Porthos

I never said I was entering the game. Just alluding to the very real fact that Big Changes were coming. Will I make a future cameo in this season of Survivor? Have to keep tuning in to find out.

Yeah, the "obvious" (note I DID NOT say "simple") way would be to keep track of each showing's auditorium number somewhere and then if your scraper can't find it anymore (either because AMC removed it or it's not accessible due to being sold out on Cinemark), flag it as a sellout internally and move on. Maybe spit out sellouts somewhere to a separate file so you can look it over and go "sellout at 2am? You stupid program, they just removed the showing entirely" and adjust it. How to program that, I wouldn't have a clue, though. But that's how I'd be thinking if I were trying to crack this nut. Though if AMC doesn't have that data easily accessible at all, might be a moot point. Still, as you say, something to think about.

Not to tell you how to do things, but is it possible to pull out the auditorium number on your scraper? Might be theoretically possible to cross reference a sellout to an empty/partial screening that way. Though I realize with AMC that's more difficult with their annoying habit of removing sellouts entirely after a set period of time. Also might be too complicated and or too CPU intensive though, so just consider me shooting from the hip here.

Prob need at least one, maybe two, sub 30% drop(s) in the next couple of weeks or an expansion somewhere down the line. Straight 40% drops won't do it. Is in the realm of possibility, but I don't know if I'd call it a "good shot".

Out of curiosity, @keysersoze123, approx how long does it take your scraper(s) to run, anyway?

Let's just agree that the refs have screwed over just about every team to ever play a reasonable amount of time in the playoffs and call it a day. 👍 (Yes, even THAT team. )

Washington, 1984 NFC Championship Game (for the '83/'84 season). Helped get the ball rolling for replay in the first place (though not for PI) as it made Bill Walsh one of its biggest proponents. Took a while to get in, but the long memories of that call made the Niners one of the teams to constantly push for it.

Well, that's one way to look at it, sure. 👍

Might have missed a facemask penalty on that last play as well. Hard to tell from a still I saw, as it might be incidental contact that is overblown on a freeze frame, but someone on the OL sure looked like they had their hand on a defender's grill. Just... not great calls overall, from this non-partisan viewpoint.

Those were some... interesting calls in the Lions-Packers game.

That's actually... intriguing. I don't regularly track low openers so makes me wonder if this might be a better comp than some of the ones I personally do have on hand. Though still a ton of differences. 4pm v 7pm. 3D and PLF. Sequel factor. Animation versus live action. Still interesting. Wonder if Philly is gonna show something similar, if Eric has that comp.

Yep.

Think right now it pacing to around 98m or so? One or two really goods hold in the next couple of weeks might do it though without having to go the expansion route. Speaking of expansion, could see something at Thanksgiving or Xmas. The material doesn't exactly scream "holiday classic", but the Loves Classic Brit Programming demo in the US makes at least some sense as that sort of programming gets more popular at that time of year, even without an explicit holiday connection. It's been noted that Focus hasn't really played an expansion game like this before. But it hasn't had a film make this much money before, either. At least not since Brokeback Mountain when adjustment is taken into account. So uncharted waters for them. Rooting for it to happen though.

I don't know if you saw the plans Greg Weisman had for it (not going to link to it in case it ever happens), but it was gonna get cray cray bananas including going centuries into the future and all sorts of nuttiness.

Not counting FFH which had a midnight this year, according to this chart, Desolation of Smaug was the last major film in the DOM market to have midnights. Before that was Man of Steel.

MAKE A SEQUEL/CONTINUATION, YOU COWARDS!!!!!!!!

But the thing is, bad buzz has translated into lower numbers and Disney isn't immune to it. TLK is one example of probably not reaching potential, at least in the DOM market. Sure TLK did what I more or less expected (and I have the posts to back it up). But it also clearly could have done better here if it had hit more of a cultural zeitgeist. or if it didn't have the problems I saw coming when when I started thinking of a 525 to 540 or a 540 to 550 range for it. And it wasn't just here. The trades seriously low-balled Aladdin, both in OW and projected final total. It blew by tracking by, what, 25m, 30m on OW? That hardly ever happens except on films knocking on 200m+ where tracking models break down. For that to happen to a 90m opener is insane. I'll agree that in a vacuum the potential for Aladdin to do 1b WW was always there, for the reasons you citied earlier. But, until the relative last minute at least, Disney so badly botched the marketing and rollout of the film that I don't blame people for being skeptical of it. Not sub 200m DOM skeptical, no. But the skepticism wasn't just here, but industry wide.

Hell even in the last month before release, while the buzz obviously started to turn into a much more positive direction, there still was a fair amount of bad buzz. Mostly centered around Marwan Kenzari as Jafar and some Y-I-K-E-S level early screening reactions. At the same time the reaction to the soundtrack was off the charts and counter buzz about it being a fun enjoyable film that actually did come together really started to build. But to say there wasn't a tremendous backlash initially to Will Smith as the Genie when pics of him as the Genie first came out nor that it had a near disastrous initial impression at CinemaCon the year before just isn't correct. Folks were too hard on it on this board. Pile on mentality is real around here. At the same time, no denying that "Not Great, Bob" was the watchword around Aladdin for quite a while if one just paid attention to the buzz around it.

Because it had, if not quite toxic buzz for nearly a year, really really really bad buzz for about nine months?

By the way. I just have one thing to say about the end of the Yanks-Stros game last night: Ball. Don't. Lie.

I am going to add one spoiler observation:

Now that was a good episode. Tightly plotted, tie ins to both TLJ and Solo and advances various character plots. I liked how Tam was handled realistically here, as well as Tierny. All in all a very solid episode. Keeping things light on the spoiler side, but if the rest of the season is close to quality as this one, it should be a fine ride.

Three days later... At T-4, Maleficent 2 might have finally stabilized a bit. It has now sold 527 tickets region wide (+114 tickets in last three days). 42.26% of Pika Pika (2.41m) [-0.09m from last check] 36.22% of Aladdin (2.54m) [+0.08m from last check] 26.21% of It 2 (2.75m) [-0.05m from last check] The traditional lolcheck: 81.45% of H&S (4.72m) [-0.57m from last check] TS4 comps to 2.27m (-0.07m) and TLK comps to 2.36m (+0.02m). No real change. Well, a change in that the bleeding has stopped and possibly reversed if Aladdin is a good comp. So still holding at 2.25m to 2.5m. Probably on the higher end, I'd say. About to hit crunch time though, so there's still time for it to hit 3m. Also time for it to backslide if it doesn't take off.

4.2m.