Eric S'ennui

THE MADRIGALS VS THE GUCCIS To start things off, Happy Thanksgiving to all of our amazing and beautiful American posters. For those not in the States, this is a special time of the year where us Yankees get together with family members we both love and hate, watch a silly parade that also serves as a glorified commercial for NBC programs and other products, indulge in a bountiful, stressful to make feast that takes hours to cook, watch some random football games despite the NFL being corrupt AF, debate politics with our racist aunt/uncle, prepare ourselves for the epic sales hitting Wal-Mart tomorrow, and drink ourselves to death in order to numb ourselves from the stress we’ll soon endure as the Christmas season officially starts. Oh yeah, we also go to the movies too. And this Thanksgiving promises to be a very special one. Considering the holiday is all about family, we have two new releases all about two very different, yet very powerful families...and also that Resident Evil reboot nobody cares about. Disney has their usual animated release this long weekend with the very anticipated Encanto. Promising gorgeous visuals, a heartfelt story, a sincere appreciation towards Colombian culture, and a dynamite soundtrack from Lin-Manuel Miranda, aka America’s Sweetheart, Encanto will certainly be a hit. Even if it underperforms in the theaters, the almighty Disney+ service will ensure this will have an audience. Never forget that streaming is the future. For adults uninterested in animated fare, we also have House of Gucci, Ridley Scott’s other big movie this year. With an all-star cast, incredible make-up, and a splashy trailer that was an online hit, people are expecting good things for this movie too, with a potential Oscar nomination for Lady Gaga, aka America’s Other Sweetheart. And again, even if it isn’t a hit in theaters, future dictator Jeff Bezos will make it so when his new film from his new studio launches on Amazon Prime Video. Again, don’t forget that streaming is the future. Ultimately, however, this holiday is a very crucial one. Both of these films are a major litmus test for this December, plus 2022 and beyond. While horror, superheroes, and other films that target the 18-34 sweet spot have held the fort down in this current rebuilding of the box office, other genres and films that target other audiences haven’t had the same luck. Animated titles and other kids films have done lukewarm business, while adult-oriented titles, at least ones that aren’t based on established franchises, are bombing left and right. This is proven by the unfortunate box office for the Disney title Raya and the Last Dragon, though it has been saved by Disney+, as well as the sad bombage of The Last Duel. Damn you millennials and your cell phones! Both Encanto and Gucci have considerable hype behind them, thanks to their musical star connections and strong reviews, but things are still uncertain and a lot is riding on them. If these films perform well, it’s a good sign for Sing 2 and West Side Story next month, as well as many other films in 2022. If they underperform or even tank, we’ll probably see shortened windows or day-and-date releases for these kinds of films, or these films just not getting greenlit for a theatrical release. It may seem a bit nerve-wracking, but at the end of the day, it's important to recognize with a holiday like this to have fun and just enjoy being with the people you love above all else. Alongside Encanto, Gucci, and Resi Evil, this is an incredible weekend for entertainment. We have Licorice Pizza in limited release, C'mon C'mon expanding, and holdovers like Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Belfast, Clifford, King Richard, Spencer, and Eternals. There’s also Hawkeye and the new Beatles docuseries on Disney+, Wheel of Time on Amazon, and the usual endless supply of Netflix content, including Tiger King 2, Bruised, Tick Tick Boom, Cowboy Bebop, and Red Notice, to name just a few. Oh, and also Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, which I’m sure is streaming or airing on cable TV somewhere. And maybe also enjoy some Martin Scorsese movies? What I'm saying is this is an absolutely stacked weekend for entertainment, so there’s no reason to not watch at least one thing over the long holiday weekend. Preferably on the big screen of course, if possible. But, like with any family Thanksgiving gathering, you BOT posters need to respect your elders and follow the rules. This includes... 