DAJK

Straight Outta Compton was nearly as big as BR domestically. NWA doesn’t have the OS appeal as Queen or MJ. Jackson, like him or not, was a worldwide celebrity.

Anyone But You is ahead of Beekeeper in total ticket sales in Canada today. Beekeeper ATP is higher however, which gives it a slight edge in $. Still, I’m thinking Deadline has underestimated its hold.

As long as it's "good" (crowdpleasing) and Lionsgate is somehow able to mount a blockbuster ad campaign ala Bohemian Rhapsody, I don't see why this can't come close to that movie domestic and worldwide.

Just because I like nice round numbers, I want at least 30M for Mean Girls 4-day, 20 for Beekeeper, and 10 for ABY. Give it to me, America.

I would say this number assures something like 20M 3-day for Mean Girls. But the tracking team (and my own observations) shows that pre-sales for tonight are very strong, especially compared to previews. I still think 25/30 4-day is possible. Strong for Beekeeper. Should hit 15 for the 4-day.

Shocked at the positive reviews lol. There’s some intentionally unintentional amusing moments, but you can feel how hard it’s trying to be dollar-store John Wick. Statham’s great, but as far as early January action movies go, I preferred Plane, and I didn’t even like Plane all that much.

Bit of a qualifier for my earlier post. Awful awful weather today and throughout the weekend, getting hit with snowstorm tonight, and I’ve talked to a couple of the GMs at different theaters in the area, the weather is definitely crippling sales. Disregard my earlier post about walkups as being indicative of overall trends. Sorry for the confusion.

Yea Mean Girls walkups are really really bad today. Thinking tomorrow will rebound, since sales are still strong. Going to go with 3.5M flat including yesterday. Beekeeper keeps picking up. No idea what it grossed last weekend, but I could see 1.4-1.5 today. So 2M? I don’t think Clarence has sold a single ticket here today.

Any chance Poor Things can out-gross The Favorite? Could see it being at 20M by Oscar noms... not sure how well the Oscars can help bump a movie in the 2020s, but it should at least come close, no?

With school/college back in session, weekend bumps should be stronger this week. Thinking that 10M 4-day for ABY is a definite possibility as long as it doesn’t completely collapse against Mean Girls.

This felt like a Goosebumps book. Which would have been fine for a Goosebumps book I read when I was 10. Not a movie I see in theaters at 24.

Just want to point out that we have 15(!) movies over 1M this weekend. Compared to last year this week, when we only had 8. 15th place was making 142k. 2022 this weekend had 8 movies over 1M, with 15th place making 190k. Compare that to this weekend in 2020 (before Covid obviously) had 14 movies over a million, and 2019 had 17. If for nothing else, this holiday has shown that depth has returned to the box office. We’ve seen that the market can sustain massive grosses (Spider-Man, Top Gun, Barbie, Avatar), and now we’ve seen it can support depth of the product exists. I would say that this is a good weekend for people like us who track this stuff. Shows signs of a healthy market.

Beekeeper EA was selling well, but I missed the final number unfortunately. Strong gross though, there’s definitely interest here.

Honestly, I hope HitMan is a huge hit for Netflix. And I hope the studios hate themselves for it. They need to hurt for passing up on mid-budget films. We need more of those theatrically. If HitMan helps us get there, I’m all for it.

I was surprised we didn’t hear more about that. I read it in a few passing comments, but it didn’t stir up the same level of discussion we had earlier this summer.

Nobody was “expecting” that at all (maybe 1-2 “out there” posts) but the vast VAST majority of people here have been in the 200-300 range ever since OW, and most of those are squarely in the 225-270 range. Not sure what you’re trying to accomplish here.

