Discussion Box Office - How Much will TFA Make?

Absolutely, Cameron is a huge winner at the box office just in general, but I think everyone was blown away that he takes a 12 year break from making feature films and comes out with a sci-fi epic that has a solid but unimpressive $75 million December debut, then somehow goes on to make 10 times that much in one of the most impressive box office runs imaginable. That's a pretty incredible performance! Especially worldwide, though, I had no idea it would resonate that strongly. Titanic and Avatar are 2 of the most unusual box office outliers in the past 30 years, along with The Sixth Sense and Home Alone, although Sixth Sense wasn't even close to being the biggest movie of its year so it probably doesn't belong in quite the same crowd as the other three movies, but still it is another movie where word of mouth propelled it to great success after a mediocre opening weekend.

Whether or not Cameron had done it before on Titanic doesn't diminish how unusual and impressive Avatar's run was. If it was highly anticipated and everyone couldn't wait for another Cameron film, you'd expect it would have had a more normal box office run that was more heavily front-loaded at least to the first few weekends, but instead it continued making massive totals each weekend and held #1 forever.

As for any predictions I've made, they are mostly just based on observations about other films, which is tough because there hasn't quite been anything like The Force Awakens in December. There's not a basis for comparison of a recent modern blockbuster with this much hype in the month. I think, though, it's totally reasonable to compare it to a November opening like The Hunger Games or THG Catching Fire, or Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows 2, and then adjusting those types of performances for the different circumstances. For instance, with the pre-sales for TFA, we already know it's more hotly anticipated than both of those movies, which is why the box office prediction for its opening is north of $170 million. I think that prediction is low, though, because Harry Potter managed almost exactly that much with a more heavily front-loaded opening than I expect of TFA and lower overall ticket prices combined with fewer screenings over opening weekend.

A lot of predicting how well TFA does opening weekend is a simple question of whether you believe that December is something that happens to Star Wars, or whether you believe Star Wars is something that happens to December. I'm in the latter crowd. It's partially personal bias and partially lack of understanding of how December is inherently different from June when Jurassic World opened. I have heard the excuses from 6 months ago from people predicting only a $120 million opening, and they usually are, "Well everyone is going to holiday parties, and they have family coming to town, and they have holiday shopping so they'll be at the mall, and they're just busy with other stuff. Because holidays."

I don't get that. Holidays are the biggest weekends of the year for moviegoing, including Christmas, so why would family BBQs on Memorial Day have no affect on the box office gross of modern blockbusters (except a good one, since movies make MORE on Memorial Day than they do on some random Monday) but somehow magically the weekend before Christmas is this Bermuda Triangle of moviegoing where nobody can manage to find 2 hours to see a film? I just don't personally buy that excuse whatsoever. I am never more free and less busy than in December. My birthday is on the 12th, my sister's the 15th, and I usually am not busy at all with work throughout the month because it's incredibly slow for our company. That gives me way more time than during the summer, our busiest season. I know there are plenty of other people from kids to college students to adults who take off time in December because of built-up vacation time or whatever else. Also, the mall excuse is the stupidest one of all. There are so many people at the mall shopping that they can't see a movie? So really, they spend the entire weekend at the mall? I don't think so. You know what else malls have? THEATERS. Every mall I've ever seen has a theater inside of it or right next to it! So if you're shopping for 5 hours and you get hungry for some dinner, you start to think, huh, we could grab some food and go catch Star Wars after we shop. What better situation than to have millions of people at the mall right next to a movie theater? They're already out of the house for god's sake, and this is a bad thing for Star Wars? LOL, that's just dumb and lacks any sort of internal logic.

I think it being December will have about as much affect on Star Wars as a fart has on altering the direction of a hurricane, but that's just me.

 

Haha, that must be REALLY different countries. How could you not have movie theaters in the mall or right next to it?! Even when I visited South Korea, there was a big movie theater right in their large mall in Seoul. It's very common.

I cannot think of a single mall around me that doesn't have a movie theater right near it. The closest mall to me just shut down their movie theater inside, but there's one 20 feet across the street that has an IMAX screen so it was kind of silly to have 2 theaters inside / outside the mall. That's how common it is -- there are quite literally theaters clumped around every mall.

