BadAtGender

That all-time classic, Piranha 2. Hardly. Even if every forthcoming Star Wars film outgrosses every forthcoming Avatar film, it's not like that makes Avatar a failure. People overstate these competitions.

It could do over this weekend what I thought it would do for its opening.

Cameron may understand better than anyone ever how to best tell a story using the film medium.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisiana_Purchase

1. Will Star Wars gross more than $100M this weekend? YES 2. Will Star Wars gross more than $130m this weekend? 3000 YES 3. Will the 5 biggest new entries' combined grosses exceed 50% of Star Wars' weekend? NO 4. What will be the highest grossing new entry (new, not expanding)? 2000 DADDY'S HOME 5. Will Sisters drop more than 15% this weekend? NO 6. Will at least 4 films increase this weekend? 2000 YES 7. Will Point Break open to more than $9.5M? YES 8. Will Good Dinosaur stay in the top 10? NO 9. Will Hunger Games stay above Creed? YES 10. Will Hateful 8 gross at least 10 times the gross of Revenant this weekend? 3000 YES 11. Will the Big Short Increase into the top 3? 2000 NO 12. Will Concussion open higher than Joy? NO 13. Will Alvin stay in the top 5? 3000 YES 14. Will Star Wars' PTA be higher than Revenant's? 15. Will I have marked the previous 2 weeks' questions before Xmas hits? Depends if you want to be on the naughty or nice list. 10/15 - 2000 11/15 - 3000 12/15 - 5000 13/15 - 7000 14/15 - 10000 15/15 - 15000 Part 2 1. What will be the difference in gross between 1st and 2nd this weekend? 5000 103.927m 2. What will Krampus' Xmas Day gross be? 5000 1.927m 3. What will Concussion and Point Break's combined Saturday gross be? 5000 6.927m 4. What will Alvin's percentage change be this weekend (please specify drop or increase)? 5000 INCREASE 18.927% 5. What will Hateful 8's PTA be this weekend? 5000 $37,927 Part 3 2. DADDY'S HOME 4. SISTERS 6. POINT BREAK 9. THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY PART 2 12. THE GOOD DINOSAUR 15. IN THE HEART OF THE SEA

I think Kal might be onto something. Like, the last time Cameron made a sequel to his own film, it increased massively. So Avatar 2 should hit around 4 billion, DOM.

Yeah. It smol. 12 screens, but the first six are from the 80s, the expansion 6 from the mid-90s, and after the recliner renovation a few years ago, the biggest screen is probably well under 150 seats. (the Regal Lakewood 15 is bigger, but it seemed like people don't go there as much because of the lack of recliners.)

Interesting. Lakewood Mall seemed to have the most showtimes and sellouts, but I suppose lack of seats and lower prices held it back.

Any chance you can reveal the top theaters here in Washington?

I'm gone a day and it looks like we've got a new most underestimated weekend. It took over 12 years, but The Passion of the Christ has been dethroned.

I kinda hope so. I'd like to warm up to it more, beyond the first act.

They didn't spend the time figuring out the third act. It's a common problem.

Even with general falling 3D share, people will turn out for films where it's worth it for the experience. Gravity's a good example. There's no reason to think Cameron's suddenly not going to be able to sell people on the format. It's not that people don't like 3D, it's just that it's not felt as necessary in most cases.

It made money because Cameron excels about selling the experience. The 3D in Avatar was part of that. It worked because of how exacting he was about the 3D, in a way that most blockbusters aren't. (The MCU, for instance, has basically no reason to be 3D.) When it comes around to Avatar 2, the market trends are probably not going to matter, because he's, again, going to be selling the experience. If that involves 3D and 120 FPS, then I'm sure that they won't be gimmicks, but rather integral parts of creating the best cinematic viewing possible. Arguably, Peter Jackson was trying to do this in The Hobbit films, but his strengths as a filmmaker aren't really in that direction, so it fell short. Cameron is the absolute master at understanding how to use the film technology to the best effect. Basically, it's no different than Nolan's focus on using 15/70 IMAX, or Tarantino's choice of 70mm for Hateful Eight. It's part of the experience they're trying to sell.

It'll probably get the Smurfs treatment. They'll reboot it as a full animated feature.

Disney: Harrison, we want you to come back for more Star Wars. Ford: Okay, pay me a lot of money. Disney: Done. Ford: And I'm only doing one. That's it. No more. Disney: Um. Ford: Make sure you kill me. Disney: O--kaaaay. Ford: And not one of those "he fell down a hole" deaths where there's ambiguity. Big. Right there. On screen. Disney: Dead dead? Ford: So there's absolutely no questions. Disney: Fine. How would you like to go? Ford: What's the deadest I can be? Disney: We can stick a lightsaber through you. Ford: Now you're talking. But that's not enough. Disney: Not enough? It's a lightsaber through the heart! Ford: Han Solo needs to be deader than Scott Walker's presidential hopes. Disney: Stabbed by a lightsaber and then you fall down a shaft? Ford: What did I just say about falling down holes? Disney: Falling down shafts is a Star Wars tradition! The Emperor didn't come back from that. Ford: The Death Star also blew up around him. Disney: True. Ford: Can you do that for me? Disney: Blow up a Death Star around you? Ford: Yeah. Disney: *furious rewrites* Ford: But bigger. Disney: Bigger? Ford: Yeah. Make it go supernova. Disney: *sigh* Fine. You've got a deal. Ford: And a lot of money. Disney: Yes. That, too. Ford: Glad to be back!

