ST Episode VII Box Office Discussion

Domestically it has to be emphasized how successful ROTS was in 2005. Only 13 movies have made more box office in the 9 full years since.

Of those 6 came in the peak 3D years of 12 and 13. Only 5 of those ended up (or will end up with AOU) in a totally different strata of box office. Avatar 761M, The Avengers 623M, The Dark Knight 535M, The Dark Knight Rises 448M and AOU 427M as of now (and probably on the way to close to 500M)

Furious 7 is not likely to get there and in terms of ticket sales it's not even close. The repeat business very rarely happens in the current climate anymore. Age of Ultron as of this previous weekend only just caught up to the ticket sales of AOTC.

Only 4 movies have sold more tickets since 2005. AOU will be around the same or likely just pass it. Nowadays most people who do go to movies go once to the theater for any one movie and then wait for the digital version to watch on their tablet.

The more I examine it and the more box office numbers that come in this year the less and less likely it seems to me that any one movie is going to be able to replicate that recent 12 and 13 domestic peak. AOU has done so coming off a known property which itself was a phenon at the box office in 12.

Now if any movie franchise with incredible brand strength can do it then it is Star Wars so the hope is that they can do a massive cross generational appeal over 4 decades.

Realistically though matching TPM's 430M domestic from it's first run would be a totally amazing achievement in itself in today's environment.

 

Exactly. A little more than one movie a year on average. On a given year, we'd expect 1 or 2 movies to reach about $400 million in the U.S. 2014 didn't have any, but 2013 had 3.

Every 3-4 years, about 1 movie will cross the $500 million mark.

This year, statistically speaking, we might get one more $400 million movie and/or a $500 million movie, although of course this year could be an outlier. I doubt we'll see any more $400 million movies this summer unless it's Minions. Nothing much looks all that good. Bond and Hunger Games probably won't reach that mark. That leaves Star Wars.

 

Just to clarify about AOU - although it is now seen as a mild disappointment at the box office - the numbers are still impressive as we speak - this report from the Box Office Guru after last weekend:

The year's biggest domestic blockbuster, Avengers: Age of Ultron, followed with an estimated $10.9M in its fifth round. Off 50%, the Disney release has jumped to $427.1M putting it at number 10 on the list of all-time domestic blockbusters shoving aside The Hunger Games from 2012. Ultron is still on course to end with about $450M.
International grosses are close to breaking $900M and currently stand at $894.2M led by China's $225.5M which is more than the next three biggest markets combined. Worldwide, the super heroes have grossed a staggering $1.32 billion with Japan still to open. Making it to at least $1.45 billion is still likely.

Think Disney and Marvel are happy with this.

But yeah, Hollywood is changing and they will have massive struggles to get the attention from the general audience in the near future i believe. In worst case the movies themselves will only become like a catalysator for selling spin off products, licensing, and serving up nothing substantial at all in the original creative idea. Just hope the audience are not stupid and will turn against the most bad concepts. I am a pessimist now, but there might be a good outcome of this, if we go back to a more personal form of filmmaking, without massive budgets.

 

So even with the domestic down 170M if it finishes with the 450M the China gross alone will make up for that with 140M more than last time and counting.

So the far more likely overall effect is that for TFA the international gross as good as it's going to be is only going to be higher for VIII. How the anthologies will play into all of this is the thing that will be interesting.

Furious 7 in China has far outgrossed the domestic box office but I really don't see TFA doing that much more than 100M there the first time.

 

Agreed about Episode VIII. Both these movies are going to have the highest grosses ever for Star Wars movies outside the U.S., possibly also taking into account the inflation-adjusted number for the Phantom Menace, whatever it is. Episode VII will likely do no worse than $600 million outside the U.S., but could do better than $700 million. Episode VIII? Who knows. $800 million on up.

I think Marvel's international box office potential has likely peaked with Age of Ultron, which passes the Avengers 1 international box office total today.

Looking ahead to next year, I'd guess that the Harry Potter spinoff "Fantastic Beasts" is going to blow the hinges off the 2016 global box office. Serious competition for anything Star Wars.

 

Posted this elsewhere but it bears repeating on here:

In reference to Strongbow: "I don't agree that Quality=Box Office Performance for the studio. The last "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie did over a billion in business worldwide. But it was considered by many a story disappointment. Disney decide on a rethink of franchise before producing any more movies. If they were focused SOLELY on box office, they would not have done that."


I only ever watched the first Pirates but from what I gather outside of that first one the actual fan audience was never as happy with any of them outside the first one and the critics doubly so.

I don't use that as any direct indication of "quality" because again the quality that the studios care about the most is how much money they want it to make and how much it does.

In this day of social media a negative social media buzz can have some impact on decisions. So in the case of ASM2 what really spooked then wasn't the actual worldwide take but the dropping box office results of the domestic performance of the movie which was over 20% less than the last film which itself was about 25% down from the last Raimi movie.

Pirates 4 domestic gross was down almost 25% from Pirates 3.

