ST The Last Jedi Box Office Discussion (see warning on page 307 before posting)

is 1.4 billion still possible ? The international number are pretty good
If no what about 1.350 ?

 

Probably not 1.4. 1.35 is still possible. It should be at or very close to 1.3 by next weekend.

 

Ok dood! Where are you getting 'well liked by most of the public' from? Its the same as me saying everyone hated it. Judging by the wealth of negativity on youtube and social media and public reviews i would say its swinging in the favour of 'not so liked'.
It was a given it would do big box office numbers, following on from one of the biggest releases ever!
When i said 'very real' it was in reference to the huuuge backlash the film has received from all corners of the globe, in case you have been stranded on ach-to for the last few weeks virtually every major publication in the western world has run a story on it in one way or another.
In that respect i think its fair to say the backlash is significant.

 

I know the movie theater chains in my town increased ticket prices shortly before Last Jedi came out, so I wonder if Rogue One beat Last Jedi on number of tickets sold on at least the third and fourth weeks.

 

But that's backlash from fandom not from the public (general audience) like he said

 

Backlash?

Bowen is using the evidence provided by professional polling, which is far different than websites with non-rigorous and self selection samples. Your statement that it is the same as you saying everyone hated it is not accurate. His statement has evidence with statistical validity, yours does not.

You are certainly welcome to dislike the movie. That doesn't change how the general public responded to the movie.

 

Probably not.

 

If you base your opinion off of what you see while roaming the internet that isn't much to go on. The internet is full of trolls and click bait articles. No one is denying that certain segments of the fan base found the film polarizing. But there is absolutely nothing that gives good evidence that the film was as polarizing as some of you want to think it was. In fact the movie making as much as it did as quickly as it did kind of downplays the very idea that there was a huge and massive backlash towards it.

 

So what are you all thinking will be the end gross of TLJ now.

 

Around 630m domestic and around 1.35b WW.

 

Seems about right to me.

 

Variety projection for the 4 day (Friday-Monday) holiday weekend (Day 29 to Day 32): $16 million

The Force Awakens (Day 29 to Day 32): $33,020,265
Rogue One (Day 29 to Day 32): $16,806,712

 

You're stating your opinion -- which you are certainly entitled to and is certainly welcome -- as something that applies to about half of the audience, which is not accurate at all based on professional exit polling conducted. The film received very high marks (A CinemaScore and 5/5 comScore, compared to A CinemaScores and 4.5/5 comScores for Rogue One and TFA) from professional exit polls conducted. You throwing around "YouTube comments" and "Facebook comments" or whatever is meaningless. Whenever I went on FB the last two years, any Star Wars article has had tons of negative comments, even almost the majority of them, about The Force Awakens, but it would be nonsense to say the highest grossing movie ever made in America had "mixed" or "negative" word of mouth. That's just not true. There is always a loud, vocal minority surrounding any popular release. The more popular the movie, the LARGER the number of people who feel the need to trash it always is. If nobody saw the thing, there's very few people to trash it or who care enough to do so because their comments would be meaningless to everyone else (since nobody saw it in the first place).

The narrative that TLJ has had bad word of mouth and that about half the audience hated it isn't going to stick, and isn't true, it's just hyperbole. Why is this always so hard to understand for people who didn't like a movie? Is this new to you? I hated Lady Bird, the best reviewed movie of all time on Rotten Tomatoes, I found it one of the most boring movies I've ever seen and utterly pointless. But I don't believe for one second that there is mixed word of mouth because Lady Bird isn't a huge box office hit. I know better than that. Most of the audience for that movie probably loves it, at least I hear nothing but good things about it, and I'm ok with that. I don't have to like it just because everyone else does, it's just a movie after all. I think all of us here accept that many fans were disappointed by TLJ, but I also know many fans were disappointed by Rogue One, and The Force Awakens, and Revenge of the Sith before that, and AOTC, and TPM, and even ROTJ. Guess what? A LOT of fans will be disappointed with Solo, and with Episode IX, and with whatever comes after that. It's just the nature of fandom.

 

282,000 people have voted on IMDB who have to go through a log in process and wait and verify, etc.

That huge sample, which includes people who love and hate it, averages out to 7.5 out of 10, which is close to Wrath of Khan territory and Temple of Doom territory and Revenge of the Sith territory. Higher than The Phantom Menace by a full point. Higher than Attack of the Clones by a full point. 0.9 below Return of the Jedi there.

