ST The Last Jedi Box Office Discussion (see warning on page 307 before posting)

I don't trust Deadline. $11.5 million is extremely low. That's another 50+% drop. Can't sustain that if it wants to beat Avengers.

 

Friday gross for Last Jedi Domestic $2.723M.



Rogue One on such same day (Fri., Week 5): $3.260M
Last Jedi: -16.5% to RO
RO made $43.824M in remainder of run
Last Jedi if at -16.5% pace would add $36.593M to its total to finish at just over $619M.
$619M would be a multiple (off of a $220M opening) of 2.81x

 

The wheels are really falling off the car now. Not that TLJ was holding well before (only an average of 9% week to week ahead of Rogue One after opening weekend).

With Deadline's projection (that it may even come under due to the actual for Friday being lower than they thought):

Opening weekend (alone): RO + 41.87%
Week 1 (alone): RO + 13.14%
Week 2 (alone): RO + 7.27%
Week 3 (alone): RO + 5.91%
Week 4 (alone): RO - 9.96% (EDIT with new Deadline projection for 3 day at $11.5 million)

 

The original Spiderman movie remember how big that was in 2002?It adjusts to 620 in 2017 ticket prices.It also beat clones by 100 million

 

@The Last Cookiemonster enough of your absurdity already. TLJ has already made about 120m more than Age of Ultron. And in the end will have made a 160m more. In the end it will make about the same amount that the original Avengers did. To say that Disney would be upset with that is like saying that they fully expect movies to continuously do what only two movies have ever done in history.

Trying to say that there will be any shake ups at Lucasfilm because of a movie that made over 600m and over 1.3b WW is an even more absurd opinion. They knew all along this movie wasn't going to make as much as TFA to begin with. And add to that it being a darker film than TFA (and darker films generally don't get the business as lighter tone fun films do) and it doing some controversial things (which Disney would have been fully aware that it was doing) the movie is extremely likely to end up right around where Disney expected it to end up.

All these people who make these projections that you are basing your opinions off of do not work for Disney and they did not have knowledge that TLJ was not going to be the love letter to fans like TFA was. And as far as judging how big of backlash it received. You are basing that opinion off of trolls and click bait articles.

 

It's worth noting that TESB did the least business of all the Star Wars movies so far. And AOTC did the least business of the prequels. Take that FWIW, but there could be a middle chapter thing going on here.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Amazing success considering it’s one of the darkest second chapters in blockbuster history and the physical death of an icon. No way Disney is upset. They knew this this one was going to rock worlds and make some sad and angry. It’s the lightening storm before the Light of IX.

 

We're seriously debating whether or not a movie that's going to make over $600 million domestic is a disappointment.

Insert "I don't want to live on this planet anymore" gif here.

 

And as has been the case since the movie came out the people who are trying to call the film a box office disappointment are people who didn't like the film. They are strictly trying to find ways to back up their personal opinion of the film.

 

How exactly are we defining "disappointment" financially?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

A lot of them are basing it off of the fact that it will make about 300m less domestically than TFA (which by the way the drop will end up being about the same drop that ESB had from ANH percentage wise) and the fact that bloggers and other fans online were predicting it to have 700m+.

 

Weekend numbers are pretty bad, honestly. Avengers is probably off the table with these numbers. Slight bummer, but fortunately I still love the movie.

 

ESB came out a hundred years ago, can’t compare that trilogy with this one.

 

I can't speak for everyone, but I do find it interesting that it may have the lowest December-release multiple in modern history. Whether or not you think that is something Disney will react to or not (or which has perfectly reasonable explanations), it's a discussion I think is appropriate for the Box office thread.

 

Are any of those bloggers or fans financial insiders in the industry?

 

Surely Disney and Lucasfilm aren’t going to bother releasing Solo or Episode 9 in China (and probably the inevitable Obi-Wan film)? It’s just a waste of money and resources. They don't like them, end of.

 

Looks like a really messy weekend at the box office. To many movies playing at the same time.
Unfortunately Paddington 2 is performing way under predictions - the best reviewed family film in the world of 2017 ( i loved it) is bombing. Also Greatest Showman ( it made about the same OW as TLJ makes this 4th weekend total ) is having incredible legs, which is also the case for Jumanji of course. Spielberg´s The Post doing less than expected, Insidious sequel collapsing in 2nd weekend, Proud Mary doing good business ( cost $ 14 mill).

TLJ is just not having the best legs, it will crawl to $ 620 mill, which in perspective i think its a great number when you look the the conditions at the moment. Its not having TFA "feel good" factor on its side, which is just fine. I actually saw both movies in a combo yesterday ( TFA and TLJ ) and they both feel like organically connected to each other, while at the same time being very different. I am not dealing with tabloid trolling headlines, but a good one for Rob Caine would be like: " Star Wars: The Last Jedi - biggest dark / art blockbuster sequel in America since The Dark Knight".

 

That's pretty irrelevant. Star Wars are the only blockbusters that come out in December. Hard to compare movies with sub-100 openings to those with 220 openings.

 

Honestly, it's just math.

