ST Episode VII Box Office Discussion

Of course. And Disney must agree with my assessment, otherwise the teaser trailer wouldn't have been designed in a way to try to make people forget the PT ever happened. I'm sure the first full trailer will be even more full on an attempt to induce prequel amnesia.

 

Hobbit 3 had an opening Wednesday of $24.5 million-ish.

This movie seems pretty instructive about the box office potential of the ST in general and TFA in particular. Hobbit 3 is the final movie of a trilogy that was launched on the backs of the financial success of the Jackson LOTR trilogy - one of the most successful and critically acclaimed film trilogies of all time. Yet the Middle Earth prequel trilogy has been a mess. It has not done nearly as well in the U.S. as the Middle Earth OT. It's less critically praised, and fans are divided about the narrative quality, the at times draggy plot, the CGI excess, the uneven tone. Objectively, the PT movies just aren't as good as the OT movies. Even so, foreign audiences don't seem to recognize or care about the qualitative differences between the films. Hobbit 1 and Hobbit 2 outperformed LOTR 1 and LOTR 2 at the non U.S. box office and each did nearly the foreign business of LOTR 3. It seems possible that Hobbit 3 will be the most successful of the six movies outside the U.S. It could conceivably earn $800 million outside the U.S.

So what lessons can we learn? Foreign audiences are more interested in the brand names of Hollywood action movies than anything else? Here are a few:

1. It's very hard for a movie to have a $100 million U.S. opening weekend in late December. Hobbit 3, almost certainly a $1 billion plus film, will likely earn about $90 million over its first 5 days in the U.S.
2. A marginally well-reviewed movie can still make $1 billion worldwide, even if audiences generally agree later on that it wasn't all that fantastic.
3. A Hollywood brand with a tarnished U.S. brand can still earn fantastic bank abroad (Tom Cruise!, Jackson's Middle Earth!)
4. It's great if your movie makes $300 million in the U.S. But it's so much better if it can make $700 - $800 million outside the U.S.

Facts:

Middle Earth OT: U.S/foreign box office split = 35/65
Middle Earth PT: U.S./foreign box office split = 30/70
Star Wars PT: U.S./foreign box office split = 45/55
New Trek 1: U.S./foreign box office split = 67/33 !
New Trek 2: U.S./foreign box office split = 49/51

Lesson 5. Having a popular U.S. brand for your big budget sci fi action adventure does not guarantee a big foreign audience.

Conclusion: A TFA that makes $400 million in the U.S. may still only barely scratch its way to $1 billion worldwide. Or may not make it at all. Even a $500 million (U.S. box office) TFA may struggle to do much better than $1 billion worldwide.

 

Both TT and ROTK made over $100 million over their long release weekend. Would it be reasonable to consider that they would have made the same had they been released on a Friday? In other words, would what they made from Wednesday to Sunday have been compressed into Friday to Sunday?

It's not that it's impossible or even difficult for a movie to make well over $100 million in December. It's that nothing has ever been released in December that did it yet. LOTR movies, as close to the SW genre as they may seem, are NOT appropriate for children. SW has that going for it-at least for 7-11 year olds.

 

Well, we agree that it's not impossible, and we agree that it has never happened before. The reason it's extremely unlikely (though not impossible) is as I've argued before that it's just not a very good weekend for moviegoing. At least in the U.S., people do not prioritize movies over last minute holiday shopping, holiday parties, spending time with extended family, traveling to holiday destinations, etc.

The good news for the sequel trilogy as a whole is that even if TFA has an absolutely horrible U.S./foreign box office split, it can still build its foreign brand reputation over time.

Hunger Games is a fantastic example. The first movie didn't have a great foreign box office take, but HG2 made nearly $200 million more outside the U.S. than HG1. I don't know if it's because Hunger Games was building its international brand reputation or if it was mostly Jennifer Lawrence building her own international brand, but the results were fantastic.

And despite how awful Star Trek into Darkness was, it still built on the international audience of new Trek 1, earning $100 million more abroad.

 

That is something I can definitely agree with. As a matter of fact, I've brought that up early in the conversation a year ago. I got blasted for saying it though. But that's why I don't think it will break any records and the max will be $150 million. However, I can't see any way it will make less than $125 million and that's shooting low.

As far as foreign-I couldn't care less about what it does internationally. I'm only curious about the domestic.

 

I'm curious too. But not exclusively curious; I'm bi-curious. The success and appeal of the teaser trailer has made me a bit more bullish about the domestic box office take. $400 million seems like a floor to me now. And $400 million if the movie is so unwatchably humiliatingly awful it makes Attack of the Clones look like a masterpiece.

I didn't feel that way 2 months ago.

