ST Episode VII Box Office Discussion

I am sorry. But it has nothing to do with you "dont think it is going to work that way". The audience is massive for Chinese New Years and while there is no guarantee for TFA being huge - there is no evidence against it either.

Also i do not really think you registered that there is a foreign movie blackout for december in China. Opening one week ahead of Chinese New Years could be paralelled to pre Memorial Day / 4th of July weekend in US.

Now....it will still take good marketing and a quality movie to build that China success.

Also, please provide a link to the confirmation of the China release date if you can, as this thread would do good with some cold facts from time to time. Its the boxoffice thread after all. For all the JJ Abrams hate / i don`t care about Star Wars anymore bull**** You have the JJ thread or the social thread if so.

 

try Googling "The Force Awakens international release dates" - the magic of search engines!

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2488496/releaseinfo

I don't know how accurate, but I have a Dutch friend gloating already about getting to see it ahead of those of us in the U.S., so that one must be right.

Marketing isn't always a cure for lack of interest. Advertising in the U.S. has an easy job, since everyone already knows about Star Wars and the only real marketing task is to compensate for lingering public ill will and lost interest in Star Wars as the result of the prequels.

China doesn't have a prequel problem, but it also has little public awareness and less interest. It's going to have a problem because of its cast and also because the movie isn't designed for 3D.

 

Sure it possibly COULD.

Let's look at the both the worldwide and domestic perspective.

Avengers and Jurassic world were massive and huge and everything you could hope for. JW still came up over 200M short of Titanic's original gross (never mind the 3D release adding about 350M to the total) . Avengers was over 300M short then add another 1B for Avatar.

Domestically it's far closer and in fact both JW and Avengers passed Titanic's original total but still fell short of it's final total by about 15M and 35M respectively. Now add another 100M for Avatar!

Will Avatar be passed eventually? Sure and even Titanic's current 659M and much sooner.

I don't think TFA is the movie to do it.

Maybe it will do JW numbers. Maybe better but I think it unlikely that it will get anywhere near Titanic's original total (near meaning within 50M).

Titanic and Avatar gave people something that was nothing quite like they had ever seen before which is what Star Wars did in 1977. The only other Star Wars movie that could and did do that is The Phantom Menace which did the truly amazing thing of making something that was the 4th movie seem like an introduction to an almost entirely new universe and that resonated with the audience. Things like that can only be done once in a while. Imagine if TPM was actually the first Star Wars movie ever in 1999 and the impact it would have had.

TFA is obviously not doing that. It can't be either ANH in 1977 or TPM in 1999. It could of course do something akin to JW this year and that would be massive box office wise.

Internationally I would think it'll be around the 700M mark. So even adding a massive 700M for domestic that is still "only" 1.4B in total.

Something could always happen but more likely VIII will make more internationally than TFA as that market continually grows with more theaters.

 

Agreed. If TFA has an upside surprise, it will come from the domestic market. $600 million may be possible. But more than 700-800 outside the U.S. is going to be extremely difficult. China best case scenario contributes $100 million, no more than a third of its F7 box office total.

 

Fixed for some objectiveness for you Qui.

 

I definitely think that if TFA has any special box office success, it'll be on the domestic end.

 

China will be a huge unknown. Just spent 3 months there recently and SW is not a big thing there at all, but at the same time, they love big American blockbusters and like jumping on the bandwagon for popular American stuff. Probably the reason why the release date there is a little delayed, they need this to get huge buzz in the US and everywhere else first so China will want to jump on the bandwagon.

 

China is going to be fun to follow up on, because it is so unpredictable. I will consider it realistic to neither expect record numbers - like Furious $ 400 mill - or really low - about just under $100. The truth might happen to end up somewhere in the middle of that. But as you state, i also think it is wise for Lucasfilm/Disney to delay and take advantage of ( hopefully) the big buzz around the world for TFA existing at the time of the China premiere. It also brings forward the possibility for the actors and crew to "tour" China, do promo, tv etc. Have more presence in the media. Who wants to bet against Daisy Ridley learning some Chinese sentences before christmas? The Chinese New Year is a big celebration as i have mentioned, and people are traveling in masses to get "home" to their families. Not without controversy as far as i know. as there is a lot of people not managing to arrange transportation or can not secure seats on planes, trains etc.

Social media, so much bigger an influence these days, than during the TPM period, is going to be fundamental too in marketing to China. Google and Facebook still blocked right?

 

$100 million is not low. That's the "somewhere in the middle" - still a huge hit in China, would be top 15 for any year there. I think we'll see slower growth there in ticket sales for a bit, not to mention the damage done by a devalued Yuan.

Low in China would be $50 million, which would still be top 30 or so.

 

It would be fairly low for Star Wars. JW is at $ 230 mill in China. Without stars or built in audience.

Oh, dinosaurs of course.

But that is what we should compare it with. Furious 7 - already we have pointed out this was turning into an abnormal beast for some reason in China.

Here is the toplist for China so all can see. Not updated with the last Terminator film though.
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/intl/china/yearly/

 

Chinese New Year is big but I would say it's less of a shopping/going out time than Christmas is here. People generally go home and spend time with their families at home. Also you're going to have a mass exodus of young people who live in cities going back to rural areas to see family during that time which might limit box office intake since movie theaters are primarily in big cities and hard to find in the countryside.

