ST Episode VII Box Office Discussion

I'd believe it. Still, all it says is that the Chinese are largely unaware of the franchise, not that they won't respond well to it.

 

Sure, but it's not strange. Do you know all the major box office hits in China for example? Also, the Chinese Film Board only allows 20 foreign films per year to run at Chinese cinema screens, so the choices are limited. Most Chinese people watch American and Western Movies on pirated DVD's that sells for 50 cent. And in China, its all about the newest films.

As mentioned before, it's also all about building a franchise. That being said, TFA probably won't be a massive hit in China, but I think it will do well enough in order to build up for Ep 8.

Actually, not having "VII" in the title is actually a real advantage on the Chinese market.

 

No it wouldn't. A $385-415 domestic take would make TFA the biggest December film of all time not named Titanic or Avatar. As I've stated numerous times, Christmas is a lousy time to release a Star Wars film... there's a reason Disney is moving the franchise back to the summer following this release; because that's where the real dollars are.

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/weekend/

The weekend before Christmas is very hit and miss at the box office simply because of the upcoming Christmas holiday. People are shopping, and many are traveling. Weekend totals for all films combined have run the gamut of a low of $80 million to a high of $152 million, but even in 2007 when the box offic e hit that high it was an oddity with three films brining in over $100 million. On average the weekend before Christmas usually accounts for a total of $127 million for ALL films. Best case scenario for TFA is a weekend like 2007 with a total of $152 million for all films, and TFA accounting for something around $100-105 million. It's far more realistic that TFA will break Return of the King's record with something in the low $90's

This film is not going to make Titanic/Avatar numbers; it simply won't play that long, especially with kids going back to school. Just look at the history of box office over the past decade or so. If you really want to make big money during the Holiday season you release your film in November where you have a larger window to make money, and three Holidays to bring in audiences vs. two if you release closer to Christmas.

Also @Jabbadabbado's analysis of China's box office is spot on. Star Wars has little exposure in China, and will need to build up it's brand in a country where action films and historical epics dominate... sci-fi doesn't play too well there. Heck my $83 million guesstimate might be too optimistic.

Yancy

 

I've become more optimistic about the domestic box office. American Sniper put together a nearly 40-day string of million + dollar days starting in mid January. I think Marvel Avengers level hype plus a strong holiday run and good legs will push it closer to $500 million or even higher in the U.S.

Not that we have any particular reason to believe it will have good legs.

If it's a standard moderately entertaining big budget Hollywood film, it won't do any better than your estimate other than maybe setting records for December, and the December-New Year's holiday weekends. If it's not that great, its box office will plummet after the new year's weekend.

 

Avatar is sci fi, Gallandro. Transformers too, although leaning more towards an action film. Michael Bay was literally licking the Asians markets butt ( sorry my language) with it though. And that hurt the domestic box office - and also it was a bad film. But i agree that China is an open question for TFA in some ways. Disney`s marketing campaign will fire at all cylinders for this, and we will see.

About the christmas period. We have stated many times in this thread, that there is not much else to compare TFA with. Its also the chance of a lifetime for TFA to make a massive buzz over the december weeks, pre and post premiere date. As there is not a single competing film in sight. We don`t have overview over each countries local schedules of course, typical, there could be a big Chinese produced historical drama opening at the same date ( if anyone have info, please share), and that could hurt it. Simultaneous premiere worldwide, is only TFA, and i dont think this chance will come by again. I agree with it not shattering the opening weekend numbers for Avengers, Episode 8 will stand a better chance with doing that, maybe.The LOTR films show too btw, that you could play to kids for a extensive period during christmas, new years, january.

 

That's nothing but yet another attempt to look at things from the wrong side. The box office defines itself through how much interest a movie can create, a movie isn't bound by some sort of limit created by what completely different movies have done. As such, basing what Star Wars can do on numbers done by lower-level movies is never ever going to work. Even Lord of the Rings doesn't compare, because LotR was always the opposite of a sprinter, and that is even more true for Cameron-movies.

Return of the Jedi opened with 23 million, blowing past the old weekend record of about 14. Phantom Menace made a mockery of the opening day record even though it started on a Wednesday. Revenge of the Sith added 10 million on the old opening day record while starting on a Thursday.
No movie ever managed to make more than 35 million on an opening weekend in February, Hannibal made 58, Passion of the Christ topped that with 83, at a time where only one other movie had made it past 30 million. Movies had a tough time cracking 40 millions in January, remind me again how much American Sniper made, oh that's right, 89.