 

Rehabilitate it from what?

Having massive hit movies?

Weird strategy.

By having it echo this?

 

Spider-Man 3 was a hit, making almost 900 million worldwide. That didn't meany Sony didn't need to rehabilitate the brand afterwards.

 

Sony haven't shown themselves to be the brightest bunch.

3 was the biggest worldwide hit but for what ever exact reason they decided to not to do more with Raimi. I think that had less to do with artistic reasons than the costs of the movies going up.

The audience could care less about that.

So if we go by the public vote at the box office then.

BTW Revenge of the Sith was the number one movie of 2005 domestically and made 380M. Was about 90M ahead of the next most successful in Harry Potter 4 and sold some 59M tickets.

Spider-Man 3 was the number one movie of 2007 domestically and made 337M. Was about 14M ahead of the next most successful in Shrek 3 and sold some 49M tickets.

LOTR:ROTK was the number one movie of 2003 domestically and made 377M. Was about 37M ahead of the next most successful in Shrek 3 and sold some 62M tickets.

So I guess by your logic The Hobbit really needed to distance itself from the previous trilogy?

If TFA can have the same success of ROTS in relative terms to this time everyone will be rather happy.

In today's market like anything else it'd have way less tickets sold like Iron Man 3 with 10M less but make over 400M with higher prices of tickets.

 

Germain Lussier @GermainLussier 5h5 hours ago​

Was just flipping through the new @EW. They predict @StarWars #TheForceAwakens will open to $225 million and end up at $3 billion overall.

 

yeah that's absurd

 

You're missing the point. A film can be financially successful and still be disliked by fans or have put the brand in need of "rehabilitation". Films like the SW prequels and Spider-Man 3 had such massive name recognition they were pretty much going to be hits no matter what.

Spider-Man 3 was a huge hit but clearly part of the reason Sony started over was the strong negative reaction to that film.

 

First, two corrections, in 2003, Finding Nemo had the second highest gross. In 2005, the second highest gross was from the Narnia film, but not by a huge margin over HP5.

Second, if we look world wide then in 2003, RotK won by over 200 M$ over Finding Nemo, in 2005, RotS lost to Harry Potter 5 by about 50 M$.

Lastly, if we compare the 3D re-releases of live action films, Titanic, TPM and Jurrasic Park, then TPM had the highest opening weekend and yet the lowest total gross. Which is interesting as TPM had by far the best legs of all three PT films on it's initial release. The fairly big opening on TPM 3D showed that the awareness was there and fans rushed out to see it but then it dropped harder.

Bye for now.
Mr "Insert-Name-Here."

 

That entire posts completely ignores how much the international market has grown. The Hobbit isn't more successful than LotR because people liked the movies more or because they don't care about quality, the trilogy is more successful because some international markets have exploded recently while the increase in ticket-prices has led to bigger income in other areas as well. Not to mention favourable exchange-rates. To use Germany as an example, which is a market that hasn't grown a lot but has seen an increase in ticket-prices thanks to 3D, there are huge differences depending on how you look at things:

Admissions:
LotR 1: 11.93 million
LotR 2: 10.75
LotR 3: 10.44
Hob 1: 6.69
Hob 2: 6.09

just as a guideline: LotR 1 actually beats out Avatar in terms of admissions (far behind in Dollar though), while the Hobbit movies are around the last two Harry Potter movies (5.8, 6.5) and not that far from the last two prequels (5.7 and 5.6)

in Euro:
LotR 1: 82.97 million
LotR 2: 75.31
LotR 3: 72.37
Hob 1: 68.91
Hob 2: 64.83

in Dollar:
Hob 1: 88.85 million
Hob 2: 88.08
LotR 3: 87.48
LotR 2: 78.66
LotR 1: 78.56

As you can see, the difference in tickets sold is enormous, The Hobbit pales in comparison to LotR. In Euro the difference gets a whole lot smaller; going by the percentage of tickets solds, the numbers for the Hobbit movies should be in the mid 40s if it weren't for higher ticket prices. And in Dollar the most successful movie of the five (LotR 1) actually has made the least amount of money, while the ones that clearly have far less people go and see it actually outgross all LotR movies.