 

Monkey King is the high water mark for New Year's box office in China. We've seen the trailer, don't know if anything can compete with that.

 

Then you did it wrong my friend.

The only real bit of bias was the first line. "TFA is obviously not doing that."

I don't see how cutting out the actual far more objective part makes any sense.

" It can't be either ANH in 1977 or TPM in 1999. It could of course do something akin to JW this year and that would be massive box office wise."

 

Yeah, should have known better. Got lost. But when you start dissect Qui, who wouldn`t. Ah

Nothing new to discuss here really. We need trailer and full blown marketing attack in a not so distant future and then the predictions and debate can come into full circle again. Looking forward too....

 

http://variety.com/2015/film/box-office/star-wars-the-force-awakens-box-office-records-1201583023/

 

I think China will do $250 mill + ...........

 

way to take a stand on absolutely nothing, Variety. "It could be big, but maybe not but a lot of movies do well at the holidays and probably Star Wars too but who's to say, really?"

 

I actually think that's the top and bottom of it... although it's about as 'sitting on the fence' as one can get. TFA has both the potential to be huge, and equally the potential to be financially dissapointing (subjectively speaking). The only assured thing, IMO, is that it will make a lot of money regardless of whether that's more or less than expected.

 

Exactly. It could "disappoint" and gross $1.2 billion, or end up at the very top of the highest grossing movies of all time with $2 billion or more...

 

I think the 1st movie in any new SW trilogy will make huge money because you are going to get the casual fan who is curious about it. I know many friends who saw TPM in 1999 and didn't even bother to see AOTC or ROTS, but because they loved the OT as kids, they were atleast going to see TPM.

The same goes for TFA, as I think (regardless of how the movie is received) it will gross the most of the ST, as you will have many OT fans who want to see Han, Luke and Leia again. They may not see Episodes 8 or 9, but they will have the same curiosity that they did in 1999.

I do agree that any SW movie will make huge box office regardless, but when it is all said and done, I think the top 3 grossing SW movies will eventually be Episode 4, Episode 1, and Episode 7 simply because they have the luxury of being the 1st SW movie and bring in more casual fans.

I think that Episode 5, Episode 2, and Episodes 8 will be the 3 lowest grossing films, and Episodes 6, Episode 3, and Episode 9 will be in the middle as they have the luxury of 'this is the last SW movie ever' to bring in more fans then the previous installment.

I hope that makes sense!

 

It's true of franchise movies in general that when there's a lot of anticipation, the first movie does the best... in the U.S.

Outside the U.S., our franchises often build over time, and the sequels perform better. It's not written in stone, but there are many examples.

So I won't be surprised if Episode VII is the top grossing ST film in the US, but gets outperformed by Episode VIII outside the U.S.

 

They may be trying to lessen the impact of opening weekend and hope that this movie has legs rather than being heavily front loaded. I'm thinking that's what may be going on with the so-far not-so-great marketing to the average Joe. The average person needs to have their adrenaline pumping or they will simply not pay attention.

But that is so very arrogant and so VERY risky to do.This movie, with the $4billion sales attached to it HAS to resonate with casual fans and even those who aren't necessarily fans and can take it or leave it. Fans alone won't make it a monster hit.

They've done nearly NO marketing for Force Friday. Word is not out. It hasn't been in flyers or mail outs or on TV. The signs I've seen in front of Toys R Us were meager and didn't even mention TFA. If this reflects the approach they plan to take with the movie from here on out, it's going to be VERY interesting so say the least.

The movie needs marketing. There's only so long you can wait.You can't market it along side Christmas. You HAVE to get a head start on the rest of the holiday season.

 

I'd argue that it doesn't need much marketing in the U.S. more than making people aware of the release date. People will go. No amount of advertising will convince kids that Star Wars is cool, and no perceived failure of marketing will prevent men over the age of 35 from going to see it. Is the marketing going to convince teenage girls and young women to see Star Wars? No. Not if the movie doesn't contain any of the things they want to see.

The audience is going to skew old and male. That segment is critic proof. And everyone else is immune to advertising because people over the age of 60 and under the age of 18 and 90% of all women and girls already know that they aren't interested. Most women who see the movie will do it out of a spirit of charity to accompany a male who wants to see it. Most kids who see the movie will do so out of a sense of not being given any choice by their dads who bring them to see it.

To sum it all up. In the U.S. Star Wars movie advertising is irrelevant. It won't take much to make people aware of the release date. That's all anyone needs to know.

 

That's a bunch of crap. It doesn't need much marketing to do $300 million or maybe even $350 million, but that's not the kind of numbers Disney likely wants from it. It needs marketing for the average person to think there's a reason to see this movie. It has to WOW people somewhat because of the reasons YOU yourself has described (not the old person or the fact that kids don't like it but because there's STILL a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths about the PT no matter how you slice it).

 

I agree but I think the marketing up to now has already done the job of selling the idea that TFA backfills the hole left by the PT with tons of OT nostalgia. The enthusiasts will pass that info on to normal moviegoers who aren't all that excited about the Star Wars brand. I don't see how marketing to general audiences can excite anyone about something that will never be exciting to them, e.g. lightsabers and Darth whatevers and spaceships and hyperspace. The core audience is already sold. They will drag their friends and family along for the ride. The movie will make money. Disney shareholders will be pleased. The Star Wars strategic plan for the next 5 to 7 years will be officially underway.