Mrstickball

Kung Fu Panda 3 was build with China in mind... They re-animated all characters to speak Mandarin. They also did a major partnership with Chinese publishers, and KFP2 had a very strong gross when it debuted, suggesting KFP3 was going to be a monster. It was supposed to give the top list for animated movies a run for its money.. Unlikely now.

The Raid 1 had a fair bit of buzz/interest in it leading up to its release in the US. The Raid 2 had virtually no hype or buzz behind it when it released. I watched both movies at the same theater on opening weekend... There were maybe 5-6 people in the theater for The Raid, but only myself and father for The Raid 2. Which is a shame, because both movies are fantastic. Comparatively, the closest theater for Ip Man 3 is over 250km away. I hope they expand it next week so I can see it and contribute to it at theaters.

FWIW, the Boston-Baltimore corridor is home to about 55 million people.. So imagine a storm shutting down more than half of France. Its that bad. I think that arguing a 10% better performance for movies this weekend is cutting it short.. I'd imagine that the storms are probably effecting the box office by at least 15 or even 20%. It will be very interesting to see Sunday and Monday holds for movies.. Schools will likely be out for a few days, and I wonder if we could see Mon-Tues numbers with slightly better performances than typical due to it.

If you're willing to listen to an American's perspective on why Star Wars (especially this one) is so loved: Star Wars was the first great movie that was aimed towards a demographic of teens and adults, especially males. It spawned a trilogy of movies, which was extremely well-received, and was arguably the first to do so without a huge drop-off of quality (Godfather). The movie spawned a LOT of other things off - novels, video games (KOTOR is arguably one of the best ever made), as well as a massive toy/merchandise empire of which no movie has ever rivaled. TFA alone will bring in $5 billion in toy/merchandising rights, which dwarfs the box office run it has. You then take the story that ended in 1984, and announce that its coming back with all of the old major characters.. The original actors, the original puppets, everything. Finally, it releases and is arguably as good as most people wanted in a series that was a continuation of the original (whereas the Prequels were an unfathomable letdown).. That is why its so well received. Its a cultural phenomenon that is hard to explain if you didn't grow up around the franchise for the past 4 decades. One day, China will have its own great unique movie series and universe that one could equivocate it to in terms of size and scope of its notoriety, but there are very few in movie history that one can compare it to, so its hard to "Get" when you're being plunged into the series, as opposed to watching the movies dozens of times growing up, and having to live through what were bad prequels (which if you look at IMDB ratings, you can see they were very disliked, whereas the consensus is that TFA towers above them, although is not as good as ANH or ESB). In the end, a lot of people in the west that had access to movies grew up with the series since the 1970s... This is also why its doing well in Japan, since the movies were featured prominently over there as well ($60m and likely to surpass $100m in a market that has been down for years). Hopefully that explains it as best as possible.

But he's right. Everyone including Olive thought 100M might be in doubt only Firedeep said that's just not possible. To be fair, it was tanking until about 36hrs ago.. You can't be positive when the pre-orders are so grim among a country that has very easily-accessible pre-order numbers.

To be fair, AoU's run in China more or less mirrored the US.. It had the 3rd best opening followed by an incredible 59.4% drop which is terrible for a summer blockbuster.

I'm curious about the Chinese box-office experience.. Kind of OT, but I can't create a thread on it: What kind of experience do you get when going to a Chinese theater? What kind of food is available, and what kind of prices do you have? I know that its about 35-40 RMB for a ticket (at least on average), but I'm curious how similar the food and experience is to what we get in America.

New poster (been viewing these posts often but) - very amazing that Terminator 5 is doing so well, even on a Tuesday.