I don't see how The Hobbit is in any way a good comparison to the next Star Wars movie, nor does it make sense to use the numbers of the prequel trilogy as guidance, as those happened when the international markets were much smaller. The anticipation for The Hobbit pales in comparison to Star Wars when it comes to the USA. The Hobbit isn't Lord of the Rings, and TFA has set a record breaking pace with its first trailer. The formers comes at the downswing of the LotR hype and isn't really a must-see event like LotR was, while TWA is actually increasing in hype. Internationally, The Hobbit may raise more interest than Star Wars, though looking at the number of admissions, which is generally in line with what the most recent Star Wars movies have done, the difference may not be nearly as big as suggested. Again, The Hobbits numbers don't come from large numbers of tickets sold, but from an increase in ticket prices in some areas and exploding markets in others (e.g. China from 10 to 50 million from LotR 3 to Hobbit 1, or Russia, going from 14 to 44). There is simply no reason to suspect that the number of admissions for TFA will fall drastically, which automatically means that it will make much more money internationally than the prequels did, thus changing the split by quite a bit.

You cannot use Star Trek as a comparison either, because quite frankly, that one has been irrelevant outside of America for its entire existance. The tv-shows may have been popular, but the movies never garnered much of an interest, unlike Star Wars, which while not quite as big as in America, still was hugely successful in most of the world.

One thing that actually could have an impact is the strength of the Dollar. With exchange rates being quite a bit lower than they were not even a year ago, international results will be a lot lower. As you can see in the example above, Hobbit 2 made pretty much the same as Hobbit 1 when it comes to Dollars, as it had a better exchange-rate. Since then, the Euro has dropped from between 1.35 to 1.40, to between 1.20 and 1.25 Dollar. If Hobbit 3 got the same amount of Euro as 2 did, it would end up with ten million less in Dollar.

 

I already made the point about exchange rates earlier in this thread I believe, but true.
How can you argue that "I completely ignore" the growth of foreign markets when I provide the example of Trek and follow up in a later post with the example of the Hunger Games? And in 1997, Titanic made 2/3 of its box office abroad. Obviously the answer is exactly what I said: the foreign/U.S. box office split depends on the appeal of the brand to the respective audiences. For any given movie, it might be 70% of the box office from foreign audiences, or it might be 55% of the box office from U.S. audiences.

 

Well lets hope the Americans are impressed considering this a 10 years wait.

 

How I can do that?
Probably by taking a look at the points you made.

You use The Hobbits intake as an example, saying that "foreign audiences don't seem to recognize or care about the qualitative differences between the films", even though that isn't true at all. The Hobbit has fallen drastically in terms of admission compared to LotR, in fact, the drop is equal to, if not higher, than the one in North America. The only thing that has kept the first two Hobbits at such a high level in terms of Dollars, is the increase in ticket prices, new markets that were mostly irrelevant at the time of LotR and fantastic exchange rates.

You used Star Trek as an example, even though it is completely irrelevant in any way. You cannot get any sort of possible percentage for Star Wars out of the perfomance of the last Star Trek movies, they are vastly different things.

Then you continue to take a look at the shares and don't mention that the "type of movie" is far from the only thing that matters. You cannot take Star Trek and use it as a possible example for Star Wars just because it happens to play in space. The box office split depends largely on the same factors I mentioned above. The Hobbit had a large international share because of the terrific exchange rate and the rising ticket prices, not because it was much more beloved in the rest of the world than in America. By admissions, the share actually went down instead.

As such, the split for TWA will depend largely on the financial situation at the time of release. If the Dollar continues to rise, the American share will get bigger and bigger.
You cannot say TWA will have a hard time topping 1 billion worldwide if it makes 400 or even 500 million in the US, if that isn't based on anything substantial. You cannot use the share of Star Trek as a comparison, you cannot use the share of the prequels either, because international markets have grown a lot since then. As such, the very same audience that watched the prequels would lead to a much higher intake right now. The share develops out the people who watched the movie, not the other way round.

Of course TWA may fall short of a billion. That would have little to do with it keeping to some sort of magical share it cannot possible exceed, and everything to do with the situation in the world at that time.

In addition, you claim that a 100 million start in December is very hard to do, obviously, as no movie has done it so far. But the reason you give sounds weird. What does the Hobbit making 1 billion worldwide have to do with the US start?
Those two things aren't connected. The movie is very successful worldwide, but not at the elite level in America. As such, it says next to nothing about what a really hyped movie could achieve, something that is most definately true for Star Wars. Not only has the teaser for it set new records, Star Wars also easily broke the opening day record the last time around and is a contender for a bit more than the 250-300 The Hobbit can hope for. The international take for The Hobbit is of no relevance to the potential opening of TWA.


I quoted the post you made, what you wrote earlier had little to do with that. You didn't mention the Hunger Games in that post at all.
I didn't want to imply that I disagree with everything you wrote, in fact, I wouldn't assume that TWA is guaranteed to top 100 million on its opening weekend or easily pass a billion either, I just disagreed with some parts of this particular post.