In Burbank, the big mall has one theater inside of it, it has one theater just outside of it, and a THIRD that's a few blocks further away.

Pioneer here in Portland, the biggest mall I would argue (because it's downtown), also has a movie theater inside of it. There's another one very close.

Why would that at all be strange? Even from a business perspective, it makes perfect sense. There are a lot of people already at the mall and the top floor or floors of a mall is VERY tough space to lease, because it's the least desirable, so you're not going to get a bunch of smaller stores there, which makes it perfect space for movie theaters to put larger auditoriums into and fill up that space.

 

This is going to be annoying if it doesn't beat JW's opening, flat out "Star Wars is Dead!" headline clickbait. Personally, I think it isn't just due to the December timeframe so I'm still "lowballing" it at 180ish. But it would still be an incredible opening.

Also the next 7 days of TFA is going to be insane. And there probably won't be a 2nd week drop at Christmas, like, at all, THAT is where it's going to make a ton of cash it's first 3 weeks, basically kind of like Avatar and Titanic did, incremental decreasing. But I could easily see TFA breaking 130 million two weekends in a row, and probably break 400 million domestic before 2016 starts.

Look, if the movie makes 1 billion dollars globally, which I think it will, I'm fairly certain Disney is going to be very okay with that. But even if it makes a freakin' BILLION dollars, people will still decry "Star Wars is dead!"

 

Yes, with as big as this movie is I think anything short of $1.75 billion worldwide is a major disappointment. Nobody at Disney would say that, of course, but internally they would be a bit bummed. Wall Street has built that into the stock price, between $1.75B and $1.95B estimated. I think it'll get there.

And I think it will clear $500 million easily by the end of its third weekend with a shot at $600 million by then. Imagine: $250M opening, $100 million midweek, $150 million second weekend, and $125 million the next midweek plus third weekend combined is $625 million. Do I think that's happen / am I predicting that? Not really, just saying it is possible. I think the opening will be more like $225 million personally but with this crazy hype and these sell outs and the media reports I read daily, who knows??

 

I live in Las Vegas, and to my knowledge, there's not a single mall here with a movie theater inside it.

 

Vegas is my favorite city, you're lucky. My aunt and uncle also live there. I can't say I've been to the mall in Vegas but that's odd to me. That's usually the ideal place to put a theater or very close to it.

 

See, that bugs me because I'm personal "it made a ton of cake, everybody shut up" line is at 1 billion. I'm pretty sure Disney turns a profit on TFA alone at that point and then some. Sure, they paid 4 billion for it but plus TFA at a billion, plus merchandising, hell they'll probably make the investment for Lucasfilm back by the end of TFA's run if it "only" makes a billion.

 

Oh yeah for sure, you're right of course. It would make good money at that point even after marketing expenses, but not that much theatrically. It would be more about DVD, toys, merchandise, etc. It's just that Disney is a public company so when an expectation gets built into the stock price, if it falls short of that it'll hurt the stock and the brand.

Looking on the bright side I will eat my freaking socks if TFA doesn't clear $1.5 billion. It will not have trouble with that number.

 

I want TFA to beat Avatar soundly, even 3 billion. What a fluff of "dances with wolves" ripoff Avatar was.

 

It would be nice to see Star Wars reign again. For me, while I "care" about the worldwide box office, I mainly just care about the domestic. I mean, if TFA is #1 in the United States (and Canada), it'll still be amazing I think. That's what I've followed since I was a teen. I only got to enjoy Star Wars at #1 for a year before Titanic unseated it, which was really frustrating because it was the most awesome thing I remember when Star Wars: Special Edition reclaimed the crown it had lost 15 years earlier to E.T. It felt right, having Star Wars at #1. At that time, we had 3 Star Wars movies in the domestic top 10 list. We can do that again, with TFA, and in fact that's pretty much guaranteed at this point since TPM and ANH aren't going anywhere before TFA comes out, and TFA will easily break the top 5.

I was very happy when Avatar defeated Titanic, though. I know it has its flaws (I wrote a 4-page review of the film recently and watching it again critically, I have my complaints), but it's still an immensely entertaining adventure film that was quite an experience to see in theaters in 3D. That's why it made so much money. It really felt more like an experience than a movie. I contributed about 3 screenings of ticket prices to Avatar's run, but no worries, I'll be buying 25 tickets to TFA at least ha ha.