It's easier to buy into the story being a "disappointment" when the box office is down! Pirates 4 still made a billion all told and is still 10th on the all-time international gross (as in not including NA).

As important as the total worldwide gross is the domestic gross and impact in the US is still a big deal. That is where the executives live. They want it to be a big deal in the US.

So when Hangover 2, Twilight 3, Transformers 3 and Harry Potter 8 in particular totally knock you out then they want to do something about it.

If the new movies (the ST in particular the ANTH probably less so) don't do what 5 of the six Star Wars movies have done and tower over the rest of the domestic box office the year they are released then they will not be in quite the same league just as AOTC isn't no matter how successful it actually was. As I have pointed out even though it finished 180M behind Spider-Man in worldwide gross it actually ended up matching it when you go through all the revenue streams of TV, home video etc to a 1.1B take just as that first Spider-Man movie did.

It's so far the only Star Wars movie to be beat at the domestic box office by about 100M instead of beating everything else out by about 100 or more.

ROTS 90M, TPM almost 140M, ROTJ just over 140M, TESB 105M, ANH is a bit tricker since the actual year is not on box office mojo. It was so popular that it was in constant release and re-release but whatever the case of the exact number it was around the 100M mark easily enough. Probably closer to 120M.

I kind of doubt TFA is going to be 100M up on Age of Ultron.

 

Absent some kind of catastrophe like 0% RT score, TFA will be the number one movie in the U.S. of 2015, and I think it will beat AOU handily. But again it's almost guaranteed to do worse outside the U.S. than Furious 7, Age of Ultron, and probably Bond, which will likely come very close to AOU's international total.

 

So your current domestic expectations for TFA are 550M to 600M?

Assuming current reports are correct and AOU finishes around 450M or so then that is what TFA would have to do to be relative to the other movies.

You now really expect TFA to be like ANH, TESB, ROTJ, TPM and ROTS and tower over the second place finisher?

 

domestically yes, although maybe not "tower." Worldwide box office totals no.

 

I think $550 mill domestic is almost a lock......

 

I think that AOU really shows where we are in terms of domestic box office. The movie was not crushed by critics and was generally enjoyed but did not give any "punch". AOU really did not deliver anything above and beyond the first Avengers. While decent, it was seen as the same ol' same ol'. Look at some recent sequels. Pirates of Caribbean 4, Transformers 4, Amazing Spiderman 2, Mockingjay Part 1 and both Hobbit Sequels-they really didn't perform better than their predecessors and none gave anything different than we've seen before. Burn Out rates are high. The projected $450 million total of AOU is certainly an indication of the lesser impact movies are making even compared to 3-4 years ago. With Furious 7, hate to say it, you have to factor in the untimely passing of Paul Walker.

From what we've seen/read/heard, it's very hard to say whether TFA will give any kind of spark or punch that will wow people enough to break that mold. A "decent" movie isn't good enough right now to break records. You have to offer something different. GOTG was a success at $330 million while Mockingjay Part 1 was a considerable disappointment with the same totals.

And of course it's hard to raise expectations for a movie when current hype is low. It was easy to say TFA would make $500 million when we saw the trailer in April. But recent spoilers and rumors certainly lower my current predictions at least.

 

Before the first trailer, I would have said.

1. December is a bad time slot for opening weekends
2. The PT has damaged the reputation of Star Wars and people are wary of the brand
3. There's not going to be anything visually novel or surprising about TFA that will really give it an edge at the box office and long legs in the post holiday period (January). It's not going to be an Avatar.
4. The movie isn't going to do all that well outside the U.S. (it's not going to have the 75-25 split of a movie like Furious 7)

But I think I am open to new information, and the reception of the trailers has made me revise my opinion. What I'd say now is

1. December is a bad time for opening weekends, but Star Wars will set December records and do well through the holidays
2. The PT has damaged the reputation of Star Wars, but there are still a lot of optimistic fans, and the iconography of the OT still appeals to audiences even after all these years and the problems of the PT
3. There's not going to be be anything visually novel or surprising about TFA that will really give it an edge at the box office and long legs in the post holiday period (January). It's not going to be an Avatar, but it will do very, very well between December 18 and the New Year's weekend.
4. The movie isn't going to do all that well in China, where it isn't yet an established brand. That will come with later movies if the ST is good. TFA will make more than 40% of its money in the U.S. but may still make more than $700 million outside the U.S. It won't be the number one movie of the year outside the U.S.

 

Why do you still think there is anything but the slightest strand of reality (for those fans who are a slight fraction of the actual audience) to that?

You might as well say TESB damaged the brand and ROTJ continued the damage but it did help it rebound some.

The prequels did nothing but enhance the brand of Star Wars with the actual modern movie audience. To a whole new generation of them that is Star Wars not the older movies. This is the objective reality as demonstrated over and over again.

It's very hard for any one movie at the box office to get that general audience repeat business anymore.