Top 15 December Openings

1. The Force Awakens (3.78x)
2. Last Jedi (2.85x - or so)
3. Rogue One (3.43x)
4. Hobbit 1 (3.60x)
5. I am Legend (3.32x)
6. Avatar (9.72x)
7. Hobbit 2 (3.53x)
8. LOTR 3 (5.23x)
9. Narnia 1 (4.47x)
10. Sherlock Holmes (3.37x)
11. LOTR 2 (5.46x)
12. Hobbit 3 (4.72x)
13. King Kong (4.36x)
14. Chipmunks 2 (4.56x)
15. LOTR 1 (6.65x)
***
25. Jumanji 2 (7.11x - so far)

Off of a $220M opening weekend, picking the lowest of those, Sherlock Holmes with 3.37x, would result in an expectation of $741M. Those multiples are *why* you release in December. So $620M-$630M *is* unexpected, at least after the opening proved that there was rabid interest in the film. I'm *not* saying it's disappointing in absolute terms. Disney is still making money hand over fist. But it may be something they want to look at.

 

When you have the largest head start in film history there’s really nowhere to go but down though. The two go hand in hand.

Best opening in history means more people see it first and each theatre is packed for 4 days for all screenings so there’s nowhere to go but huge % drops.

% drops make for big headlines but money is money and in the end 1.25 billion dollars and being one of the highest grossing WW films of all time despite the film being the dark second chapter, and Luke passing, and angering Trump fans everywhere... is a remarkable achievement that is hard to imagine being seen as something in need of some kind of course correction that wasn’t planned anyway. The ending was always going to be more uplifting. The final in film trilogies tend to be.

Lucasfilm is being run like Pixar with a touch of Marvel. Critical acclaim and just making the best art they can stand behind matters more to Pixar than beating Ice Age or Minions or Shrek or something like that. They wouldn’t make Inside Out or Up and Lucasfilm wouldn’t greenlight a psychological midlife crisis film on Luke Skywalker if they were only interested in profits. Pixar would just make mindless comedies and Lucasfilm would have just had Luke fighting everyone from start to finish if that’s all they wanted.

 

You also have to look at profitability, and according to Deadline, Rogue One actually had a higher cash on cash return than Age of Ultron. Let's wait and see how profitable The Last Jedi is. I suspect the huge domestic haul of the Star Wars spinoff, where studios really make the most of their profit, accounts for this "upset". Also the Avengers 2 budget, with its star salaries and profit sharing, was also a factor. Then, there is the question of expectations: Avengers 2 was a formula Marvel film, with extra heroes added to the mix to make it more attractive. It was a crowd-pleaser (as most MCU films are) and I suspect a lot was expected of it. The Last Jedi, on the other hand, must've been seen as a riskier venture. It's quite possible that Disney will cut it more slack.

And on a tangential note, it was mentioned above that Disney's Stateside clout guaranteed the cooperation of critics, whereas reviewers on foreign shores far from Hollywood spoke freely. I did some digging, and found this was not entirely true. Apparently, Disney's malign influence reaches everywhere. ;-)

South China Morning Post (Hong Kong): "The Last Jedi: A true epic that casts off the shadow of The Empire Strikes Back to leave us with new hope."
http://www.scmp.com/culture/film-tv...-wars-last-jedi-true-epic-casts-shadow-empire

Rappler (The Philippines): "The Last Jedi..: "Sprawling, spectacular, and commercial."
https://www.rappler.com/entertainment/movies/191266-star-wars-the-last-jedi-movie-review

The Straits Times (Singapore): "The Last Jedi packed with action and humor."
http://www.straitstimes.com/lifesty...rs-the-last-jedi-packed-with-action-and-humor

The Hindustan Times (India): "The Last Jedi: A profound spiritual experience."
http://www.hindustantimes.com/movie...nce-5-stars/story-TBbx1Q7GuCCi8cRMoQlLkJ.html

 

@ByteSizeRick the multiplier system really isn't a good way to judge how popular a film is. Basically under the multiplier system you are penalizing a film for more people wanting to come out to see it OW. In TLJ's case even though it's multiplier will end up being lower than Rogue One in the end though more people will have come out to see TLJ after OW than they did for Rogue One.

@Darth_Articulate No not that I am aware of.

 

That's not how it works. You can't just scale up smaller movies and assume the multiple should remain the same. There are exactly two December releases to open at 200+. One of them had great legs, one of them didn't. Shelock Homles grossed less in its full run than TLJ did in its OW. Comparing multipliers in this way is completely pointless.

 

"Just math" inherently lacks interpretation, so no. That's why I'm asking if actual financial professionals in the industry over projected the take. They would be better equipped to interpret the different factors going into the take. If, by and large, the majority of them over projected the take, then I think it could properly be considered a disappointment.

 

Hey, I'm happy to agree to disagree on multipliers. Respectful disagreement is the bread and butter of life! My feeling is that the current BO is evidencing strangely poor legs for the film which can be explained in a number of ways, not the least of which is that it is not, in my view, a crowd-pleasing movie (and was very much not built to be by Disney). So you all may be right that Disney is saying "art is more important" in some respects. I still think its a conversation worth having (and thanks for having it with me)!