‘Freaky’ Leads & Jackie Chan’s ‘Vanguard’ Tries To Throw A Punch

The weekend before Thanksgiving is one of the most lucrative ones on the calendar, last year bringing in $204.9M off the opening of Disney’s Frozen II, which posted November’s fifth-best domestic opening of all-time at $130.3M.

Who would ever think that the domestic box office would sink to such an atrocious level as this weekend? If last weekend brought in $10M for all titles with California theaters and other markets like Illinois open, this weekend is surely the lowest weekend for exhibition since theaters reopened back in September for Tenet, with an estimated $6.5M, a 35% drop.

On digital, there was a Vanguard ad on TikTok promoting Chan’s Nov. 19 fan event (see below). However, RelishMix wasn’t impressed with the moderate result of that, nor the overall campaign’s digital push. “There’s next-to-nothing across digital/social platforms to market this project, other than some behind-the-scenes and cookie cutter featurette materials that have trickled over from the original release in China,” reports the social media analytics corp…the campaign completely lacks strategy and positioning, with one trailer yielding 6.7M on YouTube views for over 25 videos.”

In addition to an Entertainment Weekly web page takeover, there were pre-roll video ads on EW and sister site People. There were ads on Spotify targeting the pic’s older male demo. 30-second spots were also taken on streaming and nationally syndicated radio, in the latter sector hitting such shows as NFL Sunday Night, NCAA Football, Bob & Tom, Free Beer and Hot Wings, and Westwood One’s Rock Reach network of 435 stations.

https://deadline.com/2020/11/freaky-jackie-chan-vanguard-bombs-box-office-weekend-1234620087/

RelishMix noticed that Chan told his 3.6M followers to “wear a mask” on Instagram: