Shawn

Strange... is that still happening today? Sometimes the changes 24-48 hours to take effect across the board.

Sorry for the downtime of the forums the past couple of days, everyone. Even worse timing given the WW84 news. With Andy's help, it looks like we have the main issue resolved for now. Looking into long term solutions to prevent another prolonged outage.

I wasn't intending to attack your view, so please don't misunderstand me. I just think we're in a knee-jerk society that overlooks what has made movie theaters endure as much as they have since long before any of us were born. Streaming isn't bad, I agree. But it isn't a replacement for theaters. If theaters disappear, so do big-budget (and billion-dollar-earning) franchises like Marvel, DC, Star Wars, etc. Studios aren't going to let the industry die... because they need it just as much as theaters need them. Or I'm wrong and this truly is the beginning of the apocalypse and humanity's decline.

I know it's easy to succumb to the bad news of the world (and movies) right now, but I wholeheartedly don't see it that way. Disney has a packed schedule for 2021 and ran out of room to release Soul. Moreover, they need revenue right now, this film puts them high in the race for award season, and SVOD releases simply cannot duplicate the kind of financial benefits of a theatrical release with downstream lifespans. On the non-business end of it, I don't see theaters dying. If anything, I see them coming back stronger than ever when this shitstorm is over. Will they be owned the same companies, ran by the same CEOs, or operate the same exact way? Maybe (probably) not. But a cultural institution that has survived countless evolutions over the past century, unites people in a way that watching a movie from your couch with countless interruptions and no communal experience can't do, and remains one of the most important drivers of the entertainment business doesn't just disappear overnight. A movie quote for now: "The night is always darkest before the dawn... but I promise you, the dawn is coming." A movie quote for the forthcoming future of cinema's proper restart: "With all due respect, sir, I believe this is going to be our finest hour."

Thank you for everything you've done for this community, @AndyLL. Working with you over the years has been a lot of fun (and often educational). You helped us realize the goal of bringing back our version of the Derby after many years, a project I have fond memories of as we worked throughout 2015 to make it happen in time for the big release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The Derby simply wouldn't exist here without you and your very generous time and effort. Please do stay in touch, my friend, and best of luck in your next ventures!

Sorry, meant to specify that.

$5.9M Mulan weekend (6% of international market)

Much as I/we appreciate the vote of confidence, I would like to stress that coming in under that forecast was/is still considered a strong possibility when that report came out (as much is stated in the written report). There's no real way to define what success is this weekend other than simply being open for business. Projecting has always been an inexact science and is enormously more volatile right now for obvious reasons. Looking at some raw data today, I'm thinking we may have over-estimated potential walk-up business for this weekend... but we'll see when the numbers drop. The sampling is completely thrown off without a completely open market and the uncertainty about how many people actually know theaters are even open in the States (I've heard a major industry tracking source polled only one-third of people were aware entering the weekend). And of course, opening weekend won't tell the whole story on this movie. Let's all be patient and see how the daily/weekly holds go throughout the month.

Hey @charlie Jatinder, Unfortunately we haven't heard anything from the studio yet. Only unconfirmed sources thus far, though I'm sure it's generally accurate.

Likewise, sir. Just sorry it's under these circumstances. It's surreal not to see more people / discussion on this board during the middle of July on a weekend.

I'm presuming he's referring to the fact that so many states, especially in the south, felt the jump to total lockdowns in March was sudden and disproportionate to the spread of the virus (relative to the major outbreaks in NY and CA at the time). As a result, a lot of people in regions like where I live (TN) feel like it was pointless or over-reactionary... and now that they/we know what that was like, there's an even stronger resistance to doing it again regardless of the fact that the virus outbreak is spiking closer to home now. Also... hello, Tele and everyone.

No worries, I didn't take it as a critique necessarily -- just wanted to highlight a bit more insight on what goes into the numbers we put out. We did use to rely more heavily on social a few years back. It's still a big factor, no doubt, but a smaller portion of the recipe than it once was. I tend to do similar pre-sales watching with certain theaters I'm familiar with and major metro areas, but it's time consuming on one's own (as I know a lot of you know!) Definitely agree on long range tending to have a wider range of results. That's one reason we started including ranges alongside the pinpoint numbers last year. I've seen a few bits of the pre-sales catching you and others do in this thread and it's awesome work. Hope you all keep it up!

We actually include a variety of metrics, not just social (esp. close to release). Accuracy is generally only relevant in apples-to-apples comps and/or upon release week since a variety of elements are always in play. Bit unfair to compare any service tracking weeks/months out to data that's not available until much later in the pre-release window. Tracking is really just a barometer of where things are heading at any given point in time, not an official prediction. That's the biggest difference between traditional tracking and looking at pre-sales -- the latter is a set-in-stone sales point that removes more of the challenge of separating interest from actual intent to see on opening weekend, but it's also limited in its use because (by definition) it can only include movies that are on sale. Dolittle was a good example because it only tracked (in our models) ahead of BBFL before reviews started leaking. Two weeks out, we showed BBFL steadily climbing higher. Everything else is measured in surveys, historical comps, and trend-based elements that are open to fluctuation at any given time. To be fair though, we include pre-sales trajectories and that kind of tracking has proven fairly volatile too depending on what samples and what comps one looks at. There's always a certain subjectivity to all of this. That's why we focus on all available data and update as necessary, not just one subset of info at one point in time.

Also, full disclosure, I reopened the poll to vote because I didn't realize there was a poll to begin with... so if my vote was already accounted for somehow, SW being included should be at 15 instead of 16... 😶

Throwing in my two cents here: Superhero movies, to me, aren't a genre. They're just types of movies and can apply to many different genres (The Dark Knight is a high-level crime thriller, Guardians of the Galaxy is sci-fantasy-comedy, Logan dabbles in western tropes, etc.). No different than how "animation" is not a genre -- just a medium. Regarding the "science" element of "sci-fi" -- this is all make-believe, anyway. Fiction from our current perspectives. I think Star Wars qualifies here because, even though it's rooted more in fantasy and myth than science-driven storytelling like Star Trek or Gravity or Interstellar, it's not exactly something we can't prove won't ever be possible or isn't possible. To quote another interpretation of Clarke's three laws, "any technology, no matter how primitive, is magic to those who don't understand it." 100 years ago, smartphones were inconceivable to most. Even half a century ago, they seemed like an unrealistic version of "sci-fi" if you weren't a Star Trek watcher. Who's to say lightsabers and light-speed travel (also present in Star Trek, which is generally given the classification of science fiction) won't be used in the same context in the next few hundred (or less) years?