LonePirate

One local AMC 20plex has showtimes up for Friday. Beasts is one four screens while Widows is on only one. This theater is in an upscale, adult-friendly neighborhood. That scheduling manager should speak to corporate for more training or better info.

I’m not sure moviegoers we’re in interested in a political movie on Election Day but its PTA was not very impressive as it was a few hundred less than Boy Erased’s PTA which played at one more theater.

Especially for a film with a budget of $10M. Halloween surely has to be the most surprising film of the year that will gross or has grossed $150M+. Crazy Rich Asians offers some very stiff competition here but Halloween is more surprising, imo.

Drop? The film likely increased yesterday. I would be very surprised if Halloween experienced a drop in gross on Halloween.

I am wondering if Halloween can pass ASIB only to fall behind again and permanently as ASIB legs out a long run. Both films are having sensational runs and both will easily finish $100M-$125M (at a minimum) above the expectations for them at the start of this year.

People were hyped for the film based on the effusive praise for the following the brief footage at CinemaCon this spring and the music heavy trailer. Then the film turned out to be bad so all of those high hopes have been crushed. Without the early praise and a misleading trailer, people would not care enough to hate it.

That surely helped the gross, even if most attendees turned out to see Jonah Hill (I presume he was there) given that the cast is largely unknown with one exception. It will be interesting to see where the PTA lands in weekend #2.

That Mid90s gross is pretty amazing. It’s $40K above the much more hyped Beautiful Boy’s debut in the same number of theaters last weekend. It is also more than twice the gross of Oscar buzzy Can You Ever Forgive Me? which opened in one more theater. Sure, it is not nearly as flashy as the massive Halloween opening; but it is still very impressive.

I don’t know if it can reach $80M this weekend but it is certainly possible given the tracking, the early sales, the reviews and the excitement for the film. I gotta give @Dr Loomis baumercredit for making this call six months ago. That was a heck of a prediction for the film based on mostly second hand reactions from snippets shown at an exhibitor conference. The prediction should be close if it misses, and it might very well be on target. I know I will be contributing towards that $80M goal as I would love for it to take down Venom’s new record.

Just submitted my list. #1 was very easy and the Top 10 was not too difficult but the lower half of the list was surprisingly tough. There were so many movies I sort of liked but didn’t outright hate which made the ranking difficult. If anyone is having trouble completing their list, there are some great forgotten films posted above which people have recommended (Ronin, The Thin Red Line, Gods and Monsters, Wild Things, etc.)

We know the ending to First Man and the run-up to the moon landing was widely reported news during the 1969s. The same cannot be said for The Martian, Interstellar and Gravity which are all works of fiction.

This is a very interesting year. I wonder where in my Top 3 I will place Out of Sight. The X Files will be in my Top 10 as the movie was definitely in the now back in 1998 even if it is a little dated now. Living Out Loud, an otherwise terrible movie, will make my list around #25 simply due to one glorious scene.

Except there are too many films for it to co-exist with if it wants to break out. It is sandwiched between Widows and Beale Street with all three films going after the same type of adult audiences, with Green easily being the least high profile of the three. Then there are the two Boy films going after art house and adult audiences in November as well. It will lose buzz to all of those films and then the rest of the adult and awards films form a gauntlet against it in December. It is going to need considerable love from critics groups and the Golden Globes if it wants to survive. Its best move would be to hit 2-4 theaters during Christmas week and expand slowly in January in hopes that adult and awards savvy moviegoers will be seeking something fresh.

Green Book will get lost in the crowd. The noise surrounding Widows (and Creed 2, if it is as good as the first one) will drown out Green Room. It might perform respectedly if it sticks to a limited release and the art house circuit, provided Beale Street does not kill it a week later. If it goes wide, it will flounder during the Thanksgiving weekend due to the sheer number of higher profile films.

Girl, Green Book and Marwen are going nowhere except to mostly empty theaters. Widows and Creed will split older and younger, respectively, so they will not cannibalize each other too much. There’s enough breathing room for the remaining films once you eliminate the three DOA films.