1. ABSOLUTELY NO SPOILERS. NOT EVEN SPOILERS POSTED UNDER SPOILER TAGS. This rule is applied to all weekend threads, but it's especially true for this weekend. Disney fans, Little Monsters, and gamers are all super excited for each of these three movies, and it’s really not cool to just put something out in the open that wasn't revealed in the marketing and ruin the moment for somebody. And yes, the pandemic is still a bitch and a half, so it’ll be a while until some folks watch these new movies. This also applies to other movies in theaters and films/shows recently releasing on streaming. So no Ghostbusters: Afterlife spoilers, no King Richard spoilers, no Clifford spoilers, no Wheel of Time spoilers, no Hawkeye spoilers, etc. You are free to give general opinions, but try to avoid going into any further detail. If you do spoil something here, you will be banned. No exceptions. Don't be a dick. 2. KEEP YOUR AGENDA OUT OF HERE. We get it. Movie theaters are dead forever. Streaming is a disease. Woke critics don't understand real movies. Marvel is the greatest film series ever created. Disney/Marvel is destroying cinema and Kevin Feige/Bob Chapek/Kathleen Kennedy is the spawn of Satan. James Cameron is the true king of the box office. Yadda yadda yadda. There's a time and place for these kinds of statements...actually, there isn't. But at the very least, it doesn't belong here. If you want to start these beefs related to all of these dumb children's movies, go somewhere else. If you do this kind of stuff here, you will see repercussions. No exceptions. Not gonna name names, but you know who you are. Don't be a dick. 3. THE REPORT AND IGNORE BUTTONS ARE YOUR FRIENDS. See a post that’s breaking the rules? DO NOT RESPOND TO IT. Just hit the Report button, give an explanation to the problem, including the context, then hit "Submit". We the mods will determine the post and see if it's breaking the rules and give out repercussions. See a poster that's consistently annoying? Then just highlight their name and click "Ignore User" on the pop-up. It'll save lives and hopefully cause less of an uproar or infighting. While trolls are already bad, responding to them only makes it worse. So again...Don't be a dick. 4. IS OFF-TOPIC DISCUSSION OKAY? Well...yes and no. We want people to stick to box office numbers as best as they can. However, there are plenty of dead periods of time with no new numbers. So off-topic discussions are okay to have at these times, so long as they don't impede numbers discussion. So if there's no action, and you want to share your grandma’s secret mashed potato recipe, argue about whether turkeys deserve to have rights or not, or rank your favorite Peanuts specials, that's totally fine. Just remember that when the numbers come up to keep those discussions down to a minimum. Keep on doing that, and it becomes a chore for many who just want to know the numbers. Don't. Be. A. Dick. And lastly... 5. DON'T BE A DICK. Sometimes things get hostile among users. Whatever the reason may be, if you're not following any of these rules or are straight up not being nice, you're going to get the banhammer smashed onto you. Concern trolling? Banned. Revealing that Lady Gaga kills Dumbledore? Banned. Just posting something unpleasant or mean? Banned. And if you're unsure if you can handle being nice for one weekend, then, simply put, get out of here. You probably know what I'm gonna say next. TL;DR. No spoilers, no fanboy wars. Keep it nice, keep it neutral, don't attack others, and you'll be fine. If you don't do this stuff, you'll risk a threadban, a suspension, or even a permanent ban, so tread lightly. Outside of that, just have fun! And three last things, First off, this thread will likely lean into being more domestic-focused. If you want to know about how Encanto or Gucci or Resi Evil are doing in other countries, look at the International section of the forums here. Second, Just a reminder that the Martin Scorsese countdown will close this Sunday at 11:59 PM. If you want to boost your favorite titles from the Taxi Driver/Goodfellas/Irishman-directing icon, please PM your list to me, or forever hold your peace. I only have 10 submissions, so you can change the outcome just like that and I really, really want as many people as possible to vote. It makes things way more interesting. And remember, like with government elections, you can’t complain about something if you didn’t vote in the first place. Third, WE’RE HAVING A SALE One month of Gold for $10 instead of $15. One month of Premium for $5 instead of $10. One year of Gold for $150 instead of $165. One year of Silver for $75 instead of $85 If you have the funds, we strongly encourage you to donate and upgrade your accounts. Not just because of all the cool perks and benefits, but it helps keep the lights on here at the forums, and ensures we’ll stick around for many more awesome and exciting weekends in the future. Spider-Man is just around the corner, plus 2022 promises epic grosses from both DC and Marvel, as well as Top Gun, Jurassic World, Lightyear, Mission: Impossible, Mario, and the almighty AVATAR. You can't miss this stuff. And now... WITHOUT FURTHER ADO LETS DO THIS SHIT

