ST Episode VII Box Office Discussion

I like the way you think. Did you guys see the Star Wars themed movie theater in Omaha, Nebraska?! Unbelievable. God, I'm so jealous. I want to go there to see that theater now. It has a 10 foot Death Star in the lobby and the Emperor's Throne too! I can't believe a movie can be so big (or movie franchise) that 38 years later, a movie theater opens as basically an homage to it. Wow, it's crazy what Lucas made, as a filmmaker I just can't imagine that at all lol.

It's awesome and so impressive to see what Titanic did at the box office (even though I wasn't liking it at the time and still wish it didn't exist lol), but in today's moviegoing reality it's relatively unlikely to happen again. My girlfriend asked me why Titanic was so popular and I answered, with the caveat that I'm legitimately not trying to be bitter, "There wasn't anything else that was really very good that came out for three months. There was Bond, which came out the same day, but imagine you're wanting to go see a movie 5 weeks later and you still haven't seen Titanic, you figure, why not? There's nothing else out. Or it's 8 weeks later, EVERYONE is talking about this movie Titanic, you STILL haven't seen it, it's still #1 at the box office, and you figure oh what the heck, may as well check it out." That was Titanic. People like going to movies. If there's a massive event film out in theaters that has been doing well for weeks, or months, it even adds to the ridiculous box office. It's not so much just that people "want to be part of something," because it's just a movie, it's more so that some people aren't at all the type to rush out to a movie theater, but when a movie plays for that long and receives that much attention, it gives everyone the chance to see it. You have to avoid it intentionally (which I did) not to see it if you're a big moviegoer. I can safely say not one dime of my money went to Titanic beating Star Wars. Though I did support Avatar in its quest to dethrone Titanic, and still consider that a worthy cause because in my defense I didn't realize a later Star Wars movie would be around to threaten Avatar.

Now, I'll be seeing TFA 25 times or more to make sure I do my penance for supporting Avatar

 

TFA looks to be the perfect storm.
It has a fanbase from the past 2 generations (Gen-X and Millennials). It is targeting the new generation (post-millenials?).

It has the aesthetic (and original characters) of the OT, its action will be as (or more) exciting as the PT.

It has far more capability to tap into the female demographic than any previous SW movie.

It has Disney orchestrating the marketing who have reach and skill are reaching audiences (particularly in capturing younger viewers) than Fox ever could.

It is launching against virtually no competition. The next major blockbuster that would take hype is April 25 (Batman v. Superman) which is much to far away to steal any attention for TFA.

The "letdown" of the PT seems to be actually feeding into peoples desire to see it. People are starting to believe this is the movie they wanted to see in 1999.

If, and still in doubt, but if this movie delivers, and I mean hits all the right notes with the audience we will see a 1977 esque phenomena all over again. Except it would look a bit different seeing how the box office environment is much different now.

So far all the stars are aligning for TFA. The last block it has to check is. Is it good..., great?, incredible??, masterpiece???

 

There will be a Saturday to Sunday drop no matter what.

 

Yes that is a very good possible picture you paint.

No doubt the overall hardcore and casual fanbase of Star Wars is that much bigger from 1999 to 2015 than it was from 1983 to 1999. That simply figures since as opposed to largely fading away and being a nostalgic thing the new movies plus the ever increasing distribution and access to the same keeps becoming more and more so that the 5 year old in 2008 who was watching TCW had far easier access to the movies than the 5 year old in 1988 did.

Then you have simply the general crossover of SF, fantasy and the like to be in a position in both movies and TV that seemed nigh impossible in 1999. Geek culture has certainly come very far into being a far more acceptable path to follow than it ever has before.

As with the prequels though acceptance at RT is a far lesser factor than with the actual regular audience and what they say.

Top 5 tickets since 1997
Titanic 128M (first run)
Avatar 97M
TPM 85M
Lion King 75M
JW 79M

In today's release world 10 years without a Star Wars is certainly equivalent to 16 years (probably more) so that could all come to pass.

I generally agree with your points except this one because you keep going back to it like it's true for the general movie going audience even though time and again every objective measure tells us that is simply NOT the case. It's only true for that fraction of the audience who want it to be true regardless of everything else being against it.

