Shawn Robbins

October looks so good on paper. Between how its major titles are tracking and the WGA news, I think we can be positive about the box office again after a ho-hum September. Ebbs and flows, as always. Would be great if SAG comes to terms soon so that Q4 releases can have stars out there promoting.

Welp, never mind. Yikes.

I was baking in $775K earlier this week, so as long as the (relatively) stronger Friday sales weren't misleading, it should still at least get over $10 million. Thursday Night Football didn't do this particular movie any favors.

$750K Expend4bles

Was working through some long range files today and realized the imminent QUIET FU PANDA weekend currently slated for next March. Let's not even get into GARFURIOSA on Memorial Day weekend. 🤯 Edit: Better yet... GARFRIENDIOSA.

Well, to counter-quibble, the range increased... but did the pinpoint increase?

Venice had $100k from non-Thursday shows, not sure if reported anywhere yet. Was included in the $1.2m figure.

Venice had $100k from non-Thursday shows, not sure if reported anywhere yet. Was included in the $1.2m figure.

96-145 for now At the risk of jinxing things, I feel reasonably confident it's going above TLM's 3-day but am keeping it just above so as not to say 100 is "LoCkEd" and have it be a target for disappointment spin if it does, indeed, end up just below. That said, with the ATP, Twilight and maybe even Hunger Games/Captain Marvel/Barbie-level numbers don't seem far off. The pinpoint is definitely closer to those than TLM for the moment. It's such a wild one to project, though. I think we should just all go along for the ride.

Yeah, long story short, I had a major server crash this week and ran out of time to include Jawan. The next few weeks are going to be dreadful trying to rebuild some of my impacted tools and datasets from backups and archives.

Nun 3.1

Nun 3.1

I meant it as a compliment!

Me, a fellow Nashvillian.

I'm a Katy Kat, always and forever. Who is this Taylor Swift you speak of?

Preliminary data pulls: TayTay's first Saturday presales are around 55% of first Friday at the moment from two of the top three chains. Will be curious to see how much the gap bobs and weaves as more showtimes + exhibitors come on board, among other factors.

It's staggered from the looks of it. I see multiple chains on sale in the same areas, but the same regions don't have *all* of their theaters live yet. Looks like sales notifications started going out around 3am Eastern Tuesday morning.

$1.4M Gran Turismo Thursday Sneaks will be rolled into Friday, is what I'm told.

$1.4M Gran Turismo Thursday Sneaks will be rolled into Friday, is what I'm told.

3.3 Blue Beetle 1.1 Strays (includes 275k from sneaks)

3.3 Blue Beetle 1.1 Strays (includes 275k from sneaks)

I'll try and find out again, but otherwise whatever @across the Jat verse or anyone else can reverse engineer from the numbers he sees might be the only approximation we get.

I'm pumping out as many PLF viewings while I can since I know I'll have plenty of time to see it in a standard format if I need to this fall. I imagine Oppy will have a very long exclusive run in theaters leading up to award season (when I expect it to be the favorite). That will also hopefully mean gaining back some IMAX and PLF showtimes here and there.

Just a bit of my own expectation and armchair observation, partly in that Barbie's core audience is more narrowly centered around women. Even those who were doing the double feature probably still prioritized seeing Barbie first. While Barbie clearly had a capacity issue in some places, I think we also have to acknowledge Oppenheimer did just as much if not more so. A great number of people did see both films, but perhaps not on the same day or even the same weekend. And we definitely know how strong demand is for Oppy when looking at how quickly PLF formats have sold out during the first two weeks. Those audience samples are often taken very early on in the weekend, too. Studios tend to report them by Friday evening or Saturday morning in some cases, so they're often estimates that can fluctuate anyway. From a statistic standpoint, I think Oppenheimer is mostly playing catch up to the kind of demographic split it would have normally had from the outset. Ditto for Barbie, which I feel drew more men on opening weekend than it would have under normal circumstances. Its 65% female majority was lower than something like Pitch Perfect 2, which was 75% opening weekend. On the other front, Dunkirk registered a 60%/40% male/female ratio on opening weekend, and it didn't have the kind of cast or dramatic narrative that would be as appealing to women as Oppenheimer is. I think that's especially true with the positive reception of Emily Blunt's Kitty and how their relationship is central to the story. Nolan hasn't had that kind of romantic narrative so prominent in a film since Inception, and while marketing didn't necessarily lean on it, word of mouth is definitely taking care of that to some extent. I can't find the demo splits for Inception at the moment, but Interstellar also feels like a good comparable with its cast and father/daughter narrative. That had a near even sample at 52%/48% male/female during its opening. I'm not sure Oppy will quite stretch out to that split (maybe over time if it can get extended engagements in PLF), but it's at least trending that way while having to face the Barbie behemoth at the same time. TL;DR -- My takeaway is that Barbie is shedding some of its early male audience share that wouldn't have ordinarily turned out, while Oppy is gaining some of its female audience share that would have turned out earlier on had Barbie not been in the equation.

Makes a lot of sense, IMHO.