LinksterAC

As a separate exercise, I'd really love to try to get an estimate of global admissions. @hw64 made a good start in the Avatar 2 threads. Most OS markets have Avatar way ahead, but the domestic and UK market probably give TFA a 20m-30m admissions advantage. Who wants to volunteer? ?

What I mean is that both CPI and ER are fundamentally different from the other modifiers we've mentioned (including ticket price inflation, though to a lesser extent). My sentence was a bit unclear as phrased.

@hw64 Regarding your post in the other thread: 1) You make an excellent point about CPI inflation. I'll hear an argument about adjusting for that somehow. Not sure what the best method for that is, but the US rate is NOT 21%. More like 10% from 2009 to 2015 (from most of the sources I can find). And to be fair, your criticize me for not thinking about it, but this is the first time you've mentioned it yourself. 2) Please don't tell me I barely put any effort into evaluating the exchange rates. I spent hours on that, and, to wit, you haven't done any work on that account. None. I clearly stated my assumptions. You're welcome to research alternative sources and share them with us, and then you can tell us how you "barely put any effort" into the process. This isn't my full time job, and I put out the effort specifically upon your request (more like a snide remark). Your inability to take that effort with any sort of good will tells me a lot about your stance as an objective, unbiased thinker. 3) Again, I have to disagree with your statement about other modifiers. ER and CPI Inflation are fundamentally different for reasons we've already mentioned.

Ack. My apologies @Telemachos. I literally thought I was posting in another thread.

WW adjusted for ER, should paint a decent picture of total admissions between the two (even though that's not what we are talking about here). I agree that Avatar wins most OS markets, many by a landslide. But TFA wins some too, and wins the domestic market by a landslide. Hence the small actual gap (9%-ish) between them globally. We are talking BO gross here, after all. We don't really make allowances for changing markets when we talk about the differences between Titanic and movies that have followed it, excepting ticket price inflation (which is still a bit dubious). Why do you suddenly want to do it now? ER is different. It is a specifically definable, arbitrary exchange rate. It's independent of the cinema market conditions in each given country, even more so than ticket price inflation (which is actually influenced by the cinema market). That's why it makes sense to include it and exclude other modifiers. You keep bringing up expanding markets as if they're a guarantee Avatar would make more in 2016 than in 2010. They are NOT a guarantee. Avatar released in a specific set of market conditions and grossed what it did in that market. The market in 2016 is a different one, both domestically and abroad, for a host of reasons. Do you think Titanic would sell 128M tickets in the fast burn domestic BO world of today? I don't know. It might. I personally doubt it, but all we can do is speculate. The exercise you propose (adjusting for changing market sizes, etc.) is a by its nature a speculative one. There's nothing wrong with that, and I encourage you to do it. But it is not a well defined exchange that's independent of the market. In fact, what you're doing is trying to translate today's market into something it isn't. Again, the "real" difference between the two movies globally is about 9%. If we measured grosses in Canadian dollars, the domestic total would stand at $760M for Avatar, $1.3B and growing for TFA, and you'd probably be sitting here agreeing with my effort to adjust for ER instead of constantly criticizing it. At the end of the day, in terms of BO gross, TFA wins domestically by a landslide, Avatar wins OS by a landslide, and Avatar wins WW by a significant but not overwhelming margin. I've never tried to paint a different picture. I'm sorry for you that Avatar doesn't actually beat TFA by as wide a margin as is apparently appealing to you, but guess what? It still wins! Hooray for you! Hooray for everybody. Finally, I admit that my methodology in the ER approach is an estimation of actual exchanges instead of an actual figure. To get the actual figure, you'd have to track every unit of foreign currency earned and figure out exactly when it was exchanged and at what rate. The fact that this exchange rate information is not as granular as we'd like does not make the approach any less valid. It just means our measurement tools are not totally precise.

It's not a vast margin. It all depends on the currency you count receipts in, which is essentially a totally arbitrary thing. If you counted receipts in Canadian dollars, TFA would be right on Avatar's heels. The global difference between TFA and Avatar will end up around 9% when adjusting for ER fluctuations between their runs. See mine or @peludo's threads on this subject in the International Box Office forum. It will be an interesting contest between the two franchises. If Episode VII made inroads in some of the markets where Star Wars wasn't historically popular (see China), we could see some epic global battles. It also depends on whether the original Avatar resonated culturally (the way Star Wars does in the USA), or exploded because of the groundbreaking visual experience. It was absolutely a must see because of the visuals, and particularly the 3D. 3D tickets are not quite the premium they used to be, nor are they the unique draw (at least in the West) they were in 2010. But I've said it before: Cameron is a groundbreaking film maker, and he may have something up his sleeve that enhances the movie-going experience yet again. If that's the case, the Avatar sequels could match the relative performance of the original (adjusted for ER, and inflation).