You simply do not have the gargantuan success of that type if that is the case. It just does not happen.

 

The only caveat is that a lot of people are arguing that The Force Awakens will be the most successful sequel of all time, that it will take on Avatar and adjusted domestic box office totals of Return of the Jedi, Empire Strikes Back and The Phantom Menace.

I'd just caution that there's a hell of a lot of air between the adjusted box office gross of the Phantom Menace (including rerelease) and the adjusted box office gross of Revenge of the Sith, and that TFA can fall anywhere between those two points and be considered wildly successful.

But for Jurassic World, TFA could have fallen almost anywhere in that wide range between TPM and ROTS and come out the biggest domestic release of 2015.

Like it or not, I guess Jurassic World has redefined the boundaries of success for TFA.

But I'd urge people to remember that even if TFA comes up shy of Jurassic World but makes more than Age of Ultron, it will still be the fourth biggest Star Wars sequel. It will have beat out two of the prequels.

$459-$650 million is a huge success for Disney.

$653-$753 is "best of 2015"

$754 million plus is "on par with ESB, ROTJ and TPM"

~$800 million is the most successful Star Wars sequel. Far more than TPM, ESB or ROTJ did in their initial runs.

 

I'm looking forward to, say, January 3 when we can finally stop talking about whether a mediocre movie about dinosaurs is more popular than STAR WARS. Even the discussion makes me feel like I'm either sleeping still or in the Twilight Zone, because I don't live in a reality and never have lived in a reality where Jurassic Park is more popular than Star Wars. Fortunately, nobody lives in that reality, and in a month's time it'll be painfully obvious to everyone what a ridiculous and silly idea that was from the start.

 

1980 - Empire Strikes Back had sold ~2,693,100 tickets by the end of the first Sunday - 126 cinemas
1983 - Return of the Jedi had sold - 10,685,800 tickets by the end of the first Sunday - 1,002 cinemas
1993 - Jurassic Park had sold ~12,115,800 tickets by the end of the first Sunday - 2,404 cinemas
1999 - Phantom Menace had sold ~20,799,500 tickets by the end of the first Sunday - 2,970 cinemas
2001 - Fellowship of the Ring had sold ~13,273,800 tickets by the end of the first Sunday - 3,359 cinemas
2002 - Attack of the Clones had sold ~18,962,000 tickets by the end of the first Sunday - 3,161 cinemas
2002 - Two Towers had sold ~17,563,900 tickets by the end of the first Sunday - 3,622 cinemas
2003 - Return of the King had sold ~20,580,500 tickets by the end of the first Sunday - 3,703 cinemas
2005 - Revenge of the Sith had sold ~24,719,100 tickets by the end of the first Sunday - 3,661 cinemas
2015 - Jurassic World had sold ~25,309,900 tickets by the end of the first Sunday - 4,274 cinemas
2015 - Force Awakens had sold ? tickets by the end of the first Sunday - 4,500 cinemas

Are you going with $175 million? ~20,983,213 tickets that would be.

 

I agree but the reality is that JW probably overperformed wildly. And we were left with using it as sort of a standard reference, sort of the roof of the boxoffice pr 2015. Beyond logic if you ask me. But the numbers do not lie. Then, on the other end, we have used the Hobbit films too, which was maybe fair, for a while, considering the december opening date, where we have few other movies to compare with, but logically i cant use the Hobbits films either ( even if i know we have been talking OW, not total gross ), for all its worth, those movies underperformed domestic, and we are looking at TFA actually having a chance to break the last Hobbit movies total in one weekend. Domestic. That gives some perspective.

 

Agreed!

A year-and-half ago I was happy with the prospects of TFA beating all prequels on their first runs. Then I moved to being happy with it also beating ANH. Then I moved on to it beating TPM in its overall run. Then I was happy with it beating the adjusted gross of ROTS and would have been ECSTATIC if it beat TDK. Within the past month or so I was very pleased to see that it had a great shot of passing $500 million and possibly pushing out TDK from #5 all time. Then we move onto the prospect of passing $600 million then beating out JW and Titanic's unadjusted gross.

