Clint Eastwood’s Cry Macho had a muted opening weekend of $4.4 million for a third-place finish and it looks like its HBO Max performance wasn’t all that great, according to Samba TV.
Per Samba TV, Cry Macho pulled in only 693,000 households in the States over the weekend. For comparison’s sake, the Denzel Washington thriller The Little Things opened at the end of January when New York City and Los Angeles box office markets were still shuttered due to the pandemic. That film debuted slightly better than Cry Macho with $4.7 million and was 51% ahead of Cry Macho’s HBO Max performance as it drew in 1.4 million U.S. households. Cry Macho actually matched the 693,000 number of the studio’s In The Heights adaptation, which also underperformed at the box office with a lower than expected start of $11.5 million.
Samba TV, which is a third-party service that only measures U.S. Smart TV terrestrial viewership in 3 million households, shows that Cry Macho’s viewership peaked on Saturday and the audience skewed older (65+) and Hispanic (+35%). Warner Bros’ experimentation with day-and-date theatrical-streaming has continued to show a trend that when a movie performs well in theaters (Mortal Kombat, Godzilla vs. Kong), the HBO Max performance also shines. When the film doesn’t click in theaters, the HBO Max results also suffer. Cry Macho is a recent example as well as the release of James Wan’s Malignant, which came in 53% behind the Conjuring 3 with 753,000 households watching the film. Malignant debuted to just $5.57 million during its opening weekend compared to the $24.1 million of the third Conjuring installment while the latter also pulled in 3 million U.S. households on HBO Max in 17 days.
It also seems like nothing about Cry Macho made the target demo watch the film in theaters or at home. The film is 52% rotten on Rotten Tomatoes while the movie only received a “B” CinemaScore from opening night audiences. As “Deadline” puts it, “nothing to rush out to, and nothing to change the channel to.”
What are YOUR thoughts on Cry Macho’s HBO Max performance?