ST Episode VII Box Office Discussion

Post the file so I can check the numbers.

Just looks like squiggly lines otherwise.

 

Nope. Just duplicate the work. Pull the tables from boxofficemojo. Create any scenario you like for OW number and weekly % drops.

So, what's wrong with my assumptions?

1. The double hobbit opening weekend means that 35% of people who plan to see TFA have already purchased their tickets. Is this realistic? I have no idea.

 

Says who? I did. It's there for all to see.

My friend you are posting a set of rules and conditions which do not exist. Any movie can do any anything at the Box Office including following the pattern of a movie released in the same frame. The fact that these two movies open on the same day has relevance superseding any other consideration. There is no polar opposite of Avatar. You can sit there typing all you want but nothing you say precludes the possibility that TFA behaves EXACTLY the way I suggest. This is uncharted territory, and we have to have a strategy for making predictions which is better than declaring a bunch of edicts based on the belief that existing records are invulnerable.

Which movies are you talking about? I don't recall any movie opening as big as we are discussing in December.

It sounds to me like you are parroting things you think sounded cool or clever, when in fact it is empty rhetoric.

You have to decide. Will this movie play like a front loaded summer movie and quickly fade, or will it play like the slow burning gas giants Titanic and Avatar?

And if you cannot decide, join the club and work a hybrid approach like I did. It's the smart and logical thing.

I think I will leave it here as the rest of your comments make little sense if of course you are confused about which model is best.

 

Go to Sendspace. Upload the spreadsheet you used for the squiggly lines and post the link here.

I will take a look.

 

I've been down that road many times in the past year or so. I've said that if the movie makes a mediocre OW the headlines are going to explode, causing others who are on the fence to take a pass for a while. I've said that when I argued there was NO WAY the movie was only opening with $120-$130 million which several suggested. I got shot down saying that those headlines, if they exist, won't matter and what will matter is that it broke the December record. I argued that breaking the record for biggest opening in one month, particularly a non-summer month, was insignificant.

But yeah, Disney is doing everything it possibly can with its strategy (waiting until 2 months to market and going crazy, plugging with every network with every product, inundating with TV spots, opening in as many theaters as possible no matter how much it costs, etc.) so they're certainly working MUCH harder than they may have had JW not done what it did (although I don't think things would be that different). However, in the long run, what this does is create artificial box office stars, kind of like the modern home run hitters on steroids.

For that reason, the push really does need to be on how extraordinarily difficult it is to have a movie open so immensely huge in December even if it does not break $208 million. It's a relative piece of cake in June to open with $150-$200 million but in December? That's craziness and there will HOPEFULLY be writers that state that claim.

 

This thread is hilarious.


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"Squiggly lines"? And you expect to be taken seriously?

Anyway, here's one scenario:

1. $170m
2. $120m
3. $70m
4. $35m
5. $25m
6. $20m
7. $15m
8. $10m

That's from 90% ROTK/10% JW drops (i.e. slightly more frontloaded than ROTK).

 

I agree with 1 DH being the baseline. I think 1.5 DH highest reasonably we can expect it to go. Anything about that would be pure insanity. But it could happen. There has never been a movie like TFA in the history of Cinema. Just the whole scenario has never happened before. Beloved Franchise brought back with original beloved cast over 30 years later as continuation of a story that everyone always wanted to see. Then you add in the side effects of the PT letdown(which is surely heightening the anticipation to a return to the OT timeline), and the change in the creative team. Its just wild how this is all coming together.

 

Without the numbers they're based on that's what they are.

 

You're coming to this upside down.

I have tried to come in here with a basic common sense approach. You know, something simple like how many seats do you think this will fill.

At some point you have to guess. Makes sense if you understand total potential before you make that guess.

Around $380M is the most TFA can make during its OW, if you use available data. That represents 100% "Occupancy."

A movie released on the same day with less anticipation managed 66% in 2009.

Translate that 66% to this and the current OW record falls. Be responsible and drop that even to 60% and it changes little. The OW record will fall.

Is this too much for you to grasp?

 

I'm almost hoping it makes only 130 million just so I can see what Forceuser thinks is the nefarious reasons why it happened. Heck forget that, if it makes 207million I want to know.

Personally I think it's the New World Order's grand plans.


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This is Box Office discussion. We don't want to go there.

Just coming up with reasons for the pudden-fish refusal to accept basic logic.

 

Each person should predict how many tickets their local cinema will have sold by the end of Sunday. How many people in total for your one cinema?
100? 1000? 10000?

 

Artoo-Dion

I tend to agree with your weekly drops. I think it will get to around $475 million in the typical amount of time and limp to right around the $500 million mark.

As for "headlines", anything above $100 million will be considered a smashing hit considering what Spectre and particular THG4 did.

BTW, I saw THG4 last night. It was entertaining but nothing close to Catching Fire. Again gigantic mistake splitting it into two movies. For a "climatic ending", there was a lot of standing around talking. You compare that with HP8 which was all action after HP7 set up the epic ending. Again I really don't know what Liongate was thinking other then "let's just milk it dry now and not worry about long term possibilites". Spinoffs and other series seem not possible at this point. At least not with the budget they want to use. Long term it was a huge mistake! The theater I saw it was packed which was not surprising. $5 discount Tuesday coupled with a teenage theme film on a night where they have no school for the rest of the week led to a lot of teens being there. Mostly girls but not as many as I thought. A lot of boys as well and much to the relief of my wife and I, there were a lot of adults (some with kids, some with not there) and even some couples older then us! LOL!!