The more we move up that bar, the more room there will be for disappointment. What had seemed like an improbability a year ago now seems like a disastrous disappointment. It's getting kind of silly. So if the movie makes over $600 million now it is considered a failure by some folks here on this board? Really??? Seriously????? Like Jabba said, if it makes over Age of Ultron they have their biggest movie of the year. I'd LOVE it to make more than both JW and Titanic but success isn't riding on that.

 

good point. TFA needs a bit more than $1.5 billion worldwide to become Disney's most successful film ever in nominal dollars. That's all it needs to justify being positioned as the co-equal sub-brand with Marvel.

 

Relative success and relative failure. If it makes $1 more than it's overall budget what would Obi-Wan say?

 

"Search your feelings. You know that's an inadequate ROI."

$800 million worldwide is very decent for a $200 million movie with $100 million or so in global marketing costs. But it's not enough to launch a flagship franchise on the Marvel's extended cinematic universe model.

$1 billion is a terrific ROI for a $200 million movie with $100 million in marketing costs, but it might not be enough to re-introduce Star Wars to a new generation of children who will grow up with the merchandise.

$1.5 billion is probably the sweet spot for justifying an ongoing Marvel-level franchise.

$2 billion is probably the bottom line for a real pop culture event.

 

Yeah I see it as a 1.5-1.8 bn franchise.


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BobaBacca

20+ million tickets sold would be absolute insanity. Again I think some on here after being too pessimistic back in September and October are being too giddy right now. $205+ million opening is very very very difficult. Ditto a film making anything over $600 million. Only a few films have done it in history. Nothing is a lock.

yassir.khan

Disney executives will gladly take that right now. Personally I see it doing around $550 million domestic and just under a billion worldwide (I think it's going to sell better internationally then we think) and wind up right up around $1.5-1.8 billion worldwide.

 

that makes sense, but I think it will outperform a bit in the U.S. relative to international box office. It's not getting a 30-70 split. 40-60 maybe.

 

Why didn't you reply to my post?

 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Because that is how threads get too long.

 

I'm surprised we have anything to disagree about. I've graphed all the posters in this thread on a scale of "high weekend predictions/low weekend predictions" and "high multiplier/low multiplier" and this is what I came up with:

 

I believe it will have a JW like opening with Hobbit multiples. Which would be absolutely massive.

So ya I think this is my theory I am going to stick with. It will open like JW 200-215 mil but will have Hobbit multiples. So if it opens the same as JW it would end with 770 million, just edging out Avatar. With an opening of 217 million it would make about 800 million. This seems plausible to me.

 

The question is: CAN it open with JW numbers and also have Hobbit legs? (box office wise, not actual Hobbit legs which would be pretty short)

That's awfully frontloaded to have legs like that.

Look at ROTK. Its multiple was 5.1 from its 3-day Fri-Sun opening of $74 million. HOWEVER, it actually opened on a Wednesday and had a 5-day total of $124 million. Its multiple in that case is 3.

 

Sorry not buying what you're selling either. You can let the media try to convince you of something all you want but it doesn't make it reality. I could sit here and say the Germans won World War 2 until I'm blue in the face but no amount of revisionist history will ever make it so.

Forever 21 has a big Star Wars line coming, my girlfriend just texted me. Wow! That's one of the biggest clothing stores for teen girls and young adults anyway, so that's a big tie in! Going to hit the female demographic hard this time.

 

I like the scenario because the Hobbit had good legs, but nothing spectacular for a December release. Also, the Hobbit had a lukewarm reception from most which kept its legs in check. I believe the only reason that TFA will have similar multiples is because it will have such a massive opening. The Hobbit reception prevent better multiples, math will prevent TFA from having better multiples.... that is unless you think its going to be a billion dollar DOM movie......

 

I dont think you even get what I am selling. My marketing must be bad. .

I am not saying people were disappointment when TPM came out. I am saying now people are disappointment with how the PT turned out (you know in retrospect).

People are excited by the prospect that TFA might be what they think they wanted the PT to be all along.