This is cool. I've loved Christmas event movies since LOTR. Avatar, TFA, and now Episode VIII. What a treat this time of the year is turning into!

The tricky part of this line of thinking is that you're talking about a variable (market size) that's dependent on time. It's hard to say "Avatar would have grossed 1.5x as much as 2010 because market A has grown 1.5x" because as the market grows, it changes. Is 3D the unique draw today that it was in 2010? This is a speculative guess. ER is not speculative. It's an arbitrary rate applied to exchange a gross out of its native currency, and not dependent on BO market conditions at the time. For example, TFA has grossed $860M in USD domestically so far, Avatar $760M. But if you reported their domestic grosses in Canadian dollars, Avatar would still be at about $760M CAD, whereas TFA would be around $1300M CAD, on its way to $1400M. Is that a fair comparison for Avatar? I don't think so! That's the peril inherent to exchange rates. They are arbitrary and can really distort your picture depending on what currency you exchange into.

I think total losses will get to around $450M WW when it's all said and done, and probably closer to $940M domestic. About $2.5B WW adjusted to 2010 XR. But that's really picking nits. Your insights are proving to be quite awesome Peludo.

I get it. You're one of those guys who likes to annoy people. Duly noted and logged for all our future interactions.

I think China will expand tremendously. It's probably a fair bet to think its gross compared to the original will grow with China's total market growth, and it may be the first big North American blockbuster to gross more in a foreign market than it does in the USA. $600M in both China and the USA would be a massive achievement. From there, it's largely a question of exchange rates. If the US dollar stays strong (and getting stronger) it will devour a lot of the gross potential Avatar 2 has compared to its predecessor. 30%-35% as it stands now. I could see a situation where growth in China is offset by XR contraction in the rest of the world and it lands in the mid to high $2B range again. It probably won't hit $1B domestic. TFA won't even get there, and it's going to land in the Top 10 all time adjusted for inlation. Very few movies climb this high, and I think it's likely that the Avatar sequels don't gross as much as the original in most Western markets, where much of its mass appeal came from the tremendous breakthrough it made in 3D technology. (Though Cameron is a dynamo, and may have something else up his sleeve that matches 3D's "must-see" impact for the first film.) Too many people here discount this franchise. It's a timeless, accessible story, that was extremely well done. I know it's Pocahontas in space, but The Lion King was a dumbed-down Hamlet with Lions. Star Wars borrows from a ton of sources (including itself). This recycling of narratives isn't a problem if A.) the film is well made and B.) the characters are likeable and interesting. That statement qualifies for Avatar, TFA, and the Lion King. Voila! Massive blockbusters are born.

Makes the number of tickets sold for TFA that much more impressive to me.

Kal, huh? Is this the same Kal from the BOM forums way back in the day? (Yeah, I was there)

People are really predicting $800M in China? Seriously? I don't mean to discount it as a possibility, because it certainly is, but holy cow folks! Talk about predicting with your heart.

XR rates are also not "different for each country." They are a comparison of the most recent XR available, and the XR reported on Jan. 16 2010. Edit: This is by no means a perfect methodology, and I make no such claim. The rates can change quite a bit over the three months a movie is in the theaters. Venezuela is a great example. Do you use the rate before Jan. 9 2010, which would have helped TFA by a factor of nearly 1.5 more than I have shown?

My research is by no means the end all. I also said it would be close to $2.3B, not at $2.3B. My totals add up to $352M in XR losses on the chart. That said, if you add up the total 2016 grosses in my chart, and subtract out Canada, you'll come up well short of the 1.013B total that is shown at BOM. You get $925M, (that is responsible for $328M in XR losses, or a 36% rate). That leaves $90M of the $1.013B unaccounted for. Why? Because I don't have information available for every market. Since I don't have that data, I have to make some assumptions based on the large body of data I DID research. In this case, I assumed that the $90M exchanges at the Euro 2010 to 2016 multiplier of 1.33 (33%, not the 36% I calculated above). You get $120M. There's a difference of roughly $30M there. Beyond that, you have my already corrected error on the Canada estimated gross, which introduced another $20M surplus. And voila! Now you know where $400M came from on my original post. Not a perfect guesstimation, I know, but certainly reasonable given the total XR rate for the $925M. So the total loss is more like $380M (and growing). The cumulative total would be $2.25B, and not $2.3B (a $50M difference). There is still about $200M to collect WW (non-adjusted for XR), so the $2.5B number definitely stands. The final difference is about $200M to $300M (not $350 to $400) when adjusted for XR, or about a 9% difference. That's roughly the domestic difference between JW and The Avengers, two movies these boards constantly treat as comparable. In the end, I can't tell you for certain how the global market would have received Avatar today, or TFA in 2010. How would we absorb Titanic in 2010 or 2016? We don't take that account when comparing its grosses to Avatar. What I can tell you FOR CERTAIN, is how the exchange rates affect the final number in USD you see when you look at the grosses. Finally, I think your posts would benefit tremendously from a contemplative, questioning phraseology, rather than an accusatory one. I do have answers to your questions, and I'd appreciate it if you didn't come at me like I was trying to deceive your or push an agenda. I'm not. As I said earlier, I love both of these movies, and am a big fan of the BO runs of both.

