BadAtGender

I don't get the hate for this.

I kinda doubt it's going to drop WW from the first. This is why. Any shortfall it might have elsewhere is going to be made up in the in increase in China (where it did have strong legs) and dom.

Maybe? Which is why I put Avatar there, too. Which book?

I don't think summer weekdays are a strict necessity, considering it has the whole holiday season to play.

The record OW for an original film is SLoP's 104m, followed by Inside Out's 90m. For live action, it's either The Passion of the Christ (83m) or Avatar (77m), followed by The Day After Tomorrow (68m). Us is in really good territory.

1. See earlier post about THG, but basically it's probably not realistic to expect the late legs that film got here. They were absurdly good. 2. While the double feature bump is real, it's not particularly huge in real dollar terms. At best, it can get a few million more. Put it this way: if CM has a 1m weekend prior to Endgame and then gets a 100% boost, it'll earn 2m the Endgame weekend. And then probably fall well over 50% the following weekend. 3. The realm of a realistic push is much smaller than people tend to realize. At best, a company can push for an extra couple million, but not much more. If CM is looking to end with around 395m, that's probably too much for Disney to make the effort to get it to 400m. The cost of such an effort isn't worth the marginal value of the number in most cases. Finally, pointing out that something is unlikely doesn't mean that it's "off the table" it just means... that it's unlikely.

I'm not doing this based on a single weekend. I'm looking at comparable movies, all of which were either ahead of CM at the comparable time, were holding up better, or both. And then I'm looking at what sort of weekly trends it would need to get to certain levels. I mean... this is a movie box office website. Analysis of the numbers is What We Do. You can't just say "well, we don't know" because sometime we're (collectively) wrong. That would obviate the entire point of these forums. This isn't a judgement of CM's performance, which is all around fantastic. It's just a look at the question "will it get to 400m" and it looks like... "maybe, but probably not", is the answer. The early projection for the weekend just means that getting there is more difficult.

tl;dr version: 400m is possible, but increasingly unlikely, barring some very, very good later legs.

That's under the 3rd weekends of both IM3 and CACW, which set them at 337 and 347 respectively. They both had holidays in their fourth weekends, too, and were at 372 and 377m after day 25 (Memorial day). (CACW had notably worse legs.) 32.5m would put CM at 319m, which is pretty far behind either of those, and might put 400m in doubt. OTOH, it would still be sitting midway between THG and Catching Fire (heavily differing calendar than CF, which dropped heavily in third (post-thanksgiving) and fourth (early december doldrums) weekends, before hitting the holiday stride) but it's behind THG in weekend pulls, and it's probably not going to have the amazing holding power that THG had. From weekends 4-22, the only weekend it had a drop bigger than 40% was when Avengers opened, and even that was below 50%. Looking at my simple, stupid box office projector (which takes weekly grosses and applies a flat drop percentage), it looks like CM will need to hold to about 44% drops from here on out to get to 400m. 42% drops to beat the IM3/CACW/THG trifecta, and 41% to get past WW. 39% drops would be needed to catch Fire. 46% drops would be enough to pass GOTG2. I'll update the projector next week to see how things shape out then. I'd guess that it will need even better holds across the board, though.

It probably means that there's no requirement to keep it in continuity with the first film, which is pretty much what all the DC films are getting. Aquaman had the barest nod to JL, and I expect future films to do the same. Basically, Gunn gets whatever toys he wants to play with, however he wants to play with them.

To put it another way, the business TFA did DOM was outsized relative to its OS gross. It did very well (although I think it was weighted more heavily by Europe and Australia), but the OS/DOM ratio was quite low. And there's an open question about how much cultural impact can be attributed to it and how much can be attributed to Star Wars being baked into popular culture for four decades. TFA leaned heavily into nostalgia for the OT. This is... not a great comparison. The late year releases (Avatar, Frozen, TFA, TLJ) all made significant business in the following year. Avatar was pretty easily the biggest movie WW (and DOM) in 2010, for instance. And I think we were tracking TFA's WW gross compared to JW, and it ended up just short before the new year. IAC, I'd rank the top 5 as 1. Avengers 2. Frozen 3. Furious 7 4. Jurassic World 5. Harry Potter 8

Marketing isn't a single movie enterprise. It's building on what came before. CM has had a decade and ~20 films of pretty positive reception. WW had four years and three films, which were not generally positively received. It's not an apples to apples comparison. The first five MCU films also had pretty anemic OS grosses. It wasn't until film 6 that they got rolling OS. Oh, look. Aquaman was the 6th dceu film. What a coincidence* *yes, it definitely is a coincidence.

What about movies that became a phenomenon that was outsized compared to their hype and pre-release buzz? Because as huge as IW is and Endgame will be, they've also had the benefit of 10 years of marketing to boost them. They're huge, but they're known huges. HP8 had the same thing. It was a series with exceptionally strong overseas grosses, and while it did step it up to another level, it was built on what came before. TFA was strong WW, but it wasn't huge like it did DOM, so I think that cuts it out. I think there are three or four contenders. 1. The Avengers. It had a few films to build it up, but the international gross for the MCU was not exceptionally strong. Iron Man 2 had the biggest OS gross and that was only 311m. (Thor came in second.) If the MCU was anything like a normal franchise, we'd probably have expected, what 400m DOM and 500m OS? But instead, it was an absolute monster worldwide, basically taking everyone by surprise. It's arguably the film that actually made superheroes a thing that could be sold overseas. 2. Jurassic World. No, don't laugh. While JP1 was a monster in its day (probably the #2 WW phenomenon of the 90s), the sequels were... not, and 20 years down the line there was no reason to think that we'd be in for anything other than a pretty good result. But instead, we had a huge surprise. After AOU failed to get the OW record, and only bested Avengers OS because of huge growth in China), few people expected JW to even think of being in the same realm. It ended up shy of Furious 7 OS, but because of the difference in (again) China. It was a surprise that well outsized expectations. 3. Furious 7. While the series was on a rise, starting with the reunion 4th film, it more than doubled the OS gross of FF6. A good portion of that was because of the explosion of China business, but not all. And unlike all previous films from Hollywood that benefited from huge Chinese business, this was one that didn't do anything to specifically appeal to Chinese audiences. (Unlike, say, TF4.) And it did even better. 4. Frozen. While this is marginally smaller than the others, it, again, did WW business that well exceeded its expectations in pretty much every territory. And the cultural effect of it is hard to dismiss. None of the other films have a billion view YouTube video. And it's also a merchandising juggernaut that few films can claim. Frozen is so big, that Disney didn't even put Anna and Elsa into their Princess line. It's too valuable, so it's separate. It did business in soundtracks and video like it was released a decade or two earlier, and did business in Japan like it was a Miyazaki film. And it was also a film that pushed WDAS to the forefront of the industry again, rather than the weaker, older cousin of Pixar (and probably behind Illumination, too, considering how big the Despicable Me films were in the early parts of the decade.) And we're probably not going to see Frozen 2 be the #1 movie of the year either DOM, OS, or WW... but, it's not out of the question. Six years on, and we're still seeing how powerful it is. So, of the ones you listed, Avengers. But I could see the other three having really strong arguments as well.

I think it'll be close. The two MCU films closest to WW were IM3 and CACW. Both had bigger openings and second weekends than CM (though the gap narrowed). IM3 fell 58% and 51% 2nd and 3rd weekend. CACW fell 60% and 55%. While CM is likely to have stronger holds for weekend 3 than either of those, it's probably going to be close in terms of actual dollars, and it's 20-30m behind them. They also had a holiday in weekend 4, which CM won't have. Non-summer weekdays are pretty similar, though. After 25 days, (through Memorial Day) they were sitting at 377.5 (CACW) and 372.8 (IM3). CACW earned another 30.5m, IM3 another 36m. The better holds with CM will help late legs, but it'll need to close that gap as well, especially because it'll need another 4m or so to match WW. If it gets to upper 360s, it's probably got a shot, because Endgame gives it a boost. 410-415m? Sure. (If it gets within spitting distance, (1-2m) will Disney care enough to push it over? is probably the key question.)

Nice to see some Northwest representation.

IM1 made more dom than IM2.

Oh, we're ranking? Thor Black Panther Thor: Ragnarok Captain Marvel Spider-Man: Homecoming Captain America: The First Avenger Iron Man 3 Iron Man Thor: The Dark World Everything after that is mostly the same. Enjoyable, but nothing stands out. Basically, the early, establishment films were good, and they've had a recent strong streak of introduction films. There's a few other standouts, too.

I started thinking about the plot of IW and then remembered how bad it was.

That was my thought as well.

If it gets 160, it'll need about a 2.6 multi to beat WW. If it's closer to 150, then that means about 2.75. Neither is impossible, but I think the only MCU films to do that with an opening above 100 are BP and Avengers... And homecoming? Ragnarok and IM2 were closer to 2.5. Since the response seems to be positive, but not "this is revolutionary" like BP, I kinda doubt it's going to have the same repeat business. With all that said, the gender discrepancy with WW might be that more guys are going to see it than anything else. 38% of 150m is about 57m of business from women. WW had 53-54m from women? Pretty close and possibly about equal accounting for inflation. But for dudes, that would be a 93m to 50m difference. (my math might be off here, apologies if I forgot some of the correct numbers)

Movie was a lot of fun. Upper tier MCU IMO. Seeing more CM makes me excited for Endgame, even if little else does.

Actually, upon rechecking it, It looks like I was wrong. I had it as Revenge of the Sith, which after its OW (4 days, so asterisk away) was ahead of Robots. But I missed Hitch, which wasn't being tracked at that point. So, as best I can tell, Alice in Wonderland is the current victor. Captain Marvel will happily take that crown.

Holdovers don't count.

The Hunger Games was at 380m at that point, though. Alice in Wonderland is one of the correct answers for films that did it later than February. There is, however, one other film that I'm looking for.

BP definitely did it, but it's not the answer.