The Disney Lucasfilm group have obviously made the determination on the hard nostalgia sell. The problem with that is virtually every single one of those people went to every prequel as well just as they will go to every new sequel and prequel. How much of the actual audience those people are who would be "new" is probably less than a few percent of the fans and 0.1% of the actual audience.

As for Hunger Games I would expect that like Harry Potter 7 Part 2 compared to Part 1 the next installment will rebound. Doing a sequel like a chapter is one thing but to do a movie that is signposted as only half of a story doesn't exactly drive people to the movie. "So we can totally miss this one, get it on DVD and then come to the next one and not really miss anything?"

I still wonder if it is possible they will nostalgia themselves out. The movie will have a huge December open but not anywhere near the records ROTS had at the time of it's release:

Destined to be one of the biggest blockbusters,Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith blasted off with $158.4 million since Thursday. The $113 million space opera shattered the four-day record once held by Spider-Man 2's $130.5 million after notching new milestones for midnight showing, opening and single day, two-day and three day grosses.

So depending on various factors it could be turned on quick. Not that it would have any actual impact on the box office but the perception that some people think is actually important.

What will have impact on the box office as ever will be the movie itself and how much the audience takes to it.

As we know the story of the prequels is that no matter how the audience did take to them and make them top all-time hits over and over again for those few it was not enough. Somehow it was "damage."




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Star Wars fandom likely reflects the attitudes of the larger moviegoing audience, although certainly the broader audience cares less. Anti PT sentiment flows freely through this forum and I imagine it flows freely through the general public as well and the percentages may be more or less identical. There's no reason to think that the prevalence of dislike for the PT is any higher among Star Wars fans than in the moviegoing public as a whole.

The PT never enjoyed the level of acclaim and the broad cultural impact of its iconography that the OT had. When people think about the iconography of Star Wars, they're not thinking of the whole Star Wars saga, they're thinking of the OT movies. Han, Leia, Luke, Vader, the Falcon, TIE fighters, X Wings. Who thinks of Naboo fighters or child Anakin when they think of Star Wars? No one.

And that's why TFA looks the way it does and is marketed the way it is being marketed. But that's ultimately good news for the box office, because Disney can leapfrog over the PT to market Star Wars as a continuation of the OT. Build a marketing bridge over the PT to link general moviegoers directly to the iconography that they really remember and love.

 

http://www.cheatsheet.com/entertain...reveals-some-interesting-data.html/?a=viewall

The fivethirtyeight poll from a year ago sums up public sentiment pretty well. Jar Jar Binks is probably the most iconography element of the PT, but that's because the negative public sentiment about that character is large enough to have made him a pop culture villain.

 

Looks like my prediction of Mad Max's high R-rated budget being an excellent investment continues to come true. I had said it would be a steady seller despite an opening weekend that was not overwhelming, which it has been.

It topped Avengers at #4 in sales this weekend at the box office. It is still holding strong and is at 122 M in the US, 287 M internationally. Looks like that 150 M budget wasn't such a bad thing; after all is said and done with DVD/Bluray/streaming, a good profit will have been turned I would say.

 

It hasn't even earned twice its production budget yet. Given the likely global marketing costs of the movie, it's likely $170 million short of just breaking even. It has good legs, but it cost way too much to make. If they had kept production costs under $100 million, it would have been reasonably profitable, except of course that it wouldn't have been the same movie.

 

It's only been out 4 weeks, and is still in the top 5. It will be profitable, especially given its international success. It will continue to sell steady, and that's what its all about. There is no reason to think it won't given its continued success. Where did you get that international marketing cost number? Is that a fact or yet another one of your bits of nonsensical speculation? I'm guessing the latter.

It HAS been a consistent seller and remains top 5- fact.

It will fall out and won't make a profit- speculation.

 

It will top out below $325 million worldwide but will eventually break even on video sales and rental.

 

I love the way you pull these ideas out of thin air to no end with no facts to back them up. It is still top 5, and has 287 M already in week 4, and is still selling well all over the place. So it is going to stop internationally at 325 Million, with 287 ALREADY? Do you actually believe this baloney, or are you just trolling because you have nothing better to do?

 

Is this some kind of Mad Max fan site? What is your deal. Most movies make the vast bulk of their revenue in the first 4 weeks. Have you ever looked at box office data before? I'm not disagreeing with you because I have some kind of agenda, I'm disagreeing with you because you're wrong.

 

Many people are very personally invested in Mad Max's success for some reason. Whenever the media champions a movie, this happens.

 

It's a good movie. Best of the year so far.

 

To be fair, Mad Max have crossed $300 mill worldwide this weekend, and still have not opened in China and Japan, so it stand a good chance to go to $ 350, 75 maybe. Which is not bad, consider its an R rated film, and what was like a dead franchise. The budget is to high yes, so the profit looks slim. But they might have calculated with a sequel, and then cash in on it,in the longer run.

So next big one up is Jurassic World?

 

Mad Max isn't opening in China.