BadAtGender

What does that mean?

There's a limit on the number of Hollywood films that can get shown in China, and Free Birds is one of them? What the hell?

It's also 25th all time in OS gross, now. It needs 105 million more to get into the top 10. Really hoping Japan is a hit.

Ooh, yeah. Wildcard is probably pretty culturally loaded. I'm going to ignore the denotations of the term, though. In general, we have a fairly good predictive sense of how well a film will do in most markets: the US, Japan, Australia, Europe. These are all mature markets and while we're not going to be exact, we probably aren't going to miss a prediction by an order of magnitude in most cases. (Shoot, even Frozen, which pretty much everyone missed, was is probably only going to double most expectations in any given market. So predictions were off, but are not vastly off.) China, though, is the wildcard. Predictions are a crapshoot. They could be very high or very low and there's little way to tell how they will work. The combination of limited exposure (34 movies a year), rapid theater expansion, and the uncertain nature of what the audience will go for mean that things may be vastly different from expectations. The Hobbit's a good example: the first one did... not well. The second one is doing significantly better. Or Pacific Rim, which pretty much did ho-hum numbers everywhere else and broke out huge in China. In a few years, probably no more than ten at the most, China will be a mature market. We'll have a good sense about how it will go, so if I speak to people who do not follow the box office I will feel much more confident about how a film will do there. (Russia is also a bit of a wildcard, but that seems to be coming more in line faster than China is. Probably because it's not such a limited market.) (As for travel, I would love to visit China sometime, but it's probably not going to happen soon without outside help. Overseas travel is hella expensive.)

Deadline's early numbers are up: 1). Non-Stop (UNI) 3.090 theaters / $9.3M to $9.5M Fri. / 3-day cume: $27M to $28M / Wk 1 2). Son of God (FOX) 3,255 theaters / $9M to $9.3M Fri. / 3-day cume: $23.5M to $25M / Wk 1 3). The Lego Movie (WB), 3,770 theaters (-120) / $4.3M Fri. / 3-day cume: $18.7M to $19.2M / Total cume: $207M / Wk 4 4). 3 Days to Kill (REL), 2,872 theaters (0) / $1.4M to $1.6M Fri. / 3-day cume: $5.1M / Total Cume: $20.9M / Wk 2 5). Monuments Men (SONY) 3,002 theaters (-62) /$1.4M Fri. / 3-day cume: $4.9M / Total cume: $65.6M / Wk 4 6). RoboCop (SONY/MGM) 2,885 theaters (-487) / $1.2M Fri. / 3-day cume: $4.4M / Total cume: $51.1M / Wk 3 7). Pompeii (SONY) 2,658 theaters (0) / $1.2M Fri. / 3-day cume: $4M/ Total cume: $17.5M / Wk 2 8). About Last Night (SONY), 1,804 theaters (-449) / $1M Fri. / 3-day cume: $3.2M / Total cume: $43.6M / Wk 3 9). Frozen (DIS), 1,746 theaters (-145) / $720K. Fri. / 3-day cume: $3M / Total cume: $388M / Wk 15 10). Ride Along (UNI), 1,865 theaters (-321) / $830K Fri. / 3-day cume: $2.8M / Total cume: $126.9M / Wk 7

Hollywood was definitely trolling us when they decided on the name for this technology. Kurt Wimmer was probably dancing, though.

Am I right that that's a really large jump for Lego? well more than 200%? And really huge drops for Pompeii and Robocop.

Mostly not drunk, now. But, damn, Gravity is such a great film. (Also, Ultra Violet is pretty amazing. I still don't have a Blu-Ray player yet,)

Earthfall!

PIty about Kiki's Delivery Service. i'd hoped for good things, there. The original remains one of my favorite films of all time.

Hypothesus: Gravity is more intense the better yuro knowlege of physics.

I love Tom Hardy's Bane vyice so much and now I want him to have a commentary track on Gravity just because it'd be so awesome.

Holy crap this film. The opening sequence is amazing. Trying to bury myself in the couch. (buzz also seems to bewearing off.)

I may throw up!

Well cool. I'm going to watch Gravity on my own screen now and see if it freaks the shit out of drunk me. LIFIE IN SPACE IS IMPOSSBILE!

I luve you too, tele. I'ma come down to LA and hug and random due and home ppits you, instead. I'll sa :I live you, etle!" (crap, that looks terrible to me and i'm dying of laughter.)

I was (drunk( trying to explain to my family about how China is the biggest wildcard market in movies today, because of its rapid expansion. And how weird it was due to the 34 foriengn movie limitation (I hope thats' right?). It surprised them.

Getting this in before I actually see The Wind Rises and cause things to switch up. (Because it'd be odd to see something before it's removed from the list, so I hope it gets another 150 theaters or so next week.) (It'd also be odd for it to start dropping before the wide release, if that ever happens.) 1. The Wind Rises2. Veronica Mars3. How to Train Your Dragon 24. Big Hero 65. The Raid: Berandal6. Mr. Peabody & Sherman7. The Boxtrolls8. Maleficent9. Home10. Muppets Most Wanted

fcku ! (but I try reall yhard to get it right. don't that count for something?)

It's the... a fundamentalist (holy shit, right the first time!) thing? perhaps. Like, there's this sense of born again-ness that's really about all about suffering and not fun. I mean, I grew up Lutheran and it kinda warped me, but it wansn't quit ethe same.

it's ilke the only expansion market for totrure porn.. (god, that workd is to hard to timpe... fuck! type... word... fuck you alcohol!) Anyway, it's this really weird fetishistic thing where they only want to see their creator under this orrific... horrific conditions and we wouldn't wish that on anyone even fvictims of sawface or whatever his name is. Man, I spelled torture wrong, too, didn't i? Christians are weird, man. That's all I mean. I realized today that I missed choir singing. I was never great at tit, but there's a cool thing about being apart of something bigger, right?

Jesus crhist typing is difficult. fingters why do you hate me?

I'm like... super buzzed at the moment and all I can think of is a song from youth group jesus camp from when I was young: Our God is an awesome god. Whether your god is Liam or Jesus, this weekend is going to be awesome.

I'll take this.

For comparison purposes, The Passion had a 16% drop on Sunday. It also had a 3.66 weekend multiplier, although there was some bleedoff due to the Wednesday opening. I could see SOG getting a smaller Saturday bump, but the Sunday drop should be very mild, probably the best in the top 10, it could still get a multiplier above 3.