I like it more than that rating but that, to me, based on the cinemascore, critic reviews, divide between love and hate, and the politically motivated folks who are trolling it for that reason, seems to feel most realistic for a general audience which also includes all those other people I must mentioned.

 

As for the box office...

 

"After its hugely disappointing debut last weekend, China’s movie exhibitors have taken the big, and possibly unprecedented decision to drop the Hollywood studio film Star Wars: The Last Jedi’s showtimes by 92 percent, from its 34.5% percent share of the territory’s total screenings last Friday to just 2.6 percent this Friday. I don't normally track screen counts in China on a week-to-week, movie by movie basis, so I can't be absolutely certain, but I suspect this magnitude of abandonment by exhibitors is unprecedented in Chinese cinema history."

https://www.forbes.com/sites/robcai...di-dumping-92-of-its-screenings/#7a99e0b25cc0

A surprise to be sure, but a welcome one.

 

Then how do you explain the poor multiplier and weekend drops? To me it clearly shows audiences went in droves that first weekend and they did not return. They chose to see Jumanji instead.

 

Deadline estimates for weekend:
$2.9M Fri (-56%)/3-day: $11.5M (-51%)/4-day: $15.1M

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story made $16.8M over MLK weekend last year. $33M for Force Awakens.

 

These scores mean nothing and also gave the Phantom Menace and all the prequels the same scores. Proper polling techniques actually try to account for failures and biases in their samples, for example a proper technique would have learned by now that it's useless to sample people who have just walked out of a huge hyped event film, who came out in droves from The Phantom Menace declaring it was the greatest movie ever created and they wanted to see it 500 times. The low user reviews are consistent on every platform in every language across the globe, they generally trend along with what audiences think and there's no reason to think it's all a conspiracy now, when there's so many public figures giving negative reviews also who aren't part of some 'fanboy conspiracy'.

Yes there is an element of the alt-right there who seem to make about 1 in 10 bad reviews, but no they could not tank TFA or R1 for having female leads or minorities, the audience has a particular issue with TLJ's faults.

The box office was always going to be huge as it's a sequel to a successful franchise with a lot of hype, but it's not the first bad movie which has had a huge box office based on its predecessors, yet which still was poorly received by audiences and led to major shakeups (Age of Ultron) or even entirely killed their franchises (Spider-Man 3). You cannot judge the box office success of a sequel as a measure of the sequel's quality and how the audience feels about it, the massive opening before the audience had even seen it is reflective of that, especially when the reviewers gave it such a high score for some unfathomable reason as if they all couldn't see the plots which went nowhere, hated story tropes of characters just not talking to each other, etc. I've noticed that non-American reviewers seem to be giving it the negative scores, and do have to wonder if American reviewers are genuinely scared of the new massive Disney monolith which has bought up Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar, and Fox for their livelihood, and won't post their reviews when negative.

 

So back to box office and not conspiracy theories....

As a non-American I have to say that the box office returns are really good. I guarantee you in years to come when people peruse the box office returns of a Star Wars movie they won’t say TLJ underperformed. They’ll say this was a movie that was number one domestic and worldwide.

And it was a great film. (Well one can hope....).


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People still talk about Age of Ultron underperforming despite having the 2nd largest box office of any Marvel movie and being one of the top of all time.

In fact the story was very similar, and Disney shook things up after that. https://www.cinemablend.com/new/Why...ently-Think-Avengers-2-Was-Failure-80867.html

 

We shall see. We shall.....SEE

By the way that link has the headline, Executives APPARENTLY think...

Not the most convincing argument.

Oh well, off to plan when next to watch the best Star Wars film along with Empire and ANH. Yes I do mean TLJ, before any wise guys chime in.


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It was reflected in their actions in response to it, they cut major players out from the business and closed down entire groups overseeing it, and Whedon hasn't worked on anything Marvel since.

To be honest, I think that the solution unfortunately lead to new problems, with the TV side and movie side no longer properly connected and rubbing off some of the glamour from what the MCU originally promised to audiences.

 

And if RJ will still get to do his trilogy then the argument doesn’t hold merit, I don’t think.

Now if he doesn’t, no matter how they sell it, I’ll completely agree with you.


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It's not an argument, it's a fact that people are still talking about Ultron as a box office underperformer despite being one of the top of all time, and it did lead to massive structural changes by Disney and people being ousted and the power structure being changed to solve interpersonal conflicts.

Whether that will occur again with Lucasfilm isn't clear, because the same issues may not exist or be perceived to be the reasons, and the contracts signed with Lucas might prevent removing his former employees who now run things.