Sophie

Well, Dune moved to 2024, so that's not good news for this year. Looks like it comes down to Taylor Swift, The Marvels, and I guess Aquaman. All the others feel like long shots.

Even billboard admits Drake is the biggest artist of the 2010s, as well as the biggest hitmaker of the 21st century. But the media is just not going to sing the triumphs of a rapper as loudly as they will for a girl-next-door soccer mom friendly pop star. Anyway, the culture for that success to translate to box office concert film is not there. It's a specific audience that would actually go out to the theaters like this. The only rapper whose fanbase I could imagine buying movie tickets would be Nicki Minaj, or maybe Kanye now that I think of it. But even then they'd probably be lucky to do One Direction numbers. There will definitely be attempts at following in Taylor's footsteps. The person I imagine being most capable is Beyonce, but obviously not on this level.

Taylor has some crazy momentum right now though. Old Taylor songs like Blank Space and Cruel Summer coming back from the dead left and right. Wouldn't be surprised if 1989 TV had the biggest pop debut of all time on streaming (currently held by Midnights). Could even challenge Scorpion or CLB. And in terms of concerts, obviously she's unmatched.

Is Wallen, whether we like it or not. In terms of overall streams, sales, and radio play, about twice as big as Taylor this year. He also broke Drake's 2016 record for most chart presence in a single calender year. Which was in turn was a record held by the Beatles for 52 years.

Elton and Madonna are definitely worth putting in the conversation as well.

There are things that Taylor has accomplished that nobody else ever has. Such as turning rerecordings of 10 year old albums into top-tier events. This seems to be another genuinely one-of-a-kind historical achievement for Taylor. But there are also things other artists have accomplished that Taylor has yet to match. Such as Drake being the most streamed artist of all time, breaking the streaming debut record on 5 different occasions, breaking pretty much every record The Beatles had, maintaining multiple streaming debuts that Taylor has yet to match, and charting 300+ songs (so far) I've always compared Drake more to Elvis than The Beatles. Because while Elvis was there to dominate when the charts first came into existence, Drake was there to dominate when the charts went through their most fundamental change: the introduction of streaming. I really feel like the mid 2010s introduction of streaming will be looked back at as a fundamental long-term reset for the music industry in the same way that the 1950s is seen now. Only question is how long will Drake maintain his spot as the biggest artist of the streaming era. Taylor has been bridging the gap a bit since Midnights released. Meanwhile 2023 has seen Morgan Wallen take multiple of Drake's most important chart records (despite Wallen being notably US heavy). Plus keep in mind that with concert feats, it has a lot to do with her fanbase demographic being older, whiter, and having more disposable income than most of her contemporaries, such as Drake or Bad Bunny, who have a younger and less white listening demo. Plus, the music being made for older, wealthier, whiter audiences encourages mainstream media to shine more of a light on her accomplishments. But I think comparing people like Elvis, Beatles, MJ, Drake and Taylor, who are all ultimately unrivaled within their own particular accomplishments does them all a bit of an injustice. And just like with Avatar vs Gone With The Wind, you can't really expect people to rationally compare historical vs modern accomplishments. Optics will cloud people's judgements and they will get heated fast.

BTS and MJ both made over 70% overseas. And that's about $190M overseas for MJ. 1D also made almost 60% overseas. A lot of these concert films aren't even released in very many overseas territories though. Hence why some of them make 90% of their gross domestic. Taylor, I've been told, will likely gradually release it overseas to match with her actual tour. I'd say a 50/50 split could be a reasonable expectation, assuming she puts effort into overseas territories.

Is Taylor fucking Swift going to be the one to save 2023 box office?? Obviously should be very frontloaded, but I'm being told that she could get a $100 domestic opening. And from what I know, Taylor is also quite popular overseas.

You aren't wrong. 1.3B is nowhere near 700M

BOM hadn't updated or something when I wrote that about MI

I'm seeing people very confident at this point that Oppenheimer will pass the $700M mark. That would give Hollywood the whole top 6 of the highest grossing films this year. Can we squeeze two more $700M+ grossers out of 2023? Will anything else land in the 600-700M range? Mission Impossible may not even pass $500M. Most likely contenders at this point: * The Marvels * Dune * Aquaman * Hunger Games * Wish * The Meg * Migration * Wonka Most of these are unfortunately pretty outside chances.

I'm hearing thar the drops for MI are putting 600M in question. And we could potentially be losing Aquaman this year? But meanwhile Barbie crossing 700M should be a big possibility. And is there now a chance Oppenheimer could get there too? Let me know what you guys think.

Looks like it's gonna require some good legs for Mission Impossible to cross $700M. What do yall think?

Overseas looks really healthy for Mission Impossible.

Here's all the evidence showing what your saying is nonsense: The Little Mermaid had decent critic reviews and great audience reviews. Opened up to a fantastic $95M. Should make it to near $300M domestic. Only reason it's no longer in this thread discussion is because, for whatever reason, it has one of the weakest os shares of any of the live action remakes. Transformers had the same if not better reviews than most of the original franchise, from both critics and audiences (personally was really shocked by how much better it was, but yeah A- cinemascore, on par with average for franchise). It outperformed expectations a bunch with its $60M opening weekend. But the os share is nowhere near as strong as other transformers films, it's a reboot to a franchise whose last main installment crashed hard, and above all, this is post-covid times where things are all downsized. It would have needed DAMN good word of mouth, or at least a much stronger OS share, to be in contention for 700M. Elemental was never going to get close to $700M without some insane Top Gun level wom. And check that dom/os split of 67/33. Spider-Verse, our one film that is really overperforming, might not hit the 700M mark because the os share is worse than the predecessor. Mario, the biggest breakout of the year, is rotten. GOTG, the only of the last 5 MCU films to have positive word of mouth, paid for the sins of its predecesors by only opening to 118M, and won't be able to catch up to last year's Doctor Strange movie, despite that film having some of the worst legs of the whole franchise. Flash tracking was plummeting before any reviews came out. Not easy to say that it could have reached $700M with positive reception. The already piss poor reputation of the DCEU may have put a cap on this film even with goid reviews. Even if BOP's initial 327.5M dom estimate came true, it would still need over a 53% os share in order to pass $700M, which it's just barely holding right now. Fast X is rhe only one of this slate where you can actually point directly to the legs and say that that's the reason 700M isn't a guarantee. And yet, Fast X is the 3rd biggest film of the year. Meanwhile, last year's slate of 8 films that surpassed 700M included Jurassic World, Minions, Doctor Strange and Thor which were all relatively maligned by either critics or audiences. So yeah, pretty much none of the evidence points directly to quality being the main issue. The one issue that's coming up more and more for these films is relatively weakened os shares.