Caesar

Alright went ahead and did a full count of The Batman Wednesday previews at the biggest chain in two Australian states (QLD and NSW). Wednesday night previews (153 showings) - 2255/30632 Highest percentage sold < 100 seat showing - 65.6% (21/32) Highest percentage sold > 100 seat showing - 38.2% (105/275) 24 showings with 0 seats sold - 4874 seats (mostly regular showings) Regular showings - 2.3% (336/14790) PLF - 9.6% (1321/13761) Lounge seating and dinner service - 28.7% (598/2081) No comps since it's been a long time since I've done any count here. Still thinking an opening in the US of around $100 million max. If Australian's coming out of restrictions that have required them to wear a mask whilst watching a movie in the cinemas and seating limitations aren't hyped up massively then I have trouble seeing the US opening being too big.

Not too many TV Spots but they usually don't really show up for us until the week of the movie but we've definitely got billboards and when I went to the Cinema yesterday they had a lot of posters up and were advertising that the tickets were on sale. Plus the big chains sent out an email that tickets were on sales three days ago so the people who usually turn up for preview showings should be aware of it.

Looking at my local cinema in Australia (the only cinema in a city of 100,000 people with the next closest cinema being 30 minutes away with no nearby public transport) after 3 days of presales. Wednesday night previews Standard showings - 7/500 tickets sold Premium lounge seating and dinner service - 0/50 tickets sold Thursday and Friday both have no tickets sold so far, even in the usually popular night showings. Even the biggest and most popular cinemas in the state are at less than 10% sold for the Wednesday night previews with almost no tickets sold for Thursday or Friday. For perspective I've never seen a big US opener not sellout the previews at these cinemas. Australia's usually a pretty close comparison to the US (because almost all our popular shows and movies are imported from the US) and so based on what I usually see in my area I'd be thinking a US opening of under $100 million. Maybe Australia just isn't feeling the hype this time though.

The selling point of Avengers was to show Marvel's biggest heroes in the same movie teaming up. This movie showed DC's biggest heroes in the same movie teaming up. What more can they do? Flash is well known but not popular with the GA, Aquaman is a joke to the GA, Cyborg is completely unknown to the GA and Green Lantern is best remembered for the terrible movie. What exactly will they do to help Justice League do more than DC's first team up movie.

I'm not talking about the trailer, I'm talking about the TV spots that were everywhere leading up to release. Maybe it was different in the US but in Australia this had a lot of promotion during prime time TV and all that promotion focused on the self made success story, as well as attempting to sell this as the holiday movie.

I think you'll find that people on here are trying to suggest that she is draw like that, hilariously it doesn't seem to matter how low the projections for the box office go. First it was that the story was hard to sell but she saved it, then it became that no one could sell the movie and she's the only one who could do this well. Never mind that Wahlberg managed to lead a movie about an unpopular war that had been considered box office poison to be a big success, never mind that Bullock led a space movie that spends most of its time focused on one person stranded in space to be a massive success. The real draw is the actress who took an inspirational true story about a self made success and somehow managed to fail to sell it to audiences (ironically unlike the woman she played in the movie who was actually able to sell a product to an audience). It's weird, I have no problem with this movie, it seems like a nice movie but the bizarre attempt to declare Lawrence a draw (when no actor at the moment has shown the ability to sell all movie's and everyone manages to have box office failures) is annoying. Edit: I really don't like how much I've been negative about this movie in reaction to it's box office so this will be my last post focusing on the negatives of this movie. I will start by saying once more that at the very least this was a minor success and it's always good to see a movie make a profit at the box office.

It's an easy sell because it's a true story about a self made success, those types of stories sell well, which is why it had a good OD (in fact after its OD many on here were declaring how big of a success it was and suggesting that it would do American Hustle numbers). The fact that the movie immediately began having worse holds than all of its comparable movies and has continued that pattern throughout its first week shows that it is the WOM reception of the movie that is problem.

The problem is that you're thinking about the plot in its most simple form. This movie wasn't sold as being about the Miracle Mop, it was sold as being about a woman down on her luck with financial and family problems who manages to pull herself out of those problems and becomes a success, made even better by it being a true story. This is a very easy sell, particularly since its key demographic is the one receiving the least attention during the holidays. The fact is that the movie had a good OD, exactly what you'd expect and it seemed like it was on track to easily do over 100M, maybe even do more than American Hustle. It's just that the movie has had weak legs, something that was noticeable on its second day when it had an usually steep drop.

There's no such thing as an actor being a draw, appealing movies sell regardless of who's the star and all an actor can do is bring media attention to a movie (which isn't really worth much if you can't get Oscar nominations anyway). Historically it's actually been a director's name which has sold a movie and Joy is actually underwhelming for David O. Russell, it'll certainly be his least profitable movie in a long time. At the very least though this can be considered a success, so everyone comes out looking okay, even if the box office and awards hype is lower than what would have been expected.

