Mango

It is a little pointless to rush out movies like that when they already hit streaming services within three months anyway. It seems like an odd business tactic at first. And anyone who says it isn’t a factor in box office is being a bit nearsighted, it does have an impact on legs overall. Maybe a marginal one, but you can’t just assume it doesn’t factor into the picture, even if in a minor way. Everything is a factor at some level. I get the idea that POVD might be, in a way, studios “answer” to dollar theaters these days. More or less a thing of the past (maybe there are still a few around, most started dwindling out in the early 2010s after the mass switch to digital) Movies used to could make a significant chunk of change in that secondary release, many a films were pushed over the arbitrary “$50m, 100m, 150m, etc” marks through those. $20 on demand isn’t necessarily the same steal as a $1-2 ticket but for a family or group of teens looking for a cheapish movie night, it’s a solid get.

I have a good feeling about this film, Gunn does seem to really “get” what makes Superman an endearing character when most of DC forgot that long ago. I think the movie’s release date could use some breathing room, though. Marvel scheduling Fantastic Four for two weeks after will most likely cut into its IMAX run. I was going to say a bump up a week or so for a July 2nd midweek release would be good, but it seems like Jurassic World 4 is gonna make that date after all. Maybe early June?

Possibly. Marvel doesn’t seem to have a ton of faith in the film if they are pushing it back to 2025 despite being mostly finished. I imagine the rest of the lineup through Kang Dynasty/ Secret Wars will probably be more or less hit or miss, Marvel is gonna have to get used to no longer being a guaranteed hit machine. Whether they can learn from that and start up Phase 6 or 7 or whatever with the X-Men and Fantastic Four properly is going to be the real test.

All this doom and gloom is going to look real funny when Deadpool 3 does $400m next summer and everyone proclaims “Marvel is back!” Most of us saw a bomb coming miles away. It’s been building over the mixed reception of phase 4 (5 now?) and it is just kind of culminating here. It’s a bit jarring and ironic that the first Captain Marvel was the culmination of peak MCU interest/hype/goodwill, and it just so happens the sequel is the culmination of all of that going away. I’d say it’s time for Marvel to take a step back and reevaluate their formula, but it seems they might be doing that, with the major shake up to the Disney Plus series and the schedule reshuffling. Time will tell I guess.

this is the peak, though

Barbenheimer combined domestic gross is $936.3m as of Monday and today the duo will pass TFA’s $936.7m in domestic earnings. It’s two movies vs one but it’s still fun to point out considering the pop culture phenomenon has the two so closely tied.

Yeah. Zero chance this doesn’t take advantage of some slow weekends for an IMAX second run. With Dune moving they could probably do a week or two at Christmas then another for awards season in February

These are some pretty shite Labor Day numbers for pretty much all the holdovers honestly. I figured maybe studios were being conservative with Sunday estimates but no if anything they are kind of bullish. Even Barbenheimer didn’t hold all that well considering Labor Day is usually a small decrease or increase for holdovers.

Oppenheimer is crushing Equalizer 3 in presales at Mall of Georgia IMAX. They are sharing the screen and while Opp has better showtimes for sure (1:50/6pm) E3 presales are single digits while Opp is 50-75% full depending on the time. Looks like it’s last day is Monday unfortunately, then E3 gets a full schedule through Thursday when something called Jawan opens? It’s presales aren’t exactly high either. I just don’t understand why any 70mm IMAX would drop it. Seems like it’s gonna do way better than any upcoming release there for a while.

Should be around $310m after Labor Day Monday off a weekend of around $6m-ish. I think Deadpool 2 at $324.5m can go down. “It” sits at $328.8m, and Joker at $335m. I’m hoping it has enough in the tank to top the latter, but even if it doesn’t within the next couple months, I am wondering what the odds of a 70mm expansion around January or February for awards season could do. Seems like a real missed opportunity if they don’t.

Need at least $754,990 from Oppenheimer

Studios have been rolling “sneaks” in with opening day/weekend grosses for years. Back when BOM was a well run site, you’d see on occasion in the weekend reports “X movie played to advance shows this past Saturday”, sometimes I think the grosses for those would go to totally different movies (owned by the same studio of course) but I’d need to do some digging to confirm that. That said 9 days of previews is really dumb to count in with a Friday number, but so are 2-3pm Thursday grosses. I didn’t really care as much when it was 9-10pm shows, but every year it just got earlier and earlier. You’d figure with every studio wanting to make as many films “events” these days, one way to do so would be a midnight launch again. It’s old enough to feel almost “retro” now, tons of Gen-Z’ers probably never experienced one. If Marvel ends up desperate for hype at some point in the future, maybe something they should consider.

Yeah I’m really sick of the Thursday numbers being counted in with Friday at this point. Especially when a lot of these movies now are having shows at 2 and 3pm.

Oppenheimer is going to pass Inception sometime this weekend, likely Friday.

I wonder how much Blue Beetle made in Imax this weekend vs Oppenheimer last weekend. I’m sure Imax as a company is very happy with this contractual obligation.

No Way Home isn’t a masterpiece in storytelling but it is an absolute home run on doing fan service. It’s clunky as shit, and the plot only operates on a “fuck it, this is what we’re doing” level. There is some genuinely great stuff in there though, with character development on Holland’s part and stuff like Tobey interacting with a cured Doc Ock and Garfield getting his redemption. And of course Dafoe absolutely crushing every frame he’s in. Its the definition of a “turn your brain off” movie like the Fast/Furious and Transformers movies try so hard to be.

Shang Chi really lost me in the third act when it abandoned fun martial arts fantasy and became full on Marvel cgi battles. Other than that I quite enjoyed it.

I actually didn’t know he turned down Inception. He also turned down The Matrix to do Wild Wild West but at least that’s understandable since the Wachowski’s were essentially nobodies at the time and he was working with the same team that made MIB a hit. Still, the “would-be” of all these roles lol

-20% for Oppenheimer really isn’t all that bad considering Blue Beetle took a ton of IMAX screens most of the day.

I think James Gunn is a good director for Superman based on his comments about the character and their direction of the film, but I’ll be totally honest I’d be much more excited if it were standalone instead of another would-be cinematic universe starter. I say that as someone who’s more of a fan of DC characters than Marvel, I just don’t see the point after Infinity War/Endgame. Like, sure, it’d be cool, but chances are the outcome is just gonna be a DC rebranding of Endgame in 10 years if all is successful.

Jesus tap dancing Christ why

Blue Beetle won’t follow Flash exactly but in a morbid sorta way I want it to because an $18m opening would be a hilarious nail in the DCEU coffin. Realistically $25-28m

I can’t fault the math/method, seems as good as any. Might as well go with the sweet spot in the middle with 21m lol

Sing did have 3D, which probably boosted it a few million. Oppenheimer is definitely getting a big Imax boost, but I’m not sure if it’s THAT high. Though with these record numbers, it could be I suppose. I know Deadline reported that average $13 ticket price, but as with anything from that site I remain pretty skeptical. If Charlie or someone said it, I’d be more inclined to believe.

Ah, I just posted this in the weekdays thread lol. Extremely impressive. Between Oppenheimer’s wild success, the new Imax film cameras coming out, and the CEO expressing interest in pushing 70mm more, hopefully this can bring a bit of a renaissance of the format out. It’s too costly and difficult to ever be as mainstream as digital Imax, but there’s definitely potential to have more.