LinksterAC

Might be interesting if they can somehow pull off a mute Link. I've really enjoyed having other characters' responses to him explain his thoughts. It could be fun & fresh.

O/U on weeks until A:WoW weekends are higher than AMQ weekends?

The schadenfreude in here is palpable.

Titanic is far from my favorite film, though I do think it’s fantastic. That said, I don’t think there’s any denying that it’s, to this point, the zenith of its medium globally. Comes close to equaling Star Wars in the West, but blows it away everywhere else.

Imagine if this December 15-ish a movie opened domestically to a 60M weekend & didn't have a weekend below: 60M until mid-January 50M until mid-February 30M until the beginning of April For those few of us who tracked this stuff back in '97, it was absolutely unfathomable.

Nah. It’s not about the longevity, of which Jordan had plenty, it was the total dominance over contemporaries.

That run was the Michael Jordan of box office runs. So far beyond its contemporaries in so many ways as to beggar belief. If you inflation-adjust that thing it's just ludicrous. As a grade school aged Star Wars fan in 97/98, I absolutely despised Titanic because of how categorically superior its BO was.

Good post, though I'll make the following comment: I live & travel all over COVID hypochondriac USA (the USA West Coast) & I doubt it's even 10 to 15 percent at this point. If it is, it seems very possible to me it's comprised of people who probably were homebodies before COVID anyway. I doubt COVID *itself* is affecting moviegoing habits. That said, this doesn't mean habits didn't change during the pandemic for many. Along those lines, I do think that the rest of your post makes a lot of sense. I think there's a good chance that a strata of films (romcoms, character driven dramas) that people are less likely to go see in the movies now due to the reasoning you illustrate. But for other films (tentpole spectacles, kid's films), that reasoning seems considerably less relevant, & I doubt there is a significant effect on moviegoing habits.

It may have, but it's unclear to me that this has had an effect on the ceiling for tentpole films.

You don't understand, it would have made 1.1B in China if not for COVID. Ahem.

The A2 run gets a ton of attention, deservedly, but I rejoice that PiB & M3GAN are having very sexy little runs of their own.

Many of us said several weeks ago that the runtime would create this dynamic. I, like you, am not at all surprised. Just look at the runs of previous films with similar runtimes.

As a San Diegan, I am in the enviable position of being content (though not elated) that they won when they win, & equally content that Dean Spanos lost when they lose. I hope he’s crying into his coffee today.

And be at the theater for 8 hours plus! 😬

I have doubts the NFL playoff games really do have a marginal effect vs the regular season until the Super Bowl, but I honestly haven’t researched it too deeply. Yes, they get insane viewership numbers, but there’s also very few of them & zero college games, so I wonder how much of that is just moving the same eyeballs from a vast array of games to a handful of games instead.

But zero college football games. Not sure if it’s easy to ascertain, but we may want to look at the marginal difference in the trade off.

Thanks, friends!

Wait, this is confusing me. Were TGM ticket prices inflated compared to 2019? What about NWH v FFH? When I look at the AOI list on the-numbers it doesn’t seem like ticket price inflation has been a big factor since as far back as 2015 (Rogue One gets a very minor bump from then to now).

China is slowly coming out of its COVID trance, & that should help the BO. But there are a lot of demographic & economic headwinds independent of that which may have a pretty depressive effect on the BO going forward. I’ll be watching it with interest.

I think that there is *some* evidence of it snapping back: namely, when a must-see movie hits, people still go out at pre-pandemic rates (NWH, TGM). (Again, with the exception of China). And A2 qualifies as one of those films. For me, that makes it hard to argue that A2 is functioning with this particular handicap. Though the other types of films you mentioned may be. I haven’t really looked into them.

One thing to remember is that 2009 was almost ideal for A1. Peak globalization in terms of the general economy, slow economy (thus, increased moviegoing), & absolutely killer FOREX in dollar terms. (The Forex thing totally bothers me when comparing WW runs for films, because it really can give a film a 20% boost over another for no reason other than an accounting decisions). All that said, A2 is having a phenomenal, leggy run & because of that, I’m not convinced A3 & A4 will perform worse. In many ways, the public is reacquainting with this franchise after a 13 year absence, & I think that could lower the ceiling on this run. But it’s being very well received & will act as recent advertising for A3 in a couple years. Do you remember what happened with the LOTR movies?

No, we don’t don’t know that behavior has permanently changed in a way that’s detrimental to any given movie. By your reasoning, TGM & NWH should have had even bigger runs, & frankly, I don’t see solid ground for that argument. IOW, people being more used to streaming in general doesn’t mean that Movie A would have done better in 2019 than in 2022. In fact, on the contrary, it seems like the biggest blockbusters are just as big (if not bigger) than ever. Edit: The exception here is China, of course, where there are still policies in place that reduce the consumption of movies at the cinema.

I’m not about to say that’s impossible. I certainly think it’s a *possibility*, but I’m also not going to take it for granted like you are. Seems also possible to me that China would have ended up being as little 1.5X the rate it’s running now. Mainly because China is trying its post-2020 darndest to reopen right now.

That was my global O/U line before its run started. Fun to see the over looking very likely. My O/U domestically was TGM…and that’s looking more like an over with each passing day. Great run. Really impressive for a direct sequel to a 13 year old movie.

Who else thinks there’s a great chance A2’s Sunday hold is really strong and we’re looking at something like 11.7, 20.5, 16 & 48M after actuals?