By Yesterday came the news that Apple has scrapped its plans for a wide theatrical release for the George Clooney and Brad Pitt-led action-comedy film “Wolfs”.
Instead, the plan is for the Jon Watts-directed film to now open only in select theaters on that date, September 20th, before streaming on Apple TV+ worldwide the following week on September 27th.
In addition, a sequel has been greenlit, suggesting Apple is very happy with what they’ve seen – that fits in with reports that the movie has earned high test scores and is a crowd-pleaser that plays like an R-rated ‘Oceans’ film.
Certainly the switch of release strategy seems far less to do with the film itself and more with Apple’s past track record with cinema releases which haven’t been good.
Now, a source for Jeff Sneider reports that “Apple is done with wide theatrical releases for all of its movies”. Instead, they will reportedly be adopting this ‘one week limited’ strategy which began with this week’s poorly reviewed Doug Liman-directed film “The Instigators”.
The strategy will again be employed with Steve McQueen’s “Blitz” which is expected to be a serious awards contender and will get its one-week theatrical run in November. The sole exception will be the Joseph Kosinski-directed Brad Pitt-led film “F1” which releases next Summer.
Explaining why the pivot after giving theatrical a serious try for much of the past twelve months, the report says:
“Apple’s all about good PR, and they don’t need the bad PR from all these movies not doing well, is how the individual explained it to me, though they noted that the decision wasn’t a reflection on Wolfs, which was ‘actually pretty good, [and] would’ve done fine.’”
Apple had four big experiments with theatrical releases of late – Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon,” Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon,” Matthew Vaughn’s “Argylle” and Greg Berlanti’s “Fly Me to the Moon”.
All were star vehicles and all boasted considerable budgets (all were $200 million each bar ‘Moon’ at $100 million). ‘Killers’ scored rave reviews and both it and “Napoleon” landed multiple Oscar nominations. “Argylle” was flat out panned, and “Fly Me to The Moon” scored tepid but good reviews.
However all badly underperformed at the box-office – “Napoleon” performed the best with $221 million followed by ‘Killers’ with $157 million, “Argylle” with $96 million and ‘Moon’ with $39 million.
In contrast during this time, Apple released the Mark Wahlberg-led “The Family Plan” directly to its service and skipped theatrical. Even with shockingly bad reviews, it quickly became Apple TV+’s most-watched film. Though some films seem
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