I genuinely think one of the smartest (or perhaps luckiest) decisions made for Anyone But You was casting Powell and Sweeney. They're both up-and-comers who have bona fide hits under their belt that make them recognizable (Euphoria for Sweeney, which is very big among the online Gen Z/Millenial crowd; and Maverick for Powell which was strong for older white women) but they aren't A-listers to the point where it's just "Clooney and Roberts in another movie together". They are small enough to disappear into their roles, and big enough to be recognizable. It also helps that they're both strong actors who have genuine chemistry with one another. One thing I've been noticing lately is that the "movie star" isn't as dead as we thought it was 2015-2019. Sure, you don't get surefire 200M grossers just by casting an A-lister anymore, but if you get the right actor in the right role, they are massive massive draws. The "franchise" trend of the 2010s (which is still strong mind you) is somewhat becoming eclipsed by a "star + concept" model which honestly excites me. If ABY can make it to 80M total (or screw it, 100M seems possible) I think it's a huge win for the industry, a huge win for rom-coms, a huge win for movie stars, and a huge win for theaters.

Lol did anyone have Anyone But You outcrossing The Color Purple on their bingo card a month ago? Because we might have to start considering that possibility. Also, this is one unique instance where our faith in the tracking team led us astray. Under normal circumstances, without prior knowledge of Xmas day presales, I would not have thought TCP might become a 150M+ grosser, and would have predicted something closer to 70-80M. Now, obviously this isn’t a bad reflection on the tracking team, since BOTers literally only could work with the data we had, and that was what the data was showing us, but it does show that there are still surprises to be had at the box office even with the clairvoyants we have working with us.

Not bad not bad.

Yea I'm not expecting Minions 2 numbers for DM4, but DM3 numbers is totally achievable. What Minions 2 showed is that there is still life in this franchise (heck, it's technically the highest grossing unadjusted domestically). Thinking 275/900 for it.

Night Swim’s not doing terribly here. Consistently ahead of where I’d expect it to be for 1M previews. Would guess 1.3-1.4 based on comps, but schools haven’t gone back yet here so weekdays may be stronger than usual.

62-72

Lol I waded too far into this discussion on Telegram. Not touching it with a 10 foot pole here.

One of the things I keep seeing when people try to talk about the box office on social media/tiktok etc. is a fundamental misunderstanding that I don’t see addressed a whole lot. I’ve mentioned it before, but I wanted to bring it up. I just saw a video of someone talking about how theaters were all empty this year because of bombs like Indiana Jones or Aquaman or Transformers. As opposed to last year when we had hits like EEAAO. This person said that 2023 needed more big hits like EEAAO in order for theaters to survive. I’m going to assume that either this person never actually looked at the raw numbers and only looked at Letterboxd, or they misunderstand how box office works. For theaters, a 150M DOM grosser and a 170M DOM grosser are solid hits. Indiana Jones was a solid, consistent performer this summer at my local theaters, and it didn’t over perform or underperform here. The reason it’s a bomb is because of its massive budget. But theaters don’t really care about the budget. Indiana Jones is going to sell 2-3x the number of tickets that EEAAO will sell, bring in 2-3x as many people to the concession. For theaters, they would much rather have an Indiana Jones or Transformers than an EEAAO or an Aftersun or a Saltburn. Just because smaller movies are hits relative to their budget, the budget doesn’t matter to a theater. What is the raw number of tickets being sold? That’s all that matters. So no, theaters weren’t more empty in 2023 than they were in 2022 or 2021 simply because there were more bombs. Many more tickets were sold, revenues were up, even though it’s still far below where we were pre pandemic. AMC and Cinemark don’t care that Dial of Destiny had a 325M budget and was therefore a bomb. It was still a 60M opener that had decent legs throughout the summer.

Had a dream about this movie, or rather I was watching the movie (but from first person POV so I was “inside” the movie). Swift was the twist villain, but her motivation was that she wanted to steal my grandpa’s house. I remember thinking in my dream “well that’s pretty effing stupid, who the hell decided THAT in the screenplay?” And then I called my grandpa to tell him he was in a new movie.