True Grit held well actually for the comparable movies. Django and Les Mis both dropped hard and in line with their comparable movies. I will give you Benjamin Button but that movie had an unusual story, I would expect it to take time for it to gain attention from WOM, definitely an outlier. What you're missing though is that on this particular date a Friday Christmas followed by a Saturday Boxing Day, movies don't typically drop and if they do it's only a small percentage. It doesn't matter what has happened other years when the dates are different, what matters is this year when two movies that did slightly smaller business that Joy managed to increase and a movie that had a far greater opening managed a far smaller drop minus previews. I'm just saying that Joy is acting different than I would have expected. This is supposed to be a feel good movie for the holidays, it's targeting the demographic which isn't interested in the other movies opening, it's a very easy sell. Personally I don't like extrapolating an entire run based on two days estimates, but in my experience when a movie is showing early signs of being front loaded (especially when it's a movie that shouldn't be) then it's going to be front loaded. Not always of course (as mentioned Benjamin Button didn't follow this theory) but history suggests that Joy is going to be front loaded. I hope it's not (it seems like it's an appealing movie), but it seems the most likely possibility at the moment.

If you take out previews then Daddy's Home dropped by a far smaller percentage, despite doing significantly bigger business on OD. The simple fact is that of all our comparable movies (one's that opened on a Friday that fell on Christmas) for some reason Joy had the largest drop.

Concussion increased, as did Point Break, both of those are doing business only slightly below Joy and yet Joy has a large drop, a bigger percentage drop than a franchise movie had on the same date in 2009. What else could you blame it on if not poor WOM.

Sherlock Holmes is a franchise, a movie like that is likely to have a higher percentage of demand on it's OD yet it dropped by a smaller percentage than Joy, it was also the record for a Christmas day and was far bigger than Joy's OW will be. Also everything around Sherlock Holmes increased that year. Let's say you're right though, Joy follows the pattern of Sherlock Holmes, is that a success if it becomes one of David O. Russell's lowest grossing movies, you're multiplier would have this just reaching above 60M, I'd hardly call that a victory.

No it's a movie you go to see because it's being advertised as a feel good movie at Christmas that is aimed directly at the type of audience that aren't interested in Star Wars. By you're reasoning I should assume that Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg are massive box office stars, since their movie was advertised as those two facing off against each other over being a dad.

So my dad saw this and said two things to me, good movie and the lead actress was great. My dad watches movies solely for entertainment and never singles out an actors/actresses performance unless he's already seen them in previous movies and has decided to check the movie out because he's heard good things about their performance in the movie. So yeah, it shocked me to hear him give praise to an actress who he'd never heard of or read about before. I agree with him of course, her performance was easily the best in the movie, I really think Ridley will have a great career, she deserves it.

They're no Tony/Steve.

In the novelization when Rey pulls the lightsaber away from him, Kylo says "it is you". I think this is one of the parts left out of the movie so that they could do it in Episode VIII instead. So yeah they will probably show that Rey was one of Luke's students when she was a kid.

OW: 250M DOM: 850M WW: 2.2B

The subject of The Walk isn't enough to make a movie interesting, I don't know what you could get out of the movie that you couldn't get from watching the documentary or even just reading about it. In the case of Steve Jobs, he's just not the right person to make the focus of a film. There's nothing in particular about his story which would draw people to want to watch a movie about him.

I kind of joked about actors from the series being replaced by Chinese actors but I do wonder how much of that will happen given that previous co-productions have given Chinese actors small parts and instead just used China as the location for a large part of the movie. Also who will be the token female this time, I'm assuming it won't be Rousey based on her schedule, so we've got to find another young women to interact with men 30 to 40 years older than her.

Okay, so who is returning, who is refusing to return and who is being replaced with a Chinese actor. This is good news for action movies everywhere. You can and will be saved by China.

You sure you're not describing JW?

We're discussing if a large majority of the movie audience is dumb? I thought that was answered years ago when that audience went to see five Twilight movies. Watch all five Twilight movies to find out whether the bland girl with no personality ends up with the old pervert with no personality who's emotionally abusing her or the young pervert with no personality who's emotionally abusing her. It's not that movie audiences are inherently dumb, it's just that they seem to be able to relax more when they're watching movies that don't require them to think about characters or the plot. Given how needlessly complex some of the art house movies and even some blockbusters make their stories, I don't really blame them.

Nothing against Ferguson though, I liked her in this.

Given some of the comments I've read on here over the weekend, I'm surprised no one has started a WWW thread for Marvel. It would be weird sure, but I'd like to see the detailed posts explaining why exactly a studio that keeps making large profits on well liked movies is apparently in trouble.