Which movie will have the highest gross at the end of its run?

The only thing wrong with Willow is that it's a hardcore fantasy movie. It is a little violent in parts for small children too. I only brought it up because of what Nrf-Hrdr wrote:

So even when people come out of the cinema's raving about how exciting the action bits were, how emotional the dramatic bits were and how scary the scary bits were, the public will still stay away in droves because "it's all wizards and magic and pixies and all that gay crap"? I'm not convinced.

The public stayed away from Willow, despite the Lucas connection, precisely because it was all 'wizards and magic and pixies and all that gay crap.'

 

"But did you notice her trying to fly a fighter, join the men in a fire-fight, etc.?"

Uh... yeah. She wasn't a pilot, she was a *gasp* female politician! I mean, how many Girl Senators were there in 1977? She could handle a blaster, though. Sure she blinked everytime she fired the blaster, but she still fired it. She was also the first main character to blow away a storm trooper.

She continued bossing the guys around in "The Greatest Star Wars Film Ever Made" and got in some more Stormtrooper slaughtering as well. She might not have been piloting the Falcon at the end but she WAS in one fo the front seats for a while.

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Back to LOTR: It opens on Wednesday the 19, so it will have a big day or two before the opening weekend starts, then the weekend comes, then Christmas Eve and Day, then the rest fo the holiday week, then New years. Dec 26 and 27 will basically play like a Sunday, much higher than a regular weekday. Ali and Black Hawk Down will be the main competition, but I think LOTR will be THE movie to see.

With big weekend grosses and elevated holiday numbers, LOTR could average 15 million a day for the first 14 days. ($210 million)

 

Oh, another reason I think LOTR will beat out HP. HP comes out at the beginning of the holiday season, which means it's got to fight it's way through over one month of competition (many well adverstised and popular movies come out in Nov./Dec.) LOTR will come out towards the end of December, which means it'll have one and a half weeks of major box releases to fight through, then it'll be January, and jack squat comes out in January, or Feburary, or March. So, LOTR won't have much competion if it can withstand the first three weeks.

I went back and did some research. Titanic also came out on Dec. 19, up against James Bond. Then January hit, and nothing of interest came out until April, except the Man in the Iron Mask, US Marshals, and The Wedding Singer. The Marhsals was a flop, and although MITIM and TWS did well, they weren't the kind of movies that could stand up against Titanic. I anticipate this factor will work well in LOTR's favor.

 

Here's an On Topic ) contorversial issue:

I've been kind of thinking about this for a while. DO you think there could be a cultural problem with Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings? What I mean is, do you thing that those movies might be seen as...... um, too English? I mean, Harry goes to this English boarding school type place, and all the LOTR characters have English accents, do you think an American audience might be a little put off by this?

I hope not, but the possibility has been in the back of my mind since I started downloading the trailers.

 

Darth23

Uh... yeah. She wasn't a pilot, she was a *gasp* female politician! I mean, how many Girl Senators were there in 1977? She could handle a blaster, though. Sure she blinked everytime she fired the blaster, but she still fired it. She was also the first main character to blow away a storm trooper.

She was defending herself. She backed into a corner, what did you expect her to do? The point is that she left the guys to fight the war in the trenches; she wasn't pretending to be a guy. She was a Princess and as such, also played the role of Senator. Nothing feminist about that.

Not so with the chicks in TPM. They are fighter pilots and shooting blasters and a bounty hunter. Give me a break.

The question is, considering the desperate straits in ANH and beyond, you would think that chicks would have been needed much more so. Where did they go? No where, GL hadn't gone feminist on us back then.

 

"Then January hit, and nothing of interest came out until April, except the Man in the Iron Mask, US Marshals, and The Wedding Singer. The Marhsals was a flop, and although MITIM and TWS did well, they weren't the kind of movies that could stand up against Titanic. I anticipate this factor will work well in LOTR's favor. "


Well US Marshals and Man in the Iron Mask both made like 58 million, I suppose since US Marshals was sort of a 'sequel' to the Fugitive, it was a dissapointement, but then it was an odd kind of sequel, with no Harrison Ford - Richard Kilble.

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"She was defending herself. She backed into a corner, what did you expect her to do? "

I would think that YOU'D expect her to scream and faint and wait for some man to come rescure her, not try to rescue herself.

 

I thought that too for a while, that FOTR would start modestly on Titanic's release slot, then just keep rolling, $20 million week after week after week. But LOTR just cannot muster that level of audience support. The demographics are all wrong. The hardcore Tolkien fans alone will guarantee FOTR an extra $25-50 million at most. $200-$225 million in domestic box office is all it can achieve.

