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

I'm super curious what these numbers mean, but don't understand your working sorry. When you say "what the market thinks it's worth", are you referring to particular well-respected predictions?

 

How is this value determined?

 

In English, please.

 

Deadline says $1.7M Friday, down 37%, which if true is a very good Friday especially given the theater drop. It would be a 100% increase from Thursday. Easy hitting $600M Saturday.

 

Hopefully this will explain things--I didn't want to construct an epic post with all the nerdiness overwhelming people.

So, basically, I used a technique to build a smooth curve through the data. This ignores unwarranted spikes due to hyped-up opening day, public holidays, etc. This curve represents the underlying trend in the data. The spikes (and dips, e.g. Christmas Eve), OTOH, collectively form a kind of additional bump outside how the film is actually performing--they're there because of hype, or boredom, or any number of factors beyond the underlying demand.

So then the question becomes, how much of a particular movie's total gross is attributable to that noise--the spikes and bumps. That's what the percentage represents.

Obviously this is not completely rigorous--I'm doing this with limited data--but it still paints a picture.

I'm still not entirely sure that's clear, but maybe it's a start..​

(For those curious, I'm using the stl() function in R after scraping data from Box Office Mojo.)

 

While I think smoothing most bumps makes sense, opening day is when you see a film measured on its marketing and predecessors' pre-built goodwill, and the scale of that relative to subsequent days - as the film has to more stand on its own - is quite telling imo, and is what has separated many problematic (but still high earning) sequels in box office behavior. By smoothing that out, you lose the effect of the audience reaction on the film's success, and smooth out a movie so that a movie which made one billion on OD, then 5 dollars for the rest of its run because of being disliked, is declared a smooth billion dollar success with no context for how that number played out.

When you say what the market thinks it is worth, do you mean in a capitalistic sense and not in the sense of predictions?

 

That's exactly what I'm measuring. So, to use your example:

Underlying trend value: $5
Overall gross: $1,000,000,005
Percentage: 99.99%

IOW, 99.99% is not attributable to the underlying trend.

Yes, I'm saying the trend suggests it's worth $X, but instead it received $X+.

 

Who would thought that TLJ will be against such a tough competition as Jumanji. Jumanji is now 8th best box office movie of the year and heading for positions 5-7. Jumanji beat easily Justice League and will beat Thor in a few days.
That was real surprise.

 

Jumanji is the biggest surprise to come out of 2017. I think it scratches the "simple good fun" itch that TLJ doesn't go after.

 

Yes, compared to TFA, TLJ is like every other movie in the world- it made less money, but we have been over that 1000 times, and it is ridiculous. No need for repetition.

ROFL the ad hominem bit about "blind fanboy narrative, endless praise." You do realize people can have a different opinion than you about the movie, right? That they can like it? It is you who are embarrassing and annoying. Didn't get what you wanted out of SW, and in your frustration you want to make it like it was a failure in the broader sense. No, YOU just didn't get what you wanted.

It is you who are ignoring what people are writing and repeating the same thing over and over. You haven't addressed the logic of what I wrote in the first post you responded to, and what you are writing has already been debunked by others.

AGAIN- It didn't become the #1 movie of the year, and a massive critical success because a few fanboys liked it. Anyway, enough of this repetition.

 

Weekend box office estimate from deadline (these tend to go down once actuals come out):
8..) Star Wars: The Last Jedi(DIS), 2,456 theaters (-634)/ $1.7M Fri (-37%)/3-day: $6.5M (-45%)/Total:$604.2 M/ Wk 6

Last Jedi, the most divisive Star Wars film:
http://comicbook.com/starwars/2018/01/18/star-wars-most-divisive-movie-last-jedi-phantom-menace/

 

When your most divisive film makes 1.3 billion you're in a good spot. Warner Bros would kill for this.

 

Maybe. But we have seen a WB property become devalued along similar circumstances. It wasn't Batman v. Superman that showed the divisiveness. It was Justice League. It is possible, based on the legs we are seeing from Last Jedi (and some of the other charts that @Artoo-Dion is doing), that the film really did burn through a material portion of Star Wars' goodwill. Flipping an audience base from "Ooooh, Star Wars!" to "Prove it and we'll come out" (i.e., from "hype" to "show me") is going to have a long-term negative effect. That's what I believe happened with this film (especially for casual audiences and families that thought they were going to get the "Jumanji" experience out of Last Jedi that the Force Awakens was), but time will tell the tale. Unfortunately, I think the narrative is going to be able to be played as negative going into IX coming off of SOLO, if only because I can't imagine that process working out well (I would *love* to be wrong there. I like Ron Howard and would love to enjoy that film.)

 

So it looks like it will be closer to $615 or $616 million overall domestic. Never saw that low coming but oh well. Right around a 2.80 multiplier.

Will IX be able to put up 10% more than TLJ? ROTJ and ROTS both put up 17-22% more than their predecessors.

 

Yes and no. You're in a good spot for this movie, but how does that affect the property going forward? We'll find out over the next 2-3 years from the BO and merchandise.

 

I see IX at around 20-30% lower than TLJ, I'm sure much less pre-sale tickets.

 

A 2.8 multiplier is better than the average multiplier for films with 200M+ openings.

 

How will Solo affect IX? You have the divisive TLJ, if that is followed by a Solobomb (TM), how does that back to back lead in into IX affect it?

 

If 1.7 Friday is accurate that puts it at 599.4.

 

This year also has no celebration, which may affect additionally.

 

Having a Celebration or not having a Celebration will have absolutely no affect on the box office whatsoever.

 

The Harry Potter franchise was very successful.

 

You don't think Celebration creates hype? Hype is part of marketing 101

 

To say that a Celebration would have any affect on the overall box office of a movie is just ridiculous. Very very few people even know that Star Wars Celebrations even go on. It would be like saying that a neighborhood catching on fire and everyone having to move out of the large city that neighborhood is in would have a drastic affect on the population of that said city.

 

New promos and bts footage and interviews to name a few things come out of celebration, not just attendance. All of that is covered by sites and sw.com and used to promote the movie. Celebration, like any marketing, has an impact on BO.

Marketing and hype has more affect on BO than a calendar. You think Disney spent hundreds of millions of dollars to promote a movie if it didn't affect BO?