Rogue One Rogue One Box Office Discussion

I had some good predictions for Rogue One and some lousy ones. Everything I thought about China was wrong, and virtually every prediction I made after the holidays besides one was garbage. I guess I can laugh it off now, but it's awkward when you're using good data but there isn't enough of it and then you simply cannot predict some elements of the puzzle. I remember with TPM, predicting that movie became challenging at times because it would have incredible holds during the week, like seriously it would be down something stupid like 7% Wednesday-to-Wednesday and so everyone was thinking, alright, could be a 15% decline this weekend? Maybe 20%? Then suddenly, WAM, theater count gets chopped prematurely despite overperforming countless movies ahead of it in per-theater-averages and the weekend was down 28% or whatever. That happened all of the time. The simple act of new movies being released -- no matter how bad they are, no matter how little anyone cares about them -- takes its toll on movies in release. It doesn't ultimately matter that you're beating such and such other movie pretty badly on the daily per theater averages, because at some point a theater only has so much space and they just make the call that Star Wars is gone. Even if it was a bad call, the movie isn't coming back at that point. It's gone from that theater forever (at least for this release).

With Rogue One, there have been a few logical theater declines (when it shed 1,000 theaters from 4K to 3K, totally justifiable) and a few real head scratchers, specifically losing half of its 900 theaters recently. Or 1,600 down to less than 1,000. Those were odd declines given what garbage is out right now and how badly some of those other films are doing. You can't control for that, though, so you can't really predict it either.

My main marvel with Rogue One's box office run is seeing what a big movie it is, and how successful it has been, but then looking back at TFA and realizing its numbers were beyond amazing. Rogue One had great holiday legs, at times really surprising me (those first week to second week increases for instance, that absolutely insane $32 million Monday after Christmas! Wow...), and then we saw what happens in January to most December movies, even TFA to a degree, which is the legs just kind of fall off because moviegoing in general is so much weaker. I had thought $550M was doable based on where it was when the holidays ended, and actually I thought it could clear $550M pretty easily, but that first non-holiday weekend pretty much put an end to that idea.

I expect The Last Jedi has a very high chance to be the best performing middle film of any Star Wars trilogy. ESB was significantly down from ANH, as was AOTC relative to TPM. Not hugely so, but a good solid percentage decline. I think despite TFA's monstrous success, and the high bar that it set, we may see a relative overperformance of TLJ. Many fans, like myself, are not actually "huge" Han Solo fans. Don't get me wrong, I love Han, he's awesome, but I was always more of a Luke guy myself because I'm more into the whole Jedi / Sith thing. I have still waited forever to see Luke in action again, even if he was just speaking, like Yoda in the OT, and not fighting at all. That's still fine with me, I'm just looking forward to seeing him again. It's also Carrie's last movie. A lot will depend on the word of mouth and quality of the film, but I can definitely see a $750M domestic gross, which would be just under a 20% decline from TFA. Historically, we may expect closer to a 28-29% decline. I would say we'll know pretty well once it opens, since an OW above $200M pretty much guarantees a $700M domestic gross or very close to it. As fan-centered as Rogue One was, it still came close to a 3.5 multiple so I fully expect that's a realistic target for Last Jedi.

 

It is all about marketing. Rogue One had very little marketing, compared to TFA.

Expect the marketing campaign for TLJ to be much larger.

Also, "the Luke Skywalker" factor will hit with full force after the first trailer.

You underestimate the powaaa of Luke Skywalker....

 

Exactly. Lucasfilm pulled a blinder with the lack of Luke Skywalker in the first film. This way they get massive nostalgia and pent up demand boosts for both Episodes VII and VIII.

 

The word "blockbuster" may be arbitrary, but the concept I'm trying to convey here isn't.

Just for example, in the distribution of oil field size, an oil producing region may have one supergiant oilfield that can sustain production for decades, like Ghawar in Saudi Arabia, then there will be a lot of large fields, more midsize, then plenty of small fields.

The distribution of the biggest blockbusters is analogous. Recognizing that it's a moving target due to inflation and changes in the global audience, the distribution of $800 million plus global movies over the last 7 years looks like this.


Rounding up or down to the nearest $100 million, this is the distribution of the movies with the largest global revenue between 2007-2016

$.8 billion = 14 movies
$.9 billion = 10
$1 billion = 12
$1.1 billion = 6
$1.2 billion = 3
$1.3 billion = 2
$1.4 billion = 1
$1.5 billion = 2
$1.6 billion = 0
$1.7 billion = 0
$1.8 billion = 0
$1.9 billion = 0
$2 billion = 0
$2.1 billion = 1
$2.2 billion = 0
$2.3 billion = 0
$2.4 billion = 0
$2.5 billion = 0
$2.6 billion = 0
$2.7 billion = 0
$2.8 billion = 1

Between 2007-2016, there are 42 movies that earned between $750-$1.15 billion worldwide
There are 8 movies that made between $1.15 - $1.55 billion worldwide
There are 2 movies that made more than $2 billion

$1.2 billion is a point that distinguishes the big hits of any given year from the big hits across a multi-year period (blocbuster)
and $2 billion is now the benchmark for a once-in-a-decade blockbuster (megablockbuster)

It's ok to call the nomenclature arbitrary, but the groupings make sense in terms of clarifying how relatively successful a movie is across the last decade.

Rogue One is a borderline case. It's an above average run of the mill annual blockbuster, but really out of the running for a major blockbuster.

