Thread by @HESherman

I'm pissed off this morning and I'll tell you why. It's because of headlines in the entertainment press saying that the opening weekend of IN THE HEIGHTS had disappointing sales of $11.4 million. The problem is that the metrics in use are no longer valid.

Yes, articles note that the $11.4 million is box office sales, and that the film's availability on HBO Max can't be measured. But there's no question that subscribers to the service, with the option of watching for no additional cost at home stayed home.

Then comparisons are made to other post-COVID films like A QUIET PLACE 2, GODZILLA VS. KONG, and THE CONJURING 47. But isn't it interesting to note that those films are, to varying degrees, scary movies? They wouldn't have the same audience as the family-friendly HEIGHTS.

Yes, couples may have ventured out in pairs to be scared in the dark, but parents with kids at home, if given the option of staying home and watching more economically, may well have opted for that route. Moviegoing for families was already an expensive proposition pre-pandemic.

The muted gross also doesn't account for the fact that with theatres in major urban centers still enforcing social distancing measures, the number of available seats was limited as well. When I looked at tickets late last week, many shows in NYC were full up.

If IN THE HEIGHTS had come out a decade or more ago, I might have worried that opening weekend sales would become an excuse to curtail production of musicals. Fortunately, there are a number in the pipeline, including DEAR EVAN HANSEN and the WEST SIDE STORY remake.

My greater concern is that the low gross will be an excuse for studios to not make films with Latinx leads telling Latinx stories by Latinx creatives. That would be a disaster and would be an excuse to derail intentions of diversifying the stories told on the big screen.

Some pundits say that HEIGHTS could follow the trajectory of THE GREATEST SHOWMAN and prove a success in the long run. I certainly hope that's the case, especially since the post-pandemic box office cannot be expected to perform like years past.

But now that streaming of new films day and date with theatrical showings has been accelerated by the pandemic, and with streamers not generating or reporting revenue for new films without surcharges to access, there must be new ways to determine success.

On Rotten Tomatoes, HEIGHTS is 96% positive with critics and 95% positive with audience reviews. It has an 'A' Cinemascore from surveys of people after they've seen the film. That's indicative of a remarkable achievement in popular filmmaking which will yield monetary victory.

But film metrics have been weird for a long time. When we read about a movie's budget, that's only production cost. We don't know what was spent on marketing, which can be massive. So when a movie grosses this many million but only cost so many million, that's a false indicator.

I'm pissed off because of course it's the stage-based film that's being treated as a disappointment, it's the Latinx created and cast film that's being treated as a disappointment – and it has only been open for four days.

The narrative of moviegoing was radically rewritten by the pandemic and we can't allow pre-pandemic rationales to create a conventional wisdom of falling short. Estimates were for a higher opening? So what. How much practice has anyone had predicting post-pandemic grosses?

If the movie press were being responsible, they'd be making very clear how much has changed and how the old way of determining a movie's success financially has to be recalibrated, especially since some of the information is no longer publicly reported.

We will never know what IN THE HEIGHTS might have done at the box office if the old, no-pandemic paradigm were in place. But we certainly can't tell about any movie based entirely on its in-theatres opening weekend anymore.

IN THE HEIGHTS is proof that we either need new metrics or simply have to abandon the old model of grosses as a horse race. On so many levels, the film is already a great success. Because the counting no longer works, the entertainment press cannot count it out.

Read this, if you must. variety.com/2021/film/box-…

And not incidentally: only 43% of the country is fully vaccinated as of today. Families with kids are least likely to be fully protected as a pod, because vaccine access for young people is still not fully available and unapproved for those under 12.

Paciencia y fe.

Last thought: many people have been out of work during pandemic. Disposable income likely impacted. Even with hiring rebounding, people have to take care of essentials first – housing, food, clothing, utilities. Not conducive to buying movie tickets – or even streaming service.