Finance sources tell us today that Warner Bros.’ weekend Stephen King upset Doctor Sleep is poised to lose around $20M after all ancillaries, should it earn $100M at the global box office...
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We already laid out to you why Doctor Sleep was in a deep coma: A late-breaking, uneventful campaign (no tee off to the horror fans at San Diego Comic-Con), its 2 1/2 hour running time, which doesn’t work for horror fans or exhibitors, the latter who are cuffed at programming the pic (one auditorium can get as little as 4 showtimes in a given day for Doctor Sleep).
Also, this 2013 novel by King doesn’t have the brand equity that It did. Not to mention, Doctor Sleep didn’t wake up the young female and Hispanic horror-going demos with its billing as a sequel to the 1980 movie The Shining. When it came to those who cited the franchise as their reason to attend, females under 25 were last in that category, 18% behind all other demos. Ditto for the 13-17 year olds (17%, yes, it’s an R-rated movie, but they’ll still go).
Not to mention Hispanics, another prime horror movie-going demo, trailed Caucasians, 18% to 32%, for that same reasoning. Many are also citing that Ewan McGregor’s cold turn as the young psychic Danny also softened grosses, with PostTrak showing that he was not the top reason why people went to see the movie; top influences being genre (40%), subject matter (39%) and the King canon (26%). McGregor was a distant reason at 16%.
All of this said, film industry social media analytics corp RelishMix cited a huge reason why Doctor Sleep didn’t work: “For those who have seen the movie, and who share frustrations with Kubrick’s Shining, Sleep similarly departs from the novel in ways they would not have preferred.” Boom, mic drop.