Gopher

If I had to predict - 18.45m (4%) 14m (-24%) 15.7m (12%) 23.4m Fri (49%) (-67% from last Fri) 14.7m Sat (-37%) (-68% from last Sat) 30.6m Sun (108%) 32.4m Mon (6%) 68.7m (-55.7%) (290m 10-day) 101.1m 4-day 322m 11-day

BATB is going to make a play for 450 mil, I think.

Highlights of weekend are how tremendously Manchester did and how poorly Rules Don't Apply did. The former came close to eclipsing the latter in literally 2% of its theater count

Recommendation for anybody participating in this conversation: if you haven't seen the De Palma doc, check it out! this guy was a friend of and huge influence on Scorsese and Lucas, and has had the weirdest, coolest, most up-and-down career of any of the 70s/80s auteurs.

Moana's mirroring Tangled adjusted numbers now, which if it followed from here would put its final tally around 220m. Only disappointing because its closest relatives at Disney, Zootopia and Frozen, were such overperforming monsters. Hopefully word of mouth does it similar favors, but I'm weary of it competing against Illumination's own musical over the holidays. I'm wondering if families are discovering Fantastic Beasts now after avoiding it last weekend? It's going to have a remarkable hold compared to other Potters.

Crazy bonkers wild year where I want to put BOTH of Disney's animated efforts in my top ten. I loved Moana about as much as I loved Zootopia.

Hi everybody! MOANA: Let's break down what can happen over the week - Thurs- 9.8m (-25% w/o previews, which would be a bit bigger than Good Dinosaur's or Frozen's drop) Fri- 24m (145%) Sat- 22.7m (-5.5%) Sun- 13.6m (-40%) Wknd - 60.3m/85.8m. I could be overestimating how frontloaded this could play but I'm inclined to air on the side of a heavier Thanksgiving drop. Curious where legs will take it from here, I could see anything between 230m and 330m total. FANTASTIC BEASTS - using Potter/Twilight comps this will hit 37-42m for the 3-day frame, which isn't a bad drop but not much to fall from in the first place. Should be on track for a 200m finish, probably not much higher than that though. ARRIVAL - Should stay flat from last weekend which is pretty sweet. Oscar now makes the difference between 90m and 100m+. ALLIED - Yawn. BAD SANTA - Nobody wanted this TROLLS - 150-180m feels like best case scenario for the DWA brand the past few years. They probably won't break this until SHREK 5. RULES DON'T APPLY - Nobody was interested in the story of a lovable eccentric billionaire? I wonder why EDGE OF SEVENTEEN - Will any of you go out and see this movie? It's phenomenal, and already the year's most underrated.

I don't think it's controversial to say it's been a rough summer at the movies. Disappointment after bomb after negligible film. Yet I'm inclined to pick through the wreckage and make cases for what films I was happy to see an audience respond to (positively or negatively) a specific way, and seemed to signal good tidings for the future. I thought given how diverse the tastes of these boards tend to be, many members can chime in with many reasons. Also, in the face of constant internet civil war, who doesn't like a warm and positive discussion? For starters, I just saw that The Lobster is closing its run just under 9 million dollars. For a baffling, bizarre, not-made-for-US-audiences-whatsoever film that was slated to be dumped by a failing distributor, A24 picked up the slack and gave it a proper platform run. Yet it still felt like a film audiences discovered early on, recommended, and kept around for a while. Weird even when critically acclaimed won't always hit (see: Swiss Army Man's middling box office) so I love success stories like this one. On the studio side, Lights Out - a truly solid horror film borne from a singular filmmaker's style that refused to pull its punches - opened against several tentpoles that couldn't muster any staying power and went on to a 3x multiplier after a very good opening. Horror may be the cornerstone of the original live-action studio movie these days, but I don't think it'll ever go away. And of course I was thrilled when Sausage Party did better than Team America: World Police in just one weekend.

Love this idea. This list can be subjective on interpretation alone. I would feel compelled to rank a disappointing sequel to a great movie over a terrible sequel to a whatever film (like I'm sure Godfather 3 is 'better' than a lot of stuff that won't make this list but it sure won't feel better). There's a lot to unpack with what a sequel means to someone.

Awesome for Don't Breathe. Been a while since a horror flick will be #1 for two weekends but it sounds like this one deserves it (Light Between Oceans breakout would be like 10 mil with that screen count). Just saw that Sully opens in two weeks? Feel like I've heard little about it. I wonder if its opening will go any higher than mid-20s like a lot of post-Labor Day fare (Contagion, The Visit, Resident Evil, Tyler Perry, etc).

2.25x vs 3.5x because one 'only' opened to 100m instead of 135? You know that's crazy, baum.

I mean it clearly wasn't! The marketplace chewed it up and spit it out pretty quickly. I'm not playing bias here but look at Guardians two years ago and look at this one. Night and day in staying power.

If 2.2x is now decent legs and three weekends of 50%+ drops indicates a well liked movie, I guess BvS lowered the bar a lot.

Loved it. LOVED it. Sincere, poetic filmmaking on a studio level unlike we ever see these days. One of the best of the summer and the year.

Hill is super charismatic in this - the character felt like the manifestation of him doing Jordan Belfort impressions to Leo on the set of WOWS. Otherwise, meh. Not nearly as outrageous or as socially biting as it thinks it is. But much more watchable than most of Todd Phillips' work.

It's as gorgeous a use of animation I've ever seen. Meta (stop motion story about a boy creating a stop motion story), thematic (the people we have lost will come back to life through what we choose to construct and believe in) and just drop-dead gorgeous. I cried in the opening few scenes and in the last few. I was moved with the wonder and scope of each frame. Now, the storytelling.. Laika has this tendency to overstuff their narratives, making them very objective-heavy and video game-esque. Coraline does it, Paranorman does it, and Kubo is as big an offender as any. I think the story is perfectly in line with the themes of the film, but it's lacking the simplicity of the film's animation and emotion. The different pieces and metaphors and objectives needed streamlining. Also, gotta be honest, was curious that very few Asian artists actually seemed to work on this film. I noticed a George Takai voice cameo, an Asian 'consultant' on the film's story, and.. that's it. There's nothing wrong with homaging a culture, it's another to Americanize the representation of that culture, whether it's through voice casting or the construction of these puppets themselves.

Ghostbusters was undone by the fact that no $144m live action comedy with that much riding it was gonna return its investment. Especially one attempting to relaunch a franchise that hasn't been in the public consciousness for 30 years. There's not a precedent. Sony became too obsessed with trying to get in all the iconography and references to the original's world that they didn't feel comfortable just letting their leads be funny - this was on the wall for years, when they attempted to launch that Ghostbusters-only company for an extended universe and realized before this movie came out how dumb that sounded. It alienated the audience that usually goes to Feig's work and the audience who'd be interested in a Ghostbusters reboot. I think its legs indicate neither audience is particularly happy with it (Ghostbros can see any other summer tentpole, R-rated comedy fans can see Bad Moms or Sausage Party, there's a lot of options). This error happened with Sony no less six years ago when Green Hornet didn't play as a superhero movie and didn't play as a Rogen/Goldberg comedy (Rogen has said since GH that it's his mission to be the smallest problem for the studio of any of their films by having the smallest budget). Trek did fine for what it was (I assume its international run isn't over yet?). There was no hook for general audiences like there was for the first two. It seemed like a fans-only experience and Trek's fanbase isn't mainstream. Paramount just spends too much money on these movies. Into Darkness probably didn't break even in theaters (2.46x its budget WW) and they decided to spend more on a sequel that offered less.

It's... pretty good! Not really sure what the fuss is. Everyone gets the job done, and MacKenzie directs the hell out of the last third of this movie, but the subtext is so obvious, told to us through supporting characters and literal writing on buildings instead of through any real nuance. Bridges is fun too but like the rest of the film it's fun because it's familiar. Last scene however, between Pine and Bridges, was so damn good I wish the movie's first act was its third.

If Suicide Squad keeps up the 50-something drops I'd expect Don't Breathe to be ahead of it for Labor Day. Nothing to write home about this weekend. Kubo did fine, not very well. War Dogs' IM is weirdly frontloaded and the weekend probably won't top 14m. Sausage Party's drop is fine and at least secures 100m. Pete's Dragon should've held better. Ben Hur didn't even bomb as much as it could've.

Kubo will make 50 mil just as all the Laikas do. And we'll get another Laika in two years. Very excited to see this one!

If SAUSAGE PARTY follows SUPERBAD 3.02m Thurs (-10%) 4.97m Fri (63%) 5.86m (18%) 4.98m (-15%) 15.81 (-53.9%) But it hasn't been following Superbad's daily patterns at all so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This may be the nostalgia talking but TDK's run was SO much fun. Reading the boards when it dropped like 40% its first Monday was insane. Avengers was almost as fun - the Friday number going up from 60 to high 60s to mid 70s to low 80s - and TFA opening week was undoubtedly crazy, but TDK was the first time a summer blockbuster in our era was pulling those kinds of numbers.

This month is a parallel to that Jurassic World / Inside Out month in that I'm only here now for the Sausage Party numbers

Am I still the only person here who's seen Nine Lives? I've thought about that movie at least 10x more than I've thought about Suicide Squad. Y'all should go