 

my point is that some movie franchises do relatively better in the U.S. and some do relatively better abroad. Star Trek is one that does relatively better I the U.S. It seems highly relevant to me that two big budget franchises directed by the same man are in the same genre and are released worldwide in a similar number of theaters within a few years of each other.

I'm just waiting for some evidence that Star Wars is more likely to make 70% of its box office outside the U.S. rather than say 55%.

We're all agreeing that TFA will do well in the U.S. Better than $500 million if it's good. $400 million even if it's Attack of the Clones-ish.

 

Really? Both BB-8 and DR's speeder seemed very PT to me.

 

You can't say that the ST is trying to rid everyone of the PT simply because stylistically the PT looks like the OT. The OT evolved from the PT and the ST evolved from the OT.

 

I'm not saying the ST is trying to "rid everyone of the PT." I'm saying the marketing seems designed to induce PT amnesia, which makes sense. I'd say the only real PT-related marketing ploy in the teaser was the red lightsaber bit, which seemed a deliberate callback to Darth Maul - probably the most popular villain of the PT.

 

The ST comes AFTER the OT which is why the TFA look is more similar to it, that is why it "seems" that way. You are stretching what is actually happening into something else.

 

I'd wager that it isn't that they're trying to induce "prequel-amnesia" or whatever, as opposed to not pushing the PT as hard as the OT to try and cash in on that sweet nostalgia. At the same time though, they really aren't focusing on either as much as their focus on pushing the new.

The market's different from how the franchise left it at III, now demographics that weren't seen as all that important in day to day 2005 are suddenly huge targets. I don't think anyone could have foreseen the way Twilight changed the dynamics of demographics, and later still with Hunger Games. Harry Potter encouraged less more YA adaptions, but rather more fantasy novels leading to weird things that the confusing marketing for Bridge to Terabithia. It wasn't until the other two that YA adaptions with more of a push towards female audiences wasn't just a good dynamic, it was a brilliant dynamic that allowed lots of movies to succeed where they would have otherwise failed for being generally terrible movies.

More than that... geek is cool now. Something like the Avengers could have never been pulled off in 2005, it wasn't edgy enough. If your name wasn't Spider Man, Batman, or Wolverine you fell into the hole of "Lame superheros for stupid nerds". It took things like the sheer irrelevancy of Iron Man followed by a slow trudge of other similarly themed more action-comedies to push towards the more action spectacle of movies like Captain America to finally get audiences to warm up to the idea of a superhero mixup, which they certainly delivered with The Avengers. At the same time, Walt Disney Studios has revitalized the spirit of the Disney Renaissance. In 2005, the idea that anyone but Pixar could get away with an honest-to-god good spirited movie that didn't try to be "hip" and "modern" like Shrek was laughable at best. It wasn't until Disney's attempt to cash in on that same market with the unholy abomination that is Chicken Little that they started to see that maybe it wasn't the best idea to do so. They tried to do as Pixar did with Meet the Robinsons and Bolt, but those movies were too flawed to really capture that same spirit. They tried to return to it with The Princess and the Frog again, and it was more successful, but it really wasn't until Tangled that they fully embraced the idea of the pure Disney movie, which payed off big time with Frozen.

Heck, even geek culture is different. Fanbase now inhabits a shared space with fandom, the land of shippers and fanfiction. It's a different beast entirely, and it sort of types into the YA novel revival and the success of The Avengers. It doesn't really concern studios that much, but there have been attempts to cater to that concept, to mixed results, like the painfully ironic Dr. Seuss adaption The Lorax.

It says a lot that in 2005 we were complaining about the lack of good superhero movies and now there are concerns about the market becoming saturated with superhero movies.

 

I'd like to hope that simply not being another cookie cutter supehero movie clone in and endless stream of cookie cutter superhero movie clones will help TFA, but the evidence is good that the only thing global audiences are interested in is robert downey jr in a robot suit. If Abrams had cast him as c3po, Star Wars would be golden.

 

Star Trek just isn't a good comparison at all. I understand adopting a wait-and-see approach to foreign markets, but using Trek is not a good place to start.

Even under JJ's watch, Trek is a science fiction franchise as opposed to space fantasy. It might be shallow, simplistic science fiction, but it's science fiction nonetheless. Try making sense of those movies with the sound off. Anything that is "ideas driven" is going to hampered in foreign markets, and that goes doubly for a franchise so steeped in American cultural ideals.

Marvel is actually a more apt comparison. Their films are pure spectacle. SW is in a similar vein, and its ideas are simple (not simplistic) and deliberately universal. Hell, it has Asian cinema as a major influence, so you could even compare its foreign accessibility to something closer to the Transformers franchise.

The one thing I'd expect from TFA is for it to play well in foreign territories.