The idea that movies which had nothing whatsoever to do with a future release could in any way put an exact limit on said release is utterly ridiculous. If people don't get something they absolutely have to rush to see, they may do other things first and watch a movie later. This doesn't mean, however, that all these movies who didn't have the rush-factor can somehow be used to gauge a movie that does have the rush-factor. The first weekend of May isn't some sort of mythical date that forces people to go watch movies, it turned into this big weekend because interesting movies started to come out at said date. The movies decide how successful a weekend will be, not the other way round.

Certain things can have a minor influence on the general behaviour of a movie, like children still being in school leads to lower weekdays and higher weekends than during summer, where school is off. Just like prolonged holidays can indeed cause movies to have their intake split over more days, but all of that is completely insignificant compared to the rush-factor of a movie.

The odds of TFA opening below 100 million over the weekend are next to nil. There might be a better chance of it getting the first 100 million opening "day" (with the earlier and earlier previews it's more like two days by now) than doing less than 100 million over the weekend. Not that either has much of a likelyhood of happening.


Stating that the December start would prevent it from reaching Avatar/Titanic numbers, and declaring that a November start would be a much better date to make a lot of money is kind of weird as well, considering that Avatar and Titanic both used exactly that December start date. So if you truly want to base things on past performances, like you say you do, the pre-christmas start-date would in fact be the only true candidate to make such a large amount of money, as it is the only date that ever led to this kind of success.

Not that I believe that TFA will come particularly close to Titanic, much less Avatar, but the reasoning simply made little sense.

 

Very well said!!!

This whole notion of TFA not making over $100 million in its first weekend because no other movie ever did that in December is absurd. No Marvel or SW movie was ever released in December. The argument makes absolutely no sense at all and never did. TFA will easily do that and Avatar 2 and 3 will likely do that as well.

 

The hype for the first Hobbit was pretty big, and its audience skewed more family/kids than the LOTR trilogy. Yet it couldn't reach $100 million.

Also remember that the 3D price premium is less appealing to U.S. audiences now than it was when Hobbit came out, and Hobbit was designed for 3D and so should have cleaned up in that format. I can see TFA breaking the $100 million barrier for December, but not by all that much. And it will depend on how good the movie is. Abrams has shown that he can make a generic crowd pleaser (09 Trek) with a nice visual look. TFA will likely be the same. A generic crowd pleaser, but instead of lens flares all over his interior sets and ship effects, it will be high level aping of the visual look of ANH.

That's a money-making formula, but it's not going to offer the visual novelty of Avatar for foreign audiences, and it's not going to blow even American audiences away, because they are familiar with Star Wars iconography to the point of being blasé. Except of course for children, who are largely indifferent.

Star Wars nostalgia = money, but it doesn't equal record-breaking money.

 

Nothing about any of his box-office analysis has ever been spot-on.

I don't even know that he's guessed right once or twice.

He is to box-office what Hannity is to politics.

 

I predicted Spielberg's War of the Worlds would become the second-highest grossing movie of all time in the U.S. But that was before I saw it.

 

Ha well perhaps with names such as Phasma and Snoke as two of the menacing villains, maybe we SHOULD actually downgrade our expectations for the box office.

 

Now that AOU has "disappointed" at the box office I think it shows that audiences are saving their money for the next big event film. TFA will be it. I see a $140m opening weekend and a $560 total to make this the most successful SW film not counting inflation.

 

How many people are saving up their TFA theater money 7 months in advance?

 

There are many people who only go to the movie theater once or twice a year. Those are the people who helped Titanic, Avatar and the first Avengers become the monster hits they were. I think TFA will be the kind of film that draws them out.

 

The big thing about Abrams and his 09 Trek reboot was that even though the box office was unspectacular, it did extremely well on video (nearly $200 million in DVD/Blu Ray sales, all time top 10 best selling Blu Ray title). Even though Blu Ray sales are in steep decline, online movie revenue is growing, so whatever the format, TFA will likely make fantastic money in the home video market.

 

Thanks for clearing that up. I had misunderstood what you had said.

 

The real money is in the merch though.

The movie is promotion for the merch in the end.

That is the story for every top domestic movie ever. The thing is though the domestic box office just isn't robust right now.

