Eric the IF

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.

Just a reminder to folks here that you still have ONE WEEK LEFT before submissions are due. I know some of you plan to wait until the last minute, but if you're confident in your rankings, there's no reason to PM me your list now! @#ED @Porthos @4815162342 @75Live @A Star is Orm @a2k @aabattery @ACSlater @AJG @Alpha @AndyLL @angeldelmito @Arlborn @Barnack @baumer @Biggestgeekever @Blaze Heatnix @boomboom234 @Boxofficerules @BoxOfficeFangrl @BoxOfficeZ @Brainbug @Captain Craig @CaptainJackSparrow @Catty @cdsacken @cax16 @Jedi Jat @chasmmi @ChD @Chewy @ChipMunky @CJohn @Claire of Themyscira @Cmasterclay @cookie @CoolioD1 @DAJK @darkelf @Darth Lehnsherr @Daxtreme @ddddeeee @DeeCee @Deja23 @EarlyDeadlinePredictions @Eevin @el sid @ElsaRoc @elcaballero @Empire @EmpireCity @Exxdee @Fancyarcher @FantasticBeasts @Films @Finnick @FlashMaster659 @franfar @Frozen @FrozenUnicorn @FrozenFan626 @Goffe @Gopher @grim22 @IceFire9yt @Inceptionzq @IronJimbo @Ithil @Jack Nevada @James @Jandrew @Jason @Jayhawk @Jim Shorts @JimiQ @JJ-8 @justvision @K1stpierre @Kalderic @Kalo @kayumanggi @KeepItU25071906 @kitik @Krissykins @lilmac @Lion Roar @LonePirate @m3racer123 @Mattrek @MCKillswitch123 @Mekanos @Menor @Michael Gary Scott @Mike Hunt @misafeco @Morieris @MovieMan89 @Spaghetti @MrGlass2 @Ms Lady Hawk @Mulder @Napoleon @narniadis @Neo @Noctis @Nova @Olive @Ozymandias @peludo @Porthos @RandomCat @RealLyre @Rebeccas @reddevil18 @redfirebird2008 @RichWS @RobrtmanAStarWarsReference @Rorschach @rukaio101 @Sam @sfran43 @Shawn @Sheikh @ShouldIBeHere @SLAM! @Spidey Freak @TalismanRing @tawasal @terrestrial @That One Guy @The Fast and the Furiosa @ThiagoMaia @titanic2187 @TLK @Tower @tribefan695 @trifle @TwoMisfits @VanillaSkies @vc2002 @VenomXXR @ViewerAnon @Walt Disney @Water Bottle @Webslinger @Wrath @WrathOfHan @YourMother the Edgelord @ZeeSoh @Jake Gittes @Plain Old Tele @Ethan Hunt @Xillix @Rorschach @YourMother the Edgelord @Reddroast @Jandrew @grim22 @MrPink @chasmmi @Eric in Boots @Blankments @MrGamer @Cap @CJohn @charlie Jatinder @tribefan695 @Empire @Jayhawk the Hutt @Sal @DAJK @ZeeSoh @carolwoodpr @RealLyre @Arendelle Legion @aabattery @TMP@Jamiem @lorddemaxus@ThomasNicole @von Kenni If you are being @ed and have already sent me a list, feel free to ignore. Otherwise, shoot a PM my way!

@SchumacherFTW See Afterlife did open well, but it still opened below the Feig movie. If Mickey's Law didn't exist, the film would have opened above it. Mickey's Law works in shifty, mysterious ways.