Stuff going on this week! Prime Day is coming, which means probable deals From Amazon and all other retailers competing!
Mattel Creations will be offering a Chronicles 2 pack for He-Man and Skeletor this Wednesday. No firm details on anything particularly new or different about the figures themselves, but the packaging is supposed to be fancy. My suspicion is that the “running change” we’ve seen in both figures may be born out of production run up for this release that happen to filter down into the normal retail offerings.
During the Target Collector thing, Mattel posted a video where they DID comment on additional iterations of Skeletor from “the Sketchbook”.
And in its 3rd weekend, the MOTU film is doing…okay-ish. Toy Story 5 opened with an impressive $160 million opening. But I think the more interesting data is how MOTU and Mando and Grogu have performed. Despite both seeing MASSIVE drop offs in their second (and third) weekends, both have actually stabilized into “soft, but consistent” performance. Despite losing nearly 1/3 of its screens this weekend, MOTU only saw a modest 37% decline from last weekend for $5.5 million (equating to a roughly $3.5 million reduction from last weekend’s nearly $9 million). In fact, the per screen average actually went UP relative to last weekend!
Comparatively, Spielberg’s latest, Disclosure Day, saw a similar cratering as we’ve seen across most films this summer. In its second weekend, Disclosure Day dropped a not-insignificant 62%. Not the 70+% seen with MOTU, Scary movie or Mandalorian, but still reflective of the importance of “FOMO” in the movie industry.
Masters of the Universe has crossed $100 million worldwide, with international number delayed as usual. It’s looking like, barring GREAT holdover against the horror films this month, MOTU will probably peter out around $60-65 million domestic. That’s roughly in the neighborhood of Send Help and The Housemaid and a bit behind Mortal Kombat 2. International returns remain a wildcard.
And I find it amusing that, for all the fuss about the film’s financial disappointment…I’ll be dipped if I can find the basic, $10, Core Skeletor figure for retail. Local Walmart isn’t carrying the line, Target is reasonably stocked with wave 1 (though, last time I was there, they weren’t overflowing with product, stuff had clearly sold). I can order the “feature” Skeletor, but even the Chronicles iteration seems to be in somewhat shorter supply.
And I’m not sure it’s “just 40 year old men” buying the Core figure, so maybe there IS something to the merchandise angle, here.