Furious 7's major run is over. At this point it's doubtful it's going to scrape to the 400M mark (it's at 350M).

Not one movie made it there in 2014 and AOU is the first movie to do it since 3 movies did in in 2013.

The edge has come off the 3D and IMAX juicing effect.

400M+ dollar movies:

2014 none.
2013 3
2012 3 (Avengers 600M+)
2011 none
2010 1
2009 2 (Avatar 750M)

So just making over 400-425 is a HUGE deal.

If TFA "only" makes that much I hope no one is disappointed.

 

Star Wars is a cog in a larger machine now, not the entire machine like it was under an independent Lucasfilm. Overall, movies account for nearly 20% of Disney revenue, a larger share than consumer products.

 

You mean the theatrical releases alone or all the associated TV, DVD and BD and digital sales?

Of course that generates a lot more total gross of which they get their slice.

In 2002 AOTC all told was one of the few billion dollar plus gross revenue movies between 1999 and 2004 with all revenue streams. So even though in total worldwide theatrical gross it was 170M behind Spider-Man it actually made as much as Spider-Man did at the end of the day with both around 1.1B in total all revenues gross.

I also suspect that in the intervening years it's bested Spider-Man considerably.

 

December box office history simply goes out the window when your talking Star Wars not only will TFA break the $100 mill barrier for a December opening weekend it will go onto smash the barrier with $150 mill plus.....

 

Yeah -- shopping for Star Wars stuff and traveling to see Star Wars more like.



I keed!! I keed!!


I don't know much about the movie biz, but my gut says that if (BIG BIG if) the film gets good reviews and good word of mouth I think it's gonna do crazy big business over the holidays. It'll be a "thing" -- something people do while they're shopping, or after they've arrived wherever they're traveling to (which is usually to be with family, to do stuff together, like, I dunno, go see Star Wars ) And the additional time off (for most people) will provide some opportunities for repeat viewings.

I think if Disney REALLY thought they were gonna harm their bottom line with a holiday release, they would've given JJ the extra 5 months or whatever of production time and just pushed it out to May 2016. But they didn't, did they?

 

Thank you. I always loved those claims people make when debating about a country, "Well, I lived there for 2 and a half years, and I know." Like that makes you the end all expert on every detail of a country.

"Well, almost nobody knows that." Gee, how do you know what "almost nobody" knows in a country of nearly 1.5 billion? Must have hired an army to do polling. Kind of hard to make anecdotal claims like that accurately.

 

In politics they say, "it all comes down to turnout".

I think with TFA, my sense is it will all come down to how good the movie is.

#profound

 

Ultron surpassed the $400+ million mark. Out of all the movies left this year, only THG: Mockingjay Part 2 and TFA have a pretty good chance of breaking the 400 million dollar mark. The only surprise I could see is the Minion movie. Kids moves always do well and Despicable Me 2 did over $350 million in US business. And right now, the minions are one of the big "it" thing with the little guys and gals. My twin boys who are 4 believe they are minions (then again their father absolutely loves the Minions therefore he thinks he is Gru and as dressed up like him for Halloween!) If it well received and finds a groove, I could see it making a run at $400 million. But other then that, just THG & TFA have really the only legitimate chances of making $400+ million in domestic box office. And considering the fact that Liongate as come out and said they are looking at making sequels therefore the ending might significantly different, I can easily see many of their core audience members (teens) staying home or at least will be making their multi-visit to the theater in order to see it.

Then again teens and their movie going habits have done a complete 180 over the past 5 years. I seen this firsthand since I am a high school teacher. Five years ago, going to a midnight movie and/or seeing a movie multiple times was all the rage. I even planned around the midnight release of HP Part I and hate to say this (though they went to see not me) the last Twilight film because I knew over half my classes the next day would be the walking dead thanks to being out until 3 AM the night before. Now? Not so much. Yes plenty of students still go to the movies but compared to what it is, it's significantly dropped. They rather wait a couple months and watch it on their I-Pads (which every single student at my school has).

I honestly think the golden age of the movie being a social experience is gone and your going to see more and more movies struggle to make what they did a few years ago, at least domestically. And sadly, "Avatar" BO's record are never being touched until the ticket price average will be 20 bucks.

 

This is all very US centric. The worlds a big place.

Spectre is potentially another big film later this year too, it'll be interesting to see if it hits Skyfall numbers.