Sing 2 Greater Philadelphia Area Seat Report T-30 and Counting Sellouts Showings Seats Sold Total Seats Perct Sold TOTALS 0 50 528 9642 5.48% Total Seats Sold Today: 91

Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City Greater Philadelphia Area Seat Report T-1 and Counting Sellouts Showings Seats Sold Total Seats Perct Sold TOTALS 0 49 313 6302 4.97% Comp 1.223x of Escape Room 2 T-1 (1.47M) 1.190x of Old T-1 (1.78M) 1.054x of Don't Breathe 2 T-1 (1.02M) Huh. So the two theaters that are having Early Access shows for tonight (I actually didn't know this movie was getting it until tonight actually) make up about 22% of the sales, which is sizable, but not too bad. However, I feel like this could just simply be a case of Resi Evil fanboys getting to the first screenings as fast as possible rather than any strong interest. Still, it is a contrast to the mass concerns and predictions of floppage we had earlier today, though not that big a contrast.

House of Gucci Greater Philadelphia Area Seat Report T-1 and Counting Sellouts Showings Seats Sold Total Seats Perct Sold TOTALS 0 21 366 4000 9.15% Comp 1.743x of Dear Evan Hansen T-1 (1.39M) 0.559x of Newark Wednesday Before Release (1.17M) 0.159x of No Time to Die T-1 (1M) 6.000x of The Last Duel T-1 (2.1M) It's a bit all over the place in terms of comps, though part of it is just how dire the year has been for adult-oriented titles. Knives Out's IM for the 5-Day would translate to 25x, though it also had early access screenings. Queen and Slim meanwhile...didn't have previews at all. Yeah, this is hard to extrapolate, but the higher comps make me hopeful, and it would ensure the best opening for an adult-oriented title this year, even though I still think Lady Gaga is helping to broaden the appeal to 18-34s.

Encanto Greater Philadelphia Area Seat Report T-1 and Counting Sellouts Showings Seats Sold Total Seats Perct Sold TOTALS 0 44 309 7222 4.28% Total Shows Added Today: 3 Total Seats Added Today: 627 Total Seats Sold Today: 77 Comp 0.387x of Cruella's Thu+Fri T-1 (2.98M) 0.987x of Jungle Cruise T-1 (2.66M) 1.016x of Free Guy T-1 (2.24M) Not really much else to say, it's in line with Coco/Moana numbers, and that's a good starting point. I don't have anything else to add to be frank.

Well yes, this is just more me being on my soapbox, but from a modding perspective, the big issue is that it almost always leads to toxic infighting. There's often a contingent of people arguing about whether critics "get it right" regardless of reviews, you have people trying to troll certain fans when a hyped film earns bad reviews by saying it's gonna be a megabomb, when nine times out of nine the film ends up doing okay financially, or edgelords complaining that a film only got those reviews because it's "woke". This usually leads to endless pages of arguments that largely go nowhere and just lead to everybody miserable and nothing constructive in the end. I've been on the block here long enough to know these patterns are destined to happen. Might as well nip it in the bud it blooms.

