TServo2049

And even with those stellar Shrek 2 sales, DreamWorks' stock dropped because they had forecast even bigger numbers they didn't reach: http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB111749009146946457 And I didn't know (or had forgotten) that The Lion King 1 1/2 sold that well. My god.

Adding those Batman Begins figures to The Numbers $30m/2.2m units figure for 2006, by the end of '06 it had sold $155m/9m units. I assume that was considered big even with the gargantuan sales figures for other stuff. (Shark Tale outsold Batman Begins? Fuckin' Shark Tale? Yes kids, there was a time when DreamWorks could put out utter crap and people would still buy it because of the novelty of CGI, and the fact that "attitude" still sold...)

Not to turn this into a Trek thread, but it seems like the only one most people agree on is Wrath of Khan. (And even then, there are some who decry it as being too militaristic, and a betrayal of Roddenberry's idealistic vision. These people almost always defend The Motion Picture in the same sentence.) And holy fuck, The Incredibles outsold Episode III?

Where did they get that number, I wonder? Their own weekly sales show a cume of only $217 million in 2011 (after over 5 1/2 years on the market). Did they get some WW sales number mixed up with the domestic?

That's Japan for you. I'm crunching numbers right now to compare the biggest opening weekends to the highest grossers (many thanks to Corpse's wealth of data). It seems like the biggest openers often tend to end up with lower grosses/admissions than other movies that open much lower.

Wow, so could this be the Japanese equivalent of something like Twilight: New Moon vs. Blind Side in the USA? For those overseas who might not be as aware, The Blind Side opened at #2, $108m behind New Moon opening at #1 (at the time, the third highest-grossing and fifth highest-attended OW), yet Blind Side's legs were so good, and New Moon was so frontloaded, that Blind Side finished with only $40m less than New Moon. Of course, this situation is also sort of different because both films are animated and have family appeal (even though the "animation = genre"/"animation = family" mindsets are not as strong in Japan as they are in the West). So they were more directly in competition (though, given what I just pointed out, not AS direct as most Westerners would assume)?

Also, I don't know if Paramount would want DreamWorks back. Remember, they had a falling out over Katzenberg demanding a bigger cut for DWA. They've set up their own animation studio to replace them - maybe if that venture isn't successful for them? (Or if Katzenberg is no longer in charge when the Fox contract runs out?)

I honestly wonder if Fox freaked out after the Penguins numbers came in, and put pressure on DW to allow them to move Panda. (Boss Baby could have hit some development snags as well - wouldn't be surprised.) I think it says something that Fox has more faith in a fourth Chipmunks movie being successful counterprogramming to Star Wars, even though the third one made $50m less than Kung Fu Panda 2 did.

It's hard to really compare stuff because moviegoing habits shift faster than date/day lineups. A lot can change in 5-6 years.

Yeah, that's why I wondered if TA3 could possibly be more like Back to the Future 2/3, Matrix Reloaded/Revolutions, or Pirates 2/3. The problems with those is that the last entry dropped for all three of them...or is that no longer a plausible scenario in this post-Potter "finale bump" era?

NYE almost always drops, even if it's on a weekend. Only time it (slightly) increased was 2004, which was on a Friday. (NYE 2010 was on a Friday too, but it still slightly dropped.) Another fun fact: Even with 12 years of inflation, the top 10 on NYE has always been $30-36 million since 2002. The only times the Top 10 has been larger were 2011 (Saturday), 2010 (Friday), and 2009 (Avatar). Weird...

It's funny, we're worrying about Avengers 3 Part 1 suffering from the Part 1 stigma, when the problem with past (pre-Harry Potter) back-to-back sequels was that the SECOND film suffered. Back to the Future Part III, The Matrix Revolutions, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (ESPECIALLY Matrix Revolutions). If they do change the titles so they're not Part 1 and Part 2, I wonder which scenario will apply...

