Matrix Takes a Record, But Not the One It Wanted

 With Spiderman: No Way Home gaining such traction at the box office, it’s likely Matrix Resurrections hoped for a little of the same magic. However the theatrical day-and-date release has failed to impress so far, and the only record it has toppled is one it would likely rather have skipped. Blake & Wang P.A entertainment attorney, Brandon Blake, breaks it down for us.


                                                      Brandon Blake

Ok, but Unexceptional

The 5-day opening for Matrix Resurrections sits at $22.5M, with 2.8M Smart TV households tuning in over the same period. This stacks up as 1.76M tickets bought, vs the 12.6M sold for Spiderman. Even Sing 2 managed 4.1M. So it’s pretty clear that the HBO Max release killed its own theatrical attendance.


The simultaneous streaming release has also launched Matrix to the number 1 slot…of pirated features for this week. It’s taken a 32.6% share in the top ten torrents, twice as high as the PVOD-available ‘clean copy’ Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, and even the in-theater film copies of Spider-Man: No Way Home.

The Downside of Day and Date

This sharply highlights one of the key problems of theatrical day-and-date releases as a distribution model. Once that one clean copy hits the pirates’ greedy fingers, it can spread like lightning- in several languages, too.


WarnerMedia has declared a return to theatrical releases next year for its event movies, so this should be their last release hit by this issue. It’s got to hurt, however. Not that the news is all glum. Its 5-day record represents takings equal to the first month of Black Widow- and Black Widow viewers had more incentive to seek out theatrical releases, as they were charged to watch it, whereas Matrix was offered free. It’s indicative of the greater theatrical recovery, however, not day-and-date success.


Despite protests to its temporary nature, it is clear WarnerMedia was experimenting with this model- and the results surprisingly speak in favor of some kind of premium theatrical start. Most studios wanted to see what would happen with a tentpole release on the day-and-date model, in case it turned out to net them a bigger slice of the pie. Well, here’s the results- lackluster takings on both sides of the release divide, and piracy eroding their share of the profits. Blake & Wang P.A only hopes the lessons will be learned.


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