You cannot assume that teenage boys will do for FOTR what teenage girls did for Titanic. A much smaller subset of teenage boys is interested in hardcore fantasy. Maybe 1 in 20.

But Harry Potter definitely has the capacity to draw children and families back for repeat viewings the way Titanic brought back the teen crowd.

 

Hopefully "LotR"

 

Even after several dozens of reviews and numerous re-showings, the Cannes footage still gets rave reviews from absolutely everyone, including non-fans. Beyond a few complaints over special effects, I?ve yet to read a negative reaction to it.

If the entire film lives up to those extracts, the word of mouth should sustain the film long after it's intitial release. If, even after the rave reviews, people still don't see it, just because of the film's supposed genre, it?ll just confirm my suspicion that the general public are a bunch of morons.

 

If FOTR is even moderately good I'll be seeing it every weekend for a month. But that's because I'm a lifelong sci fi/fantasy nerd-aholic geek-king.

I have a feeling that fantasy nerds see the LOTR films as a vindication for their nerdiness, the movie they've always wanted made so they can show the world how cool their little sub-genre really is. It's hard being us. We're always going to be a little marginalized. We like Star Wars just a bit too much, and that goes double for that "pixie crap."

But if any fantasy film is going to draw the big Star Wars size crowd, it is going to be Harry Potter. It's the kiddie-skewed plot that will do it.

 

Is there a chance that in trying to make HP appeal to both kids and adults that it may not strongly attract both? I am not saying that they may have a few jokes that kids wont get, and a few things adults will hate, but just be too general and not appeal to either.

Cause of kids guilting parrents into seeing it again and again and again and again, HP will do better, but i think it will die out faster than FOTR. I hope FOTR does better, but the whinny brat factor is on HP's side.

And dont forget, if either movie is bad, then it will bomb and after the first few weeks, be forgoten.

 

"Is there a chance that in trying to make HP appeal to both kids and adults that it may not strongly attract both?"

That's what happened to TPM, and it still did nearly a billion. Personally, if Episode I had made an authentic effort to be a kid's movie, instead of just throwing in Jar Jar to pander to the preteen set, I would have loved it. I don't understand the prejudice against movies aimed at children, but I agree with you -- movies that try too hard to pander to multiple audiences usually end up stinking.

I have a sliding scale for HP's box office based on the rottentomatoes.com rating it gets. If it gets 80% or better it is guaranteed a billion. Obviously there is not an exact correlation between reviews and popularity, but for most movies in most situations, it's a fair indicator. Episode I was an exception - truly critic-proof. Harry Potter is somewhat less critic-proof, but still more critic-proof than most movies.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is Gone with the Wind for children. Download the latest trailer.

 

"I have a feeling that fantasy nerds see the LOTR films as a vindication for their nerdiness, "

Actually most nerds saw the dot-com boom as a vindication of theor nerdiness.... till it went bust, anyway.

We DO need a good Fantasy movie, though - some of the better ones that have been made really aren't all that good.

 

Ohh crude, i just thought of a good on topic point...ohh yes, now i remember.

One thing HP has for it is that if it is off from the book, more people wont care as much than if LOTR is off from the book. I seriously doubt that kids or their parrents will care of sceans are taken out or put into HP, but i think that many people would care more of LOTR is messed up from the books (like i personaly am worried about the love story taking up too much of the movie).

I think that LOTR has enough in the way of looks to be very intresting. The special effects are said to be prety good but not perfect in some places. HP special effects are easyer, cause like they can just take a letter, something easy to render....

Why not just wait and see?

 

Whether we speculate or not, we still have to wait and see, so why not speculate?

 

Anyone who sees HP will see FOTR. The reverse isn't true. (me, for example). So just copy over whatever your predictions are for HP into the FOTR column. Not only Braveheart, but Gladiator raked in Osca's. These movies share that wackin' and smackin' trait. LOTR has sold more copies than Jabba has listed, if I'm not mistaken. If I am mistaken, oh well, but the book is still the best of the 20th century by most accounts.

Fellowship of the Ring: a nice bold $350M in the US alone

Harry Potter: $200M

Dennis The Phantom Menace: dunno, total

 

That's where you're obviously wrong. Take the Harry Potter audience, then subtract all the children, all the moms who take their kids to the movies, all the non-fantasy-lovin dads who take their kids to the movies, and all the non-fantasy-lovin grandparents, uncles, aunts, and babysitters who take kids to the movies.

Then add some geeky teenagers and you have the FOTR audience.

