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

From what i have heard, there are reviews of HP going around that it follows the book to well. That it is also being over hyped. I seriously cannnot see it comming near to breaking Tietanic anyway for the simple reason that parrents are not going to want to rewatch it that much. They have also said the acting is very bad (but Ep 1 shows that kids dont have to act well for a movie to do well...). Yeah, it will do super super on the first weekend, and great on the second, then it will fall in my opinion and unless LOTR sucks, it will be forgoten by january.

And my roommate says spiderman is going to kill AOTC. I say he is high, but hey, any ammo against him will help.

Even if HP ends up making more money than LOTR, i think it will be a better movie (long lasting, awards) than HP. But Star Wars is not going to lose to HP (fans like us probably will only watch HP once just to try to make sure it wont). Also, has anyone noticed that the HP soundtrack sounds allot like star wars (more so than because Williams did both [all?] the scors for the movies)?

 

Quite amusingly, even before any of them had seen it, some of the fanatical Tolkien purists were implying that the faithfulness of the Harry Potter movie is evidence of the skill of the director and screenwriters in comparison to that clueless hack Peter Jackson and his goons, who had the gall to cut out Tom Bombadil etc. Nearly all the HP reviews have pointed out the strict adherance to the novel is a flaw rather then a benefit.

Incidentally, I really hope that LOTR review up at AICN is true. I'm not sure any film can follow the amount of hype LOTR has without being a letdown on some level, though.

 

It seems to me that HP is being more hyped than LOTR, but both are getting allot, i am not saying LOTR is not, but HP is getting allot more, or maybe i am just blind to it...i dont know.

 

I don't mean organised Harry Potter style promotional hype, I'm talking about places like AICN building LOTR up to be the greatest cinematic acheivement of all time.

 

"(but Ep 1 shows that kids dont have to act well for a movie to do well...)"


In the immortal words of Austin Powers: Ouch, man, Ouch.


NRF: Who the #!@#%#%@$ is Tom Bombad-dil?

Sorry I never read the books, just The Hobbit, but I've been reading complaints about this guy not being in the movie for what seems like AGES.

 

In the begining of the journal from the Shire in FOTR, Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pipen (four members of the fellowship) get stuck in a enchanted forest. The meet Tom Bo...? and they enjoy themselves. Eventually, the four hobbits get in a jam and Tom bails them out, and we never realy hear from him again in the books.

 

Ah, thanx.


Doesn't like cutting-room floor bait to me.

 

Of all the cuts and changes made in LOTR that have been revieled, most Tolenites have said it is for the best in a movie (serious). The big ones are Tom is out, the big bad guy's role is going to be bigger, the love story is beefed up allot (but hopefully not too much), a guy who dies in the begining of the second book will die at the end of the first movie, and instead of the last two books being cut in half between 'Sam and Frodo' and everyone else, it will cut back and forth in the movies. Those are the big changes that have been revieled, and the die hard token fans are okay with them so far. Given that they are okay with the movie being made to appeal to more than just them, i see that as a good sign and that it may do very well.

 

Monsters Inc dropped 25% this weekend, according to estimates, takign in an estimated $46.17 million. Low drop-offs are prett normal for kid-friendly/family films, but movies that open big (over 40 mil) tend to drop a lot more - usually at least 40%.

This movie will easily pass the 200 million dollar mark, and could give Shrek a run for its money.

The real key for long term performance will be how well it holds up when Harry Potter is released on Friday. If drops less that 40% again next weekend then it will be one of 2001's top 3 highest grossing films. (I predict)

 

Monsters Inc is probably going to be there for the long haul. Potter will probably take a big bite out of its takings next week, but it'll probably recover and hang around for weeks like Shrek did.

 

The top 2 movies next weekend could gross 100 million.

70ish million or so for Harry (around the 72 mil record), and around another 30 Monsters (around a 40% drop).

 

Apparently Potter has broken the UK's record for 1 day's takings from the preview screenings alone. The reviews are increasingly mixed, though. Damn that hack Columbus!

 

WAAAAAAAHHH a star wars movie is going down...to a...kids movie (goes off and cries).

HP is going to do well on the first weekend, allot of records are going to break, but it wont last more than 3 weeks, and not just because of LOTR, but people will get tired of it.