 

Personally, I don't think any movie will beat Avatar until there is a new construct on how movies are shown and experienced. A movie that takes advantage of a whole new technology, movie-going experience, and has a package of elements that is so all-encompassing (special effects, incredible human dynamics, a story that blows us away-think of something like Gone With the Wind meets Star Wars meets Avatar in a new age of cinematic viewing).

And, might I add, it will have to be something brand new and not based on something already seen or read (like Titanic and Avatar were) while adding to that a marketing strategy that really gets people fully involved. In other words, it really has to be a generation-defining event. Avatar wasn't all that but it sure did hit on the visual/technological aspect. Imagine something doing that with ALL the buttons pressed. Someone's working on something as we speak and it will hit us at some point.

But TFA is just going to have to settle for being just plain HUGE for right now lol.

 

What is this business about "typical" amounts?

Does the typical movie break IMAX and monthly OW records weeks before they play?

(hilariously rude comment removed).

 

If you have a theory why it won't break box office records then why can't it be in the box office discussion?


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I agree with Jabba on the second weekend decline, and his post about the relationship between first and second weekends. That's where I have realized that I'm extremely stubborn. In other words if TFA "only" makes $170M opening weekend I see it making about the same amount of money the next weekend that I would have predicted if it did break the record. I think if it opens to $280M it still only makes $140 million Xmas weekend no matter what. And if it opens to $170M I can see it still making $125M or $130 million second weekend. I won't budge much on my second weekend prediction - the demand is there.

I think the mistake I see people making is that they think a massive opening weekend basically ruins the entire demand for the film. If it opens at $225 million, so what?! So 22 million people saw it opening weekend? Alright there are, what, another 200 million adults and kids who could still see the movie? I fail to see how that massive opening has put a huge dent in the demand to see it given that's freaking 90% of people still haven't seen the movie, at least. And I say at least because many, many Star Wars fans will see it twice or more opening weekend.

It's also an insanely stupid assumption because of the 22 million people who see it opening weekend, we can assume at least 2 million of them are pretty big Star Wars fans if not up to 5 million in casual fan status. They're all candidates to see the movie again second weekend or third weekend. Technically, so are kids. You ever seen a kid? They sit there and watch the same thing over and over if they like it lol.

If your assumption is that just not that many people care to see Star Wars, I would say that's your opinion (and you're wrong and will be proven so badly), but if your assumption is that 22 million people seeing a movie opening weekend somehow satiates most of the demand then your assumption is silly and ridiculous. A cultural phenomenon can tap into 100 million moviegoers for sure if not 120 million, which isn't even accounting for repeat viewings and Star Wars is the king of those.

Also everyone keeps acting like somehow TFA needs to have Avatar's weird run to beat it. Wrong. 1999 called and they want their assumptions back. At that time you couldn't beat Titanic without amazing legs because the biggest opening ever was still 8-9 times less than Titanic made. Now, a big opening is 3.75 times less than Avatar made. That's it. So you can beat Avatar either with an Avatar like opening and Avatar like legs or a Jurassic World opening and barely above Jurassic World legs.

This isn't rocket science here. JW just about beat Avatar. It was 15% off or so and you could literally just tack on 17% to each weekend and get there. I'm not saying that happens but if you're saying TFA doesn't beat JW's opening record then it's asking me to believe Star Wars isn't as big of an event and that's 100% clearly not true. I don't even think it'll be that close, frankly. After Friday I think Variety will report that TFA is on course for $250 million after a $125 million opening day, $67 million predicted Saturday, and $58 million Sunday or whatever. For second weekend you're asking me to believe that one of the best box office weekends of the year, Star Wars falls harder than JW. That's not going to happen. It doesn't matter if it makes $300M opening weekend there are still the majority of moviegoers who haven't seen the film. The vast majority, in fact. It won't magically fall 70% just because 25 million people saw it already.

 

Do not discount the Christmas weekend holiday possibilities IF it's a good movie. Kids have the entire week off and I know a lot of adults that are taking Thursday off (Christmas Eve) so they have a four day weekend (if they don't already have Christmas Eve off). If TFA is good, then it could have a darn good second weekend. Hell The Hobbit movies did better then expected around the holidays just because they were out and well, people like going to show now over the holiday.

Again it all depends on the quality of TFA. If it's getting good reviews/word of mouth (anything over 80% on RT), then I think will see it do better then what we expected over the holiday weekend regardless of what it does on opening weekend. If it's not getting good feedback then you will see it have a more typical drop even with it being a holiday weekend where the theaters is the second biggest entertainment stop after the malls.

 

I think it's better to reach even one person (if possible) with something as basic as asking them to predict a reasonable percentage of seats filled over OW.

At least then that one person will be in a position to question things should some inexplicable nonsense offering be served up later on.

 

The numbers say you're wrong.

TFA can quite easily surpass Avatar's domestic gross.

EDIT: But you know what?

That lol at the end of your comment says more to me than it should.

 

"The numbers" can say anything with the right assumptions.

 

And?

What are we doing here then?

Why not just call this the Numberless Assumption thread?

I'm just shocked that grown men can ignore something a small child would understand.

 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
No they really don't. Jurassic World was absolute epic storm. A once in a decade type storm....and it still could not be Titanic let alone Avatar.

Sorry but Avatar's number is not going anywhere which I know on the surface defies logic but in reality it makes all logical sense. It was a new technology that everyone to see (while 3D is old news in 2015) while it came out in the pre-streaming/pre-I-Pad age. People have too many choices now literally at their fingertips then sit in the theater and pay an outrageous price for tickets (let alone refreshments) for a movie they are "ehhhhhhhhhhhhh" about. I know 5-6 years ago does not sound like a long ago but in how world where technology changes every 30 seconds, it's simply a different era lost long ago.

 

We're all making educated guesses, but you seem to think you're uniquely plugged into the Truth, via "the numbers".