 

Monsters, Inc. is getting some of the best reviews I've seen for a children's movie in a long time. So far, it has a 94% rating from rottentomatoes, compared to Shrek's 87%. Since Harry Potter doesn't start until Monster, Inc.'s third weekend, I imagine Harry Potter will take away much of Monster, Inc.'s audience. But, frankly, it's hard to imagine HP getting such good reviews. If HP is not good, audiences may shift their loyalty back to Monster's Inc. for the Thanksgiving weekend.

Anyway, if Harry Potter and Monsters, Inc. feed off each other (someone else mentioned this earlier), then neither of their box office totals may be as impressive as you'd otherwise expect.

 

I think that if Monsters Inc does really well that will help Harry Potter, Monsters Inc will have 2 weeks to make a lot of money, then some of it's audience want to go back to the theater to see a new movie, and HP will be there. HP's core audience will be there no matter what. But if there are some kids (maybe younger ones) that somehow AREN'T aware of Harry Potter, the new HP trailer showing with Monsters Inc could make them want to see the movie.

So I think Monsters Inc's success could bring in some younger kinds to see HP.

From The Numbers.com:

There are 3 big releases this weekend, but one really stands out as a likely bellweather for the Winter movie market. Monsters, Inc. is Pixar's fourth CGI-animated movie for Disney and, like its predecessors, is squarely aimed at the family market. With Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring coming out in the next 2 months, Hollywood's hopes to end the year strongly rest heavily on getting families into theaters.

With a debut on an impressive 3,237 theaters, we see a potential $50m opening. Anything more than hat bodes well indeed for the likes of Harry Potter and Frodo Baggins.

It's intersting that the article is looking as FOTR as a FAMILY film and puts it in the same category as MI and HP. I know a lot of fans think tht it will definitely NOT be fr kids, but if most people think that it is, that could help attract and even bigger audience.

 

I guess it depends on what is meant by "family film." Would I take a 12-year-old to see FOTR? Sure. Would I take a six or seven-year-old. Probably not. Harry Potter is going to attract all the people who would turn out for Monsters, Inc., plus all the fans of the books who would not necessarily go see a Disney flick.

I also think you may be right that the kids' movies will help each other. When families show up for sold-out shows of Harry Potter on the Nov. 16 weekend, they are definitely going to pile in for Monsters, Inc. instead. The interesting thing will be to see what happens on the extended Thanksgiving-day weekend. If the audiences get split between Monsters, Inc. and Harry Potter, it will prove that Monsters, Inc. is the stronger film.

I'd also like to reiterate just how hard it is for a movie to beat TPM at the box office. Ignoring Titanic for a moment, TPM's numbers are frightening:

Weekend 1: $65 million
Weekend 2: $51 million
Weekend 3: $33 million
Weekend 4: $25 million
Weekend 5: $19 million

The largest weekend-to-weekend drop in there is 36%. Unbelievable.

 

It's intersting that the article is looking as FOTR as a FAMILY film and puts it in the same category as MI and HP. I know a lot of fans think tht it will definitely NOT be fr kids, but if most people think that it is, that could help attract and even bigger audience.

That's the real trick, though, isn't it. LOTR is a great family story. It was on the BBC, along with The Hobbit, as a radio broadcast. As a movie, it will be realistically depicted, but face it: this is the way Star Wars started out. I saw Star Wars for the first time when I was four or five. My parents loved it, and I did too. And, truthfully, it is a kid's story. Kids identify well with hobbits from merely reading the books. On the flip side of that, it's still a relevant story for adults.

 

You're absolutely right about ANH. It is essentially a movie for children. One of the best children's movies ever because it absolutely refuses to condescend or pander to kids the way even Lucas's later movies have (ROTJ and TPM).

LOTR, on the other hand, is typically read by young male adults, not kids. The respective tones of The Hobbit and LOTR should not be confused with each other. They are several degrees of maturity and depth apart. When you say "kids love hobbits," what you should really be saying is "kids love The Hobbit."

But USA Today completely supports my analysis of Harry Potter. $400 million upward potential in U.S. box office, giving it an outside chance at matching TPM worldwide.

 

This could be hard to verify. I don't think TPM's run will end.

 

GMT, I'd say you have better than 70-30 odds of being right. Harry Potter will beat TPM only if everything is exactly right. A near-flawless adaptation of the books, great reviews, excellent word-of-mouth, continuing mass-media attention.

 

Personally, i dont think HP has to be perfect from the book (at least, not as much as LOTR may have to be) becasue i seriously dont think HP is going to have the fanitacal fan base of LOTR to point out every little detail. But the movie of hp will have to appeal in the same way the books do.