 

Star Wars is a kid's movie.

 

Star Wars is a movie for the kid in all of us!

The hype continues:

From Showbizdata.com:

"Critics for the nation's major news weeklies have heralded next weekend's release of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone with restrained praise. David Ansen in Newsweek, for example, wrote: "Fidelity ... is a virtue more crucial to marriage than movies. There are good reasons why filmmakers think it necessary to reshape the books that inspire them. [director Chris] Columbus's Harry Potter has many delights, but the magical alchemy that the book seemed to achieve so effortlessly eludes it. The movie gets most of the book's events in, but loses much of the lightness and charm of Rowling's vision. It's overstuffed." Although critics from the daily press are barred from running reviews until the film opens on Friday, some are skirting the prohibition in their articles about the movie. Lou Lumenick in today's (Monday) New York Post writes, for example, that analysts are forecasting that the film could challenge Titanic as the top-grossing film of all time, "and having had an advance look at his much-anticipated, crowd pleasing blockbuster, I can't disagree with them. This scrupulously faithful, flawlessly marketed adaptation of J.K. Rowling's worldwide best seller will be a positive cash machine for Warner Bros."

I think the reviews are going to be solid - good but not really great. So the movie shouldn't fade quickly, but it doesnt' realyl sound like a movie that will have tons of repeat viewings.

Obviously Harry potter will open big. There's no way it will tie the record of 5 days to 100 million, if it opened on a Wednesday that I think that would be a possibility. Right now I'm thinking 250 million dollar range. I'll probably make an Offical Final Prediction on Thursday.

 

It seems that critics are really reaching when by saying that the film is "too faithful" to the book. I guess they look down on the lack of artistic value added by a film maker who perfectly translates a book to the screen. But at any rate, a film's excess of fidelity to the book is not a failing that, though it offends the artistic sensibilities of critics, the audience is likely to mind.

I can't imagine any film doing better than HP this year. My brother's kids (aged 3 to 18) are considerably more excited about HP than they were about TPM (and they were mad for TPM). Only the older ones are excited about FOTR. I see other commuters in the NYC area reading HP. I know several co-workers (all Manhattan lawyers) who loved HP and are planning on seeing the movie. My wife's co-workers (teachers) are also exicted, partly for themselves and partly becuase of the kids they teach. All this is, of course, anecdotal, but I think it reflects the cross section of the population that will see HP. I can't speak for middle-America, however.

I love LOTR and I am anticipating that tremendously. It will no doubt make a ton of money, garner oscars and wow the pants off me (and perhaps even compete with AOTC at the box office). But I really don't think that any movie will be in HP's ballpark. It is a phenomenon. Do the math. Approximately 116 million books sold. I assume that roughly 40 mil comes from the first book. If only one person for every copy sold sees the movie once, that's $ 300 mil ($8+ per (a low number) discounted for matinees). Half of those books are for kids with at least one other person in the family, most with more than one other. So up it at least 25%. Then there are kids who read it in the school library or borrowed it plus their parents/families. Then there are the knucklehead kids who don't read but who will see it because everybody else did. Then there are the blockbuster movie goers who may or may not have bought the book. Then there are the people the adult readers will bring - most have spouses. Then some of all of those folks will see it again (and some again and again and again).

If 100 million copies of HP books were sold, isn't it likely that more than 100 million tickets will be sold? If so, that's a big box office. And I think 100 million tickets is pretty conservative. All in all, I think it has an outside shot at the big boat.

 

100 million copies of 4 books have been sold worldwide.

So 25 million people WORLDWIDE bought a copy of each book. Say 70% are in the US - that's 17 million people in the US.

Even if everyone of them spent 8 bucks on a ticket that's 140 million! My original guess was 143 million in the US.

Sure that's looking at it ULTRA conservatively, but I think that it base isn't 100 million - certainly not in the US - and that like with every movie, it will have to move beyond its bae to make it into the top 10 or top 5 all time.

 

"If 100 million copies of HP books were sold, isn't it likely that more than 100 million tickets will be sold?"

100 million sales of 4 books doesn't neccessarily equal 100 million fans; there isn't a seperate fan-base for each book.

 

uh, that's partly what I was trying to say.

Are there any numbers for how many copies each book has sold? (in the US?)