You know what, I'm gonna go into a little rant here, because this stuff is very personal to me and I really want you to understand why I'm so passionate about this stuff. I studied Communications in school. I've been in journalism classes. I've met people who have written about entertainment and the arts. So I'm not a film critic, but I know enough about journalistic integrity and an understanding about how all this works, so let me tell you that this idea that critics have agendas or are specifically out to get movies is a bunch of malarkey and rings to me as more just people bitter about something than any factual evidence. The first big thing is that if somebody specifically went to a major, credible publication like Variety or THR...hell, even geek-centric sites like Collider or IGN specifically to push some sort of "agenda", they would not get hired. These publications take things very seriously and don't just hand out jobs to anybody. You need some sort of clout and insight and understanding and strong education of both writing and film to get a cushy job there...and also connections, but it's still not an easy job as you might think. The only places I can think of that would fit into "agenda-pushing" when it comes to movie reviews would be sites like Mother Jones or Daily Wire, and they don't really focus on film reviews, at least last I checked. "But audiences loved this movie that critics tanked. They don't understand what people want" Well critics shouldn't be viewed as a giant mass of people nor as a vessel of whether people should see something. The issue of aggregate sites like RT and Metacritic is that they take singular voices and mesh them all into one giant percentage, rather than giving interesting individual perspectives on a title. Something you can read and gather insight from and see an interesting viewpoint on. If you're interested in a movie, go and watch it, form your own conclusion, and then see what interesting writers had to say about it, because it can enhance your own understanding of the film even better. "Well they're biased anyways" Cool. That's...the very foundation of criticism. You can't watch a movie and not have a biased take on something, whether it be your own politics, your interest in a franchise, or how you feel about a filmmaker or the overall film climate. Shit, I'm being biased right now. And that's okay. People whine and complain when critics mention a film has shaky or problematic politics or content in them, but that's just how they viewed the movie. A film's politics may not bother you, but it can bother people. After all, not everybody's the same, and we shouldn't throw a hissy fit when people complain about a movie's politics, because that's just how they view things (hint hint to some of you BOT posters). And as much as people like to whine about how stuffy critics and Film Twitter hipsters hate all blockbusters and think popcorn movies are terrible, this goes the other way around. Between sites like Indiewire or The Wrap, we have just as many Colliders or IGNs or YouTubers who have Funko Pops in their background. We have just as many, if not more film bros or people who have "Ahsoka stan" or "Kevin Feige 4 Life" on their Twitter names. If anything, geek sites and fanboys are the ones controlling the narrative way more than bloggers reviewing films on their own time or writers for struggling publications in a print-free society. I'm sure people will still think I'm being harsh here, but my main issue with all this is that a lot of this anti-critic sentiment just reeks of anti-intellectual behavior. That somehow the poor defenseless megablockbusters with major studio backings are under attack by an agenda against the elitist film critics. Ghostbusters: Afterlife is part of a "too big to fail" franchise that will earn countless reboots and revamps in the decades to come. We'll get Ghostbusters movies and shows long after we're dead. If Afterlife bombed, the series would be back in some form and will still make millions off of nostalgic Gen Xers. But now we have people complaining about how Ghostbusters: Afterlife, a reboot of a lucrative franchise, greenlit by greedy capitalist studio executives, who are part of a giant megacorp with a strong entertainment market share, and directed by and starring folks who are richer than we will ever be in our lifetimes, is under attack by "elitist" critics, many of whom are struggling to make ends meet...yeah, this shit feels super wrong and gross to me. It's not necessarily one to one, but a lot of this feels like the equivalent of defending Bobby Kotick or Elon or Bezos or any of those jokers, at least to me. And frankly, I don't think this kind of stuff is too toxic and reeks too much like anti-intellectualism for my comfort. I know this sounds harsh, I know some will definitely disagree with me here, and it's certainly not the biggest issue in the world, but still something I just don't like. It's infuriating to me people are just leaping towards a dumb corporate ghost movie as if having anything bad to say about it is some specific targeted attack towards some defenseless motion picture.

Moderation Fun fact: you're able to still like a film that isn't critically lauded without citing there's some agenda out against it. Because nine times out of nine, it is flat out untrue and conspiratorial. Please don't start these debates about critics again.