So, if you're injured and possibly about to pass out, one thing you can do is hit the wound. It's not healthy, but the shock of the pain will probably keep you from passing out. That's what I figured he was doing. Temporary recharge, in hopes that he wins and then gets to some medical help. Yeah, it really felt like they had batons of the OT characters and were passing them off between scenes. "Okay, right now I'm Leia and you're Luke, but in the next scene, I'll be Han, and you be Leia."

Unlikely in the case of the DVDs. No Pixar film since TS3 has hit 10m, even combined BD & DVD. Inside Out will probably end up under 5m, and TGD isn't going to even do Inside Out numbers. I also don't see TGD turning into a merchandise monster. There wasn't enough awareness of it to drive it. We can probably put some of that blame on TFA, since Disney's pretty much been focused on that alone for the past three months.

Tumblr. It felt very Michael Bay.

It'll be amazing if the thing that stops it from beating Avatar is BvS. How my club breaks down is gonna be interesting.

I've often felt if ANH were released today without the weight of Star Wars history behind it, it would be seen as mid-tier at best. (Not that it IS mid-tier, but people would lambast it.) The big advantage Star Wars has is that it was released in the 70s so it managed to create its own history and mythology. Films that try to do thing similar nowadays aren't given the chance to do the same things. It's part of why the original film property is becoming such a rare feature. It's too expensive to use film to develop IP and hope that they can become successful to have a franchise go forward. It's much better to mine books or comics or whatever.

Dory's got 500m potential. Probably moreso than anything else.

I was unfortunately spoiled on the first when I hopped on FB real quick to message a friend about where to meet up to ride to the theater. I'll agree it was well done, though. Starkiller didn't do it for me. It felt too detached. I thought it was one of the weakest aspects of the film, overall. Rey's mental trip was kinda neat, but I don't think it was a huge moment, IMO. Reminded me of Spock explaining the backstory in ST09 more than anything else. Luke Reveal, eh, no. Nostalgia doesn't do it for me, and at that point I felt like the film had gone on about a scene or two too much anyway. Showdown? It was some nice lightsaber fighting, but it didn't pump me. In fact, most of the PT saber battles were better than it, IMO. So, I'm going to go with Jakku chase. The first act is the strongest of the entire film and this was a great capstone to it.

With a lot of numbers reporting, we're dealing with imperfect data. The trends for how films are released change over time. We just need to accept that that's going to be the case and factor it into our analysis. For instance, back in the days of the PT and LotR, it was common for big films to get releases on Wednesday or Thursday, even if there wasn't a holiday doing that. So you had several films (TPM, Matrix Reloaded, ROTK, ROTS) which all probably would have broken the OW record, but didn't because those early days weren't counted as part of the weekend. So something like Spider-Man took and held the record for an unprecedented four years. Then we entered an era where it wasn't uncommon to get Thursday previews. Films would get a showing or two starting at 7 or 8pm. They are listed as Day 0 on BOM. And while they might be superficially similar to the preview period we get now, I think they aren't quite the same. They may only have counted the actual Thursday portion of the take, and anything from Midnight on was Friday. So while it might make sense to fold those Thursday previews into the OW for Iron Man (pushing it slightly past $100m), there's some finer considerations. Also, because that was more standard in that era, the OW remains at the 98m it's listed at. Post Aurora and TDKR, the Midnight release has gone by the wayside. While the security reasons are mostly bunk (just witness all the other theater shootings that have continued to happen since then), I would say it's a net positive for employees; by moving the sneak portion ahead a few hours, you can let employees off earlier so they don't need to be working through the night. (It's had some effect on overall Thursday grosses, though. In most cases, it's roughly on par with old Midnights. The number of screenings tends to be roughly the same. Rather than do one showing on each screen, they take two or three screens and give them a couple showings apiece. Now, that's just rough. Star Wars is a special case since it not only had those earlier previews, but has been playing throughout the night as well. And movies have always had different number of screenings available. Theaters try to guess what demand will be and sometimes they're off. Something like TKD or TA or JW all probably had demand that exceeded what theaters thought. (They weren't full to capacity, because that doesn't happen, but relatively speaking? Sure.) Something like TASM2 probably had far more screenings than necessary. It's tough to know for sure.

It makes me happy the site background image is from the Jakku chase. That's easily the best part of the entire film.