 

It helps when you read the whole post instead of only the last sentence.

I think it's about 116 million total book sales worldwide, and something more than 25% should be attributed the first book. I don't have the numbers broken down by book, but it doesn't really matter. Take the total number of children who have purchased a copy of any HP book. That's your starting point, and it's going to be a lot higher than 25% of the total world wide sales.

My conclusion was based on the fact that many more than one person will see the movie for each copy of the 1st book sold, since (a) kids need parents to take them to the movies (and have siblings that are dragged along) and (b) not everyone who read the book bought a separate copy. I refer you to the first post for the entire chain of reasoning.

 

Oh....I think AOTC will have the highest gross of the previous list of movies that did not include it ?

 

Ok - I reread your post.

I was mainly responding to the 100 million number that I keep reading - the fact that it's a worldwide sales figure for all the Harry Potter books.

Even if the total for book 1 is 40 million, that's still worldwide.

Let's take 70% of that number as the US total (I'm just pulling that percentage out of the air) that's 28 million. Exhibitor Relations estimates the average ticket price much lower than $8.00. In 1999, 'official average' was like 4.25 or 4.75. I'd seriously doubt that its more than 5.50 now. Let's take $6.00 to overestimate a bit. This is taking into account matinee tickets, children's dicount tickets, discount theater tickets and regional diferences in ticket prices.

OK, 28 mil times $6 is 168 million, in the same general ballpark as my other guess.

I seem to remember reading that the last book sold the most. I haven't been paying that close attention, plus I don't think it would matter which one sold the most. The real key is how many people have read 1 Harry Potter book. For the US box office the issue is how many people in North America have read one of the books.

I could see the movie having an outside shot at doubling the 168 number - everyone who has read an HP book being half the total movie audience. That would give it $336 milion domestically. But realistically I thing somewhere in the $200's is most likely. A solid hit, but not the biggest movie ever.

Of course this is all based on partly wild speculation. Your milage may vary.

 

I was focusing on international totals, simply because I was pretty sure of Titanic's international total: $1.2 billion. I don't have any frame of reference for domestic numbers. Dammit, Jim, I'm a doctor not a studio executive.

It comes down to how many more tickets are sold than copies of whichever HP book sold the most. I would bet that a significant number of people read the book, but didn't buy it (libraries, borrowing, sharing amongst siblings, etc.). Take the total number of readers of any HP book (45-50 million? - wild guess) plus parents/family members/spouses (at least equal to the number of readers) plus kids who don't read (this number may be huge ) plus other sci-fi/fantasy fans and blockbuster movie goers who haven't read the books (I haven't the foggiest idea how many). That probably gets you to at least 100 million tickets. Now add in repeat viewings (another 10%? 20% who knows?). Based on all this, I would say that HP will make a minimum of $700 million worlwide. Probably a good bit more.

That analysis, conceieved in speculation and wrought out of blind guesswork, may have enough holes that it probably can't hold feathers -- forget about water. But it is the best I've got.

I just looked at total domestic gross numbers. Shrek is at #13 with over $267 million and the Grinch is at #14. How can HP not do better than that? Reviews are mostly good, some fair. The biggest complaint is that it's too much like the book, which the kids adore. I know SW fans don't want to hear this, but HP has a built in audience comparable to TPM, but without the critical backlash (so far).

 

Word of mouth will count the most. Built in audience and general anticipation will give you a big opening, but word of mouth pushes some movies to the 200 million dollar level and others past the 300 million dollar mark.

Titanic made 600 million in the us PLUS another 1.2 billion internationally. That's 1.8 Billion with a B total.

TPM is number 2 worldwide with 922 million.

I don't think there's any way that Harry potter will pass the 1.8 Billion dollar mark.

 

Titanic made 600 million in the us PLUS another 1.2 billion internationally. That's 1.8 Billion with a B total.

Wow. I sit corrected. That is one load of cash. How much money do 13 year old girls have?? The government should tax them, and spend the money on something worthwhile -- like building the NY Jets a stadium.

So maybe taking down the boat is one thing, but taking down TPM -- that's something else. I don't think a billion worldwide is out of the realm of possibility (which is why I thought it had an outside shot at Titanic's erroneous $1.2 billion).