In hurricane terms it's a strong category 2. Avatar is cat 5. TFA is cat 4, Marvel's Avengers is cat 3. You're just not going to evacuate for a category 2 unless you live on a barrier island.

 

So, kids, today we learned that even if your movie is the #1 DOM and #2 WW in a year where several dozens of major movies and thousands of other movies were released, your movie is still not a blockbuster.

 

I just spent an entire post explaining why you shouldn't let yourself get hung up on the word "blockbuster." If it makes you feel better to call Rogue One a blockbuster, call it a blockbuster. The point is, its performance at the global box office wasn't anything special across the 2007-2016 period.

Facts are facts. If you insist on calling Rogue One a blockbuster, it is at best a minor blockbuster among recent global hit movies.

 

You are just making your own facts. You created a random criteria that a blockbuster must make 1.2B.

I can say that a blockbuster is any movie that makes over 700M, and it will be as correct and random as your assumption.

Maybe we should start a poll to check the opinions of the box office thread users.

 

This is like the third post now where I've explained that I don't care about the word "blockbuster", I'm just talking about the frequency of distributions of different global box office totals across 2007-2016. I've explained why Rogue One is categorized where it's categorized, etc. Your comments make it clear you're not interested in understanding anything.

 

of the 53 movies I looked at, most of these were high budget movies, many of them with production plus marketing costs in the $200-300 million range. I excluded the outright megaflops from consideration, though that would be interesting to look at. Are you suggesting it's unfair of me to exclude the box office performance of a movie that cost $10 million to make from a comparison with a $200 million movie like Rogue One?

A movie like Split with a $9 million budget and $200 million in global box office is a much rarer occurrence than a movie like Rogue One. In terms of return on budget it blows Rogue One out of the water. But I wouldn't compare those two even though you seem to think I need to.

 

Rylo Ken unfortunately you are just making up your own data. The truth is is that R1's numbers were good enough for Disney to start their advertising for Ep. VIII as soon as Rogue One hit a billion WW. You can believe what you want. You at the same time though are just going to have to accept that if you are going to post those thoughts on a forum like this you aren't going to find a whole lot of people who will agree with you.

 

This is incorrect. The data comes from boxofficemojo. If you think they are making the data up, please let them know. There's nothing for you or anyone else to disagree with unless you're disputing the reported box office data.

 

You are putting your own personal spin on the data. And you aren't going to find too many people on here who are going to agree with your spin or even take it seriously.

 

what spin are you talking about? Do you disagree that Rogue One is just one of 42 [big budget, heavily marketed] movies that made approximately $750 million to $1.15 billion worldwide between 2007 and 2016? By all means, speak up if you disagree with that.

 

Understood. I was trying to figure out what the disagreement was about. If you look at $1 billion global movies between 2007-2016, Rogue One performed below the average. There isn't any spin.

 

RO closes its 10th week in NA with $65,053 on Thursday. Officially over $529 million.

 

Get Out is zeroing in for a nice weekend. $28 million potentially according to estimates. Lego Batman should have a nice weekend too. Rogue One is officially over $529 million.

 

Get out has been getting some very good reviews. There have definitely been some good horror movies made during the past year. Horror is one of my favorite genres (though I refuse to pay theater price to go see a horror movie) and it is nice when they make a horror movie where you actually care enough about the characters to where they become more than just plot devices to kill off.

 

530M is a nice round number, but I wanted 537M to pass TDK

 

$530 million isn't out of the question, and to think that we were close to surpassing The Dark Knight. That's awesome. I'm hoping that the international numbers coming in tomorrow or Monday are good enough to put us at $1.053.4. I know, the number means crap, but, think about this. To say that we lost the number 2 spot by just under $100 million is not bad at all. As for The Last Jedi, there are many factors driving this movie. New director, Luke will be in it, Carrie Fisher passed, more story about Snoke, The First Order, and maybe some other super weapon in disguise, and not to mention more Finn, Poe, and the beautiful Rey, and for those of us.....................we get to see Luke's/Anakin blue lightsaber again and this time without those flashy digital effects. So we are getting the hybrid dark blue/aqua tinges. Yeah baby!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Can't wait.

 

vong333

I agree $530 million isn't out of the question but if this was a NFL injury list it be listed under "doubtful". Still $529 million is nothing to go home and cry about. It was a megahit, bigger then Disney could ever hope for. I really think they saw anything above a $400/800 million split is as just more sprinkles on top and even a $300/700 million split would been "acceptable".

I am too really excited for TJL. I think it can better then TFA. I also am under no illusions that there won't be a massive drop off box office performance from TFA. The odds of lightning striking twice IE a once in a generation movie is EXTREMELY remote especially considering:

1. No Harrison Ford and Harrison as Han Solo (or Indy) puts butts in the seat.
2. It's the third SW movie in three years. Not the first SW movie in ten years which from 2005-Oct 2012 most people thought there be no SW again.
3. It's a sequel to TFA...not a sequel to ROTJ which many people were waiting thirty plus years for (like myself).
4. From the few spoilers we have, it's going to be a emotional/interpersonal story instead of a fun popcorn flick that was TFA.

As for this weekend's box office, great job by Get Out finding a whole in the winter slate and exploiting it. Had it come out next weejens, it would IMHO gotten wash away by Logan. But with it already out with a strong opening weekend and getting crazy insane reviews it s along with very good WOM will allow it to open it's legs some and really do some nice business. Logan btw continues to get rave reviews. I think it can beat both previous Wolverine movies easily.