Reviews are up. At a cursory glance, things seem pretty polarizing, though it does have some fans.

Trolls sells way more toys.

I feel very, very confident that @VenomXXR was just cracking a joke at what he feels is an outlandish prediction, thanks to a witty South Park gif. Doing this purposely is really not cool and would certainly lead to infractions (hint hint). If he was being serious, then I will make sure that he earns repercussions for his actions.

95% sure BTS will appear in this somehow.

People disagreeing with you and your predictions are not trolling. We let people talk about their distaste for movies, franchises, and even directors in other threads, so there's no reason for "your" thread to be any different, no matter how wonderful and amazing Avatar and Cameron are.

The Descendants disrespect!

I keep on seeing this stuff about how "OMG ITS ON DIGITAL THE MOVIES GONNA DROP LIKE A ROCK DIGITAL AND STREAMING ARE EVILLLLLLLLLLLLL" when for the past year, that's just not the case. If you want to exclude the first quarter of the year, where movies just stuck around because there was nothing to replace it with, a good chunk of movies when they hit PVOD/digital stores don't really get impacted by legs at all. A Quiet Place 2's weekend drops post-digital: 29%, 46%, 47% Cruella's weekend drops post-digital: 21%, 37%, 1% F9's post-digital: 45%, 55%, 57% Forever Purge's post-digital: 42%, 52%, 54% Black Widow's post-digital: 51%, 41%, 29% Jungle Cruise's post-digital: 20%, 42%, 11% Free Guy's post-digital: 45%, 45%, 48% Don't Breathe 2's post-digital: 50%, 42%, 31% Respect's post-digital: 40%, 45%, 59% Candyman's post-digital: 26%, 27%, 50% No Time to Die's post-digital: 25%, 40% Do some movies have better holds after PVOD than others? Yes. However, and this is a big however, it's not like this is the only factor at play here. There's the issue of competition, which will take away screen space for these movies, as well as some movies, simply put, just not being very good. F9, Forever Purge, and Respect all had middling reception behidn them, so even if they went onto digital stores 6 months from their release date, I sincerely doubt their legs here would be that much better. Free Guy's first three weeks after digital was the 1-2-3 punch of Venom, NTTD, and Halloween Kills. That's gonna impact any movie. Sure you can argue that people are just not used to early digital drops and that in the future movies will drop like a stone, but honestly, it reads to me people will still go to the theaters if it's an option and won't opt for digital right away, especially since it'll likely cost less to go to the theater than paying $20 to own/rent it.

If you look at the long weekend IM for Moana and Coco, that goes to about 31.6x and 31.7x respectively. Of course, there's been several years of frontloading, so Encanto probably won't be that leggy. The minimum should be Ralph Breaks the Internet's 5-Day IM of 22.3x its previews. I guess the midpoint would be like 26x, maybe 25x on the conservative side. So at a minumum of 2M previews, which could change sporadically, this should lead to a 50M 5-Day, though I could be completely wrong here. Ralph was 3 years ago, so maybe Encanto will be more frontloaded? It's all really muddy and confusing stuff.

Sing 2 Greater Philadelphia Area Seat Report T-31 and Counting Sellouts Showings Seats Sold Total Seats Perct Sold TOTALS 0 50 437 9642 4.53% Total Seats Sold Today: 105 Important to recognize here that all the sales for today are for the Early Access shows this coming Saturday. Which hey, at least indicates that people are eager to check it out I guess.

Encanto Greater Philadelphia Area Seat Report T-2 and Counting Sellouts Showings Seats Sold Total Seats Perct Sold TOTALS 0 41 232 6595 3.53% Total Seats Sold Today: 63 Comp 0.428x of Cruella's Thu+Fri T-2 (3.3M) 0.975x of Jungle Cruise T-2 (2.63M) 1.040x of Free Guy T-2 (2.29M) Just about all these previews would be pretty good, though I don't know if it's just an overperformance or not. Crossing my fingers here of course.

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