Cmasterclay

Movie is gonna be a hit, still see a ton of memes about the log one.

Agreed. I think we are looking at 82m Dune 2 v Wick 73m, the two 58m openers in Creed and Panda, Godzilla opening to about exactly the 44m of Scream, Ghostbusters doing exactly the 37m of Dungeons, and Arthur the King doing 15m less OW than Shazam but honestly probably finishing not too far behind in total. This month will certainly be bigger in total because of Dune and Panda trouncing the legs of Wick and Creed. I do think that Ghostbusters can probably have a slightly better hold than Dungeons too. So a very nice March for the big releases, probably 125m more total than last year's big five openers. I am not too pressed at all about underperformances from smaller releases this month, but if Civil War, Monkey Man, and Challenges ALL bomb, I will be getting back to negative and depressed for now.

Getting to 300m off an 82m OW in March without any summer or holiday weekdays never seemed that feasible for me for Dune - it would require not just great legs, but some of the best legs for a live action sequel EVER. It definitely has great legs though. Predicted 55/180 for KFP4 in my 2024 predictions due to nostalgia and empty market and trailer views. I wavered a bit in recent weeks but I'm counting it as a W.

Never a doubt! The lesson, as with Minions and other examples - if tracking is gonna surprise, it's gonna be with a kids movie. Though frankly Quorum always lined up with me!

Panda a breakout hit after all and Dune turns out to be a disappointing flop as well? Another W prediction for Cmasterclay cool guy sunglasses emoji /s

Nonzero chance of two movies hitting 50m this weekend?? That'd be a godsend. Still at 47 for Dune and 45 for Panda.

Ska-doosh.

I'm really curious about legs. Obviously, the IM and word of mouth portend a leggy run, but plenty of blockbusters in modern times have had great IMs due to spillover business owing to PLF capacity and length that don't necessarily translate to legendary multipliers. Then again, this certainly feels like it could be the start of something. I think if it does 84 off a great Sunday hold, 235m seems reasonable - accounting for losing PLF screens on the 22nd, but also better legs than expected due to WOM.

If 29 is accurate, it is at 61 million, and would need 19 million on Sunday. That would be a 34% drop. A typical big March movie drops between 25 and 30% on Sunday - Wick dropped 28, Creed dropped 29. So to miss 80 would require a significantly steeper drop than most March live action movies. Not only does this look like it won't have a steeper drop, but based on that strong Saturday, it actually looks to have a much better drop than a typical March Sunday due to spillover demand and WOM, so something like a 20.5% drop down to 23 would be realistic, which would get it to 84. That's where I predict IF 29 for today is accurate in the end.

It's a virtual certainty when you combine both the quality of the percentage drop with the higher baseline number. You're like Dune's Maggie. To be clear, this isn't a personal insult to you or Maggie - that's a fun bit and it's just in good fun.

That's definitely word of mouth kicking in, I'm seeing much more chatter about the movie today on my feeds than I was in the days leading up to release which is fairly rare for a blockbuster outside the mega leggy breakouts.

I'm a little higher on KFP4 and a little lower on Godzilla Kong, but absolutely looks like it. I think with better legs Dune should get over KFP and Ghostbusters should probably get over Dragons, but it'll be close. With a similar opening Panda will double up Shazam. GvK will finish 30m below Creed to offset, plus Arthur the King won't come near Scream. I actually do think Arthur the King outgrosses Shazam.

It really is outstanding that a movie with this level of themes, scope, and ambition exists on the blockbuster level. I very much liked it. I just think they were either too faithful or too concerned with the "Water of Life" stuff and how it led to the sudden heel turn. I think it would have been a more interesting dramatic choice if Paul was portrayed as either going crazy or actively faking the precog revelations instead of it....being real? I guess my problem with the story if I had to put a finger on it is that it a great parable of false prophets and religious mania, but all the superpowers and magic stuff turns out to be real? I guess that's why the turn didn't make sense to me - he genuinely seems to turn bad because of some magic shit he saw, not because of manipulation or craziness. Would have been better if they relied less on the magic and kind of deconstructed his thought process about using it as a strategy. Who am I to rewrite one of the best selling books of all time and that, but just my stupid message board two cents.

Dune 2 box office shows what every complicated and dark sci-fi and fantasy film needs to cross over to the mainstream - Christopher Walken playing himself.

Most amazing thing is that the movie that got destroyed by discourse around religious warfare and colonialism wasn't Dune but.....the seventh Scream movie?

Pretty awesome number. The reason I was so low on this when we were talking predictions initially is because the "COVID/streaming ruined the last one" narrative seemed like kind of a myth - NTTD and Venom 2 did much better that same month, and it did worse on streaming than many other WB movies that year. There's just no real evidence that it was some megahit in disguise held down by HBO Max. It would have done like 55/140 without day and date, and you gotta figure some of that 140m are casual audiences that would have been turned off by the pace and length. So for it to actually increase to 75+ and maybe 190+....that is really impressive and a product of great marketing and great job hyping it as an event.

Lord of the Rings would not be as strong in today's environment either IMO - we know the changing demographics of audiences, and something that fundamentally white and older and nerdy would do more like low to mid 200s today. That said it's much more of a traditional rousing action movie than Dune with memeable pop culture stuff.

I mean the first one did less on streaming than Mortal Kombat did. We have actual metrics for these things, as unreliable as they sometimes can be. It opened to 40m and was meh on streaming. Opening to 70-75 is actually kind of insane. It was clear there was a hard ceiling. The only thing is the studios could see that ceiling too, so it's just that the studios should have found something bigger to release for the first five months of the damn year.

I'm gonna be honest - if Dune 2 does the same as John Wick 4 opening weekend, which looks likely, it would actually feel like quite a success to me when I think about how many people in real life I know that saw or talked about Wick compared to those who talked about Dune. Dune just has not penetrated my friend groups or networks whatsoever - and I'd like to think I keep a pretty diverse and representative sample that generally leads me well. Lots of online cinephile buzz but very little in Clay's actual social life. Glad the dollars are coming from somewhere!!

That seemed to be the setup, but itould have been great to have even a mild explanation of why he goes from reluctant and conflicted to totally bought in with no gradient.

Huh. Well I liked it alot better than the first, and it was flirting with masterpiece status for awhile - but did they leave a scene on the cutting room floor or something? Paul's heel turn goes from gradual to full blown so fast it barely makes sense. From "we must go to the South" to full blown baddie with one drink that we don't even see the results of? Needed a three minute scene explaining his mindset or something. Without it....I don't know how I felt, honestly.

Tom Hardy sounds like if Conor McGregor was trying to impersonate Woody Allen in this.

For what it's worth I think the overall market is pretty healthy (people are seeing films, nice platform releases and some mini breakouts), I've said for about four months I'm not as negative about the overall health of the box office as the lack of product able to take advantage of it. This is just not a killer slate this year. It happens. And it comes at a precarious time for the box office's long recovery. Dune is a prime example. I agree 70/190 is great for a Dune movie. But the entire January to April box office being built around a movie that grosses that much is not good. The studios shouldn't have left Dune as the number one heavy hitter for these months.

I still think Dune 2 does JW4 numbers pretty much exactly (73/185) and the top six openers of March 2024 outgross March 2023 fwiw. But there's a 500m hole in April, and somehow we are longing for the days of fucking Quantumania because of how weak Jan and Feb were.