 

I just saw "Creed" in the mall and it was packed. Almost all the showtimes were sold out. I think the mall argument is dead on. People are already there and will want to see it. In fact, I see the mall theaters being sold out the most for that very reason alone.

In addition, "TigerCraneFist may be on to something when he said that we do not have another example to compare as it relates to a big box office movie like TFA opening up in December. We have NO clue how big this can be as we could be cruising on uncharted waters...

 

2.7 billion projection. Unlimited money!

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/star-wars-force-awakens-profit-844758

 

Yeah a guy in the spoiler forum's thread just shared his local mall figures and they are ridiculous. TFA is sold out of almost every single showing for the ENTIRE opening weekend through Sunday, with the exception of some off times like 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. I of course find it funny there are places where theaters aren't in or near malls because I could literally name 20 theaters in our area here and almost all of them are either in a mall or right outside the mall, and I'm referring of course to outdoor, non-enclosed malls as well. The largest outdoor mall here in Oregon is Bridgeport Village and that's where I will be seeing TFA because it's the only theater in Oregon where they're showing a Marathon screening of all the Star Wars films. It's not my local theater, but it is one of the best. Four of the five major indoor malls in our area have not just theaters in or near them, but among the best theaters. Clackamas has one of the few D-Box theaters at their mall theater, Lloyd near me has one of only 3 IMAX screens in the city, and Vancouver Mall (Washington, just across the border) has the largest (23-screen) theater in the entire metro area with reserved seating, premium format theaters, 21+ theaters, etc. The downtown mall near me only has a 6-plex and it's mediocre at best but right across the street is an arthouse theater that's the biggest in the state and has 10 screens for more niche fare, though you will see major movies playing there as well as long as it's adult-oriented (like you would see Creed, you would not see Alvin and the Chipmunks! LOL).

I legitimately cannot imagine that there's any city in the United States where malls and theaters are too far apart. That's convenient for shoppers who want to catch a movie!

 

Depends on what your definition of a mall is. A city, too, for that matter. The only true indoor shopping mall here in Maine (that I know of) is about 5 minutes from a tiny theater that hasn't been updated since the 70s. Then there's an even smaller theater in the parking garage in Freeport....basically maybe 50 seats in each theater room. Up north a little ways, there's a theater in a shopping center in Augusta (the capital). Then a decent size theater with bad seats and no heat up in one of the larger towns.

Hence why I'm driving down to Massachusetts to see TFA.

 

Good point. I have a snobby definition of city and a lax definition of mall (there are a lot of strip malls with movie theaters near them ha ha). I notice places like Baker City here where I had a film shoot even put "City" in the title just to fight for what they don't have, but to me city is like 100,000 minimum and "real city" would be like 500,000 lol. But I'm sure if I grew up in a tiny town I would have a smaller definition of city

 

So.....the 'cities' here are kinda more like glorified towns. The biggest city here is about 66,000. Second biggest is about 33,000. And the capital is around 19,000. And to put it in perspective....the town I live in has only around 5,000.

So, basically I live on Tatooine, population wise.

 

Yeah, like I said, not a single mall with a movie theater. They're either standalones (which are becoming more popular) or in a casino. I'll be seeing the premiere at a standalone whose closest shopping is a Party City.

 

It'll set a new record. Idk how much it has now as the record, but it'll be #1. If it doesn't I'm going to do a planetary force choke.

 

It will make point five past lightspeed in twelve parsecs. You heard it here first, folks.

 

I said in an earlier post that if TFA hits a certain number on RT, then would do the unthinkable and pass "Avatar".

Well, I am calling it now. TFA will break all box office records.

 

It already broke a hundred million in pre sales


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Time for final predictions, ladies and gentlemen. One month ago I said $1.82 billion as my lowest and $2.4 billion as my highest estimate. I'm still standing by those numbers - and I'm sure the movie will gross somewhere inside those numbers - but I'm gonna have a final prediction of:
$792 million Domestic + $1188 million Foreign = $1.98 billion Worldwide

Whatever the case, James Cameron must be *****ing his pants right now.