe anything positive to
the pandemic, but that sounds like a
nice little silver lining. You get to take
a step back and experience it for the
first time.
Very well said. This is the first time I’ve
watched one of my movies where I really
felt like I was an audience member.
You mentioned going to the theater a
lot as a kid—did you have a particular
childhood theater that you went to
most often?
I don’t know how familiar you are with
L.A. I have so many movie theaters, I
honestly don’t know where to begin.
I grew up at the moment when the
Westwood Village in Los Angeles was the
epicenter of movie exhibition. People
would line up around the corner at
every one of the movie palaces. It was a
privilege to wait two hours to see movies
in late-’80s, early-’90s Westwood. I’d go to
the Mann Village, and I’d go to the Bruin.
All the way up to seeing Pulp Fiction at the
UA, before they tore that down. The AMC
Century 14—that was a huge theater for
me. It’s the theater of my first kiss: Don’t
Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead.
A very romantic film.
[Laughs] Yes, exactly! I remember when
they built the CityWalk. It was a Cineplex
Odeon at that time. That was a big theater
for me. That’s one where I would just sit
there all day. I would sometimes go theater
to theater, just to watch the trailers. I
remember when the Cliffhanger trailer
came out. I would go to three theaters in
a row just to watch that trailer over and
over. But then I remember being in New
York—I remember, with my dad, seeing Big
Trouble in Little China in New York and
RoboCop in New York and watching those
movies crush.
I love trailers. There’s an art to them.
The two Ghostbusters trailers that’ve
come out so far have both been really
good—they each evoked different
tones and hit it in different ways.
I’m right there with you. The trailer is as
much a part of my experience of a movie
as the movie itself. They’re people who
care. And I’m really lucky that [Co-Head of
Motion Picture Group, formerly President
of Worldwide Marketing and Distribution]
Josh Greenstein over at Sony and [Sony
Pictures Entertainment’s EVP Creative
Advertising] David Fruchbom, who put
together this trailer, understand and love
Ghostbusters. And look, that’s the thing
about this franchise. It exists before all of
us. It doesn’t belong to any of us. Anyone
who worked on this film knew that they
were trying on someone else’s clothes.
It was our job to honor that. Whether
you were creating costumes or building
puppets or doing practical effects or
GHOSTBUSTERS II
June 16, 1989
Opening Weekend:
$29.4M
Domestic total
$112.5M
GHOSTBUSTERS
July 15, 2016
Opening Weekend:
$46M
Domestic total
$128.3M
Q4 2021
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76-82_Ghostbusters.indd 81 16/09/2021 12:09