The general belief in previous posts has been, if Disney had moved BH6 to Thanksgiving, DWA would have moved to another slot (possibly the first weekend of November where BH6 actually opened). And agreed on Tangled, I brought that up. At the time Disney scheduled BH6, there did not appear to be an inherent advantage to either slot.

I think WDAS scheduled Big Hero 6 in the early-November slot (as an "untitled" film) even before Frozen was released. Tangled released at Thanksgiving, and was dragged kicking and screaming to $200m by Memorial Day weekend drive-in double-features with Pirates 4. Ralph was released at early November and made $189m. There was no visible advantage to Thanksgiving at that point. Thanksgiving may have been better in hindsight, I agree, but I can at least understand a possible thought process pre-Frozen. (Now, why they didn't move it to Thanksgiving AFTER the success of Frozen, I can't say.) Still not a true blunder, like, say, scheduling The Princess and the Frog in mid-December instead of going wide on Thanksgiving...

As one of the people who brought it up, I think that worries about an Episode IX split are more "Hollywood is so mercenary these days that I wouldn't put it past them" than a genuine belief that it's certain to happen. Basically, "they're splitting every other 'final chapter', who's to say they won't try to pull it with Star Wars?"

Where did you get the Ralph OW? I had been searching and searching and couldn't find it.

Yes, Russia/Eastern Europe is probably the epicenter of online piracy. Even more than China.

There were three books, there were three movies. (Yes, Tolkien's publisher split his one huge book into three smaller ones, but there were three books as published.) Also, it's funny how things have changed. Back then, it was a gamble to commit to three films and film them all together. Now we're having studio-dictated splits, trilogies announced in advance, and so on. The Avengers and JLA ones don't bother me as much because they are not direct adaptations of existing stories, and they do not have to be direct cliffhangers, or even have Part I and Part II titles. They could even be changed to have different subtitles, for all we know. Also, because comics have a long history of serialized storytelling, and multi-issue events are a big part of comics, it does kind of make sense. (Well, at least for Avengers: Infinity War.) I do have a little nagging fear about Star Wars Episode IX being split. Kathleen Kennedy, if you are listening, don't let this happen, no matter how much Iger and/or Rasulo and/or whoever succeeds Iger plead. One episode, one film.

On January 2, 2014, Deadline reported that Frozen had opened to $5.2m with previews, bringing its cume to $6.5m. (In USD, I assume?) I can't find ANY info about Ralph's OW, in USD or AUD.

Either it isn't as popular OS, or it was at a disadvantage to make the year-end list due to being an August release. (Notice that late-2013 films are on the list; from what I understand, while piracy starts almost immediately with camcorder recordings, pirated films don't truly gain traction on P2P until clean sources are released - or leak in advance of an official VOD/home release.) It may make the list next year.

I don't think nearly 19 million people pirated the ORIGINAL RoboCop this year. It has to have been the new one. The original may be the far superior film, but I just don't buy that it was torrented by THAT many people just this past year. Doesn't make any sense.

It's not just you. That climax looked like a video game to me also. Even Legolas taking down a whole elephant in ROTK didn't feel as much like a video game as him running up those crumbling stones in freaking slow motion...

TDK is excellent, Batman Begins is very good, TDKR is...well, TDKR...but I'm going to have to cast my vote for LOTR. I was a couple weeks away from my 14th birthday when I saw FOTR, and this trilogy was a major part of my cinematic coming-of-age. Back in '99, before The Phantom Menace actually came out, I had thought the Star Wars prequel trilogy would become my generation's Star Wars trilogy. But even just after seeing FOTR, it became clear to me that LOTR was destined to assume that mantle.

Of course it would have. Apples to oranges. Moana will probably do excellent business come 2016. I'm still amazed that in the Katzenberg era, Disney was able to get three fairy tale musicals out in a four-year period. And then top it off with a "B" picture which few people at the studio had faith in, becoming their highest-grossing film ever. 1989-94 was insane.

I want to see that film, just out of curiosity...