Jungle Cruise led this weekend’s box office despite also debuting on Disney+ for a premium fee. Movie theater stocks were mixed following the latest sign of box office stability despite concerns about the Delta variant and streaming service threats.
The Walt Disney (ticker: DIS) family film starring Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt grossed $34.2 million domestically and $27.6 million overseas, according to Deadline. The film also added more than $30 million from Disney+ viewers who paid $30 to stream the movie early, according to Deadline. The outlet noted that’s roughly in line with another Johnson film,Rampage, which grossed $35.7 million during its opening weekend in 2018.
Disney stock was up 0.3% to $176.58 around noon on Monday. Shares ofImax(IMAX) were down 0.4% to $16.08, while Cinemarkstock (CNK) was up 0.6% to $15.63. Shares of AMC Entertainment Holdings(AMC) were down 2.9%; unlike its cinema peers, AMC is a meme stock that trades more in line with short seller activity, options volume, and momentum trading quirks than fundamental factors.
Rising Covid-19 cases in the U.S. and the decision to release the movie on Disney+ for a fee are among the concerns for movie theater stocks, but the domestic debut forJungle Cruisewas at the upper end of expectations, according to Colliers Securities analyst Steven Frankel.
Frankel covers Imax with a Buy rating and $22 target price. He points out that Imax accounted for just 6% of the domestic box office at $2.2 million and 5% oversees at $1.3 million, which Frankel argues was not surprising for a family film. He also noted that the movie’s overseas results were respectable, given it did not debut in China.
“We will be watching to see if, like Black Widow, availability on Disney+ drives a steep box office decline in the film’s second weekend,” Frankel wrote.
It’s not just movie theaters that are watching such streaming strategies closely. Scarlett Johansson,the star of Black Widow, filed a lawsuit against Disney that argued the film’s premium release on Disney+ that coincided with the box office debut was a breach of contract. A Disney spokesman said the lawsuit had no merit.
While studios like Disney and WarnerMedia have pointed to the pandemic as a reason to experiment with simultaneous streaming releases, the practice could become more widespread as such firms pour money into streaming content libraries.