In a strong testament to Taylor Swift’s tour’s popularity, the phenomenon is to debut in cinema on October 13th (see our analysis on the tour here). While great for theater owners, unfortunately, it could have opened sooner as there are no tentpole wide releases set to open during September. The next one is Killers of the Flower Moon (Martin Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Robert De Niro on Oct. 6 (3.5 hour play time). Also, unfortunately, there has been no resolution to the actors and writers strike and films with Q4 2023 release dates now being pushed into 2024, including Dune 2. This is sad because the summer box office season just ended with Labor Day for a seasonal box office haul of $4.0B, or incredibly just shy of the pre-pandemic average of $4.3B (2015-2019).
On the strikes at a conference this week, the commentary from the CEOs of Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount, Netflix, and IMAX implied that they don't expect a resolution to the strike this year. Recall that we estimate that the strikes could be significant to consumer spending in the Los Angeles region and TV and Film production (plus all their service providers) make up 5.0%-5.5% of the region’s personal income and GDP. While early, we are starting to see the region underperform for several brands. Shown below is trended visits for Nordstrom and Ross Stores. The Los Angeles DMA makes up over half of Nordstrom’s California footprint and a third of Ross’. Given the region's affluence, it likely makes up a greater proportion of sales.