No question on the admissions in Germany. Avatar wins hands down! But, again, this is a discussion of BO gross and the effect of exchange rates. Peludo's inverse exercise of adjusting Avatar's 2010 gross to 2016 XR demonstrates the same thing: don't discount TFA as a WW juggernaut. (Propos to you @peludo) Avatar is the WW champ by a clear shot ($200M to $300M, adjusted for XR), but the only movie that even comes close is TFA. Everything else is in a different strata. Even if you were to XR-adjust recent movies like F7 and JW, they wouldn't benefit the way TFA does. The back end of 2015 has seen the US dollar shoot upwards pretty dramatically. I've always been more interested in domestic totals, personally. The USA is a mature, saturated film market that's easier to get data for and to analyze. The rest of the world gives you results that leave you scratching your head sometimes (Transformers in China).

Actually, looking at my chart, TFA will either match top, or come very close to Avatar in quite a few countries (when adjusted for ER): USA Canada UK Australia Germany There are others. Generally, they are European. Emerging markets were aaaaalll about that Avatar, particular China.

Agree wholeheartedly. TFA would have the lead in some of the biggest, Western markets, but come up short badly almost everywhere else. I wish we could get our hands on admissions numbers, but the best we have to work with are grosses and exchange rates. Another quirk of exchange rates: Brazil's market has expanded in BRL, but CONTRACTED in USD.

Why don't you factor in BO market size in the USA or the West then? I will concede there are a lot of other variables to take into consideration when analyzing a movie's run, but XR is probably the most arbitrary item, and the easiest to adjust for. As I mentioned earlier, if you reported each movies' gross in native currencies, the comparisons between big films would look a lot different. Which currency is more valid?

Thank you. Ok, using your 6.4% estimate (which is something I reasoned out earlier), your total estimated Canadian gross is $55M is USD, not $58M.

Find me 3D shares international markets for both countries, and we can talk. I suspect the favored Avatar, not TFA, and inflated Avatar's gross. And the comparison based on XR is not completely meaningless. Why? Because BO grosses are generally an independent variable from international exchange rates. The XR doesn't affect the market conditions of the movie within each given country. The only time the rates affect the gross of a movie is when you convert a gross from one currency to another. If you reported grosses in native currencies only, it would paint a much, much rosier picture for TFA in the TFA to Avatar comparison. So which road is more valid? The gross in native dollars or US dollars? I don't know! Do you? If you're an advocate for OS markets, wouldn't you want equal consideration for the native currencies? Whatever the case, I think it's fair to look at it both ways.

Full list of every market I could find over $1M USD Canada is updated to $58M thanks to @Lordmandeep The Force Awakens Country Gross (M, USD) 2010 XR Gross Difference 2010 to 2016 Russia $24 $64 $39.7 Brazil $25 $57 $31.8 Germany $96 $127 $30.5 Canada (est.) $58 $84 $26.0 France $77 $101 $24.5 United Kingdom $164 $187 $22.9 Australia $58 $79 $21.6 Japan $69 $89 $20.0 Argentina $7 $26 $18.7 Venezuela $16 $34 $18.5 Mexico $26 $38 $11.6 Spain $33 $43 $10.5 Italy $28 $37 $8.9 Poland $14 $20 $6.2 Turkey $5 $11 $5.9 Ukraine $3 $8 $5.5 Norway $8 $13 $4.6 Netherlands $13 $17 $4.2 South Africa $3 $7 $3.7 Sweden $17 $20 $3.5 Chile $7 $11 $3.5 Denmark $11 $14 $3.4 Hungary $6 $9 $3.2 Colombia $4 $7 $2.9 Belgium $8 $11 $2.7 Austria $8 $11 $2.6 Finland $7 $9 $2.2 Malaysia $6 $8 $2.1 India $4 $6 $2.0 South Korea $23 $25 $2.0 Romania $3 $4 $1.4 Czech Republic $4 $5 $1.3 Bulgaria $3 $5 $1.3 New zealand $9 $10 $1.2 Peru $6 $7 $1.2 Portugal $3 $4 $1.0 Greece $3 $4 $1.0 Thailand $4 $5 $0.4 Croatia $1 $2 $0.4 Taiwan $6 $6 $0.3 Slovakia $1 $1 $0.3 Singapore $7 $7 $0.2 Israel $3 $3 $0.2 Philippines $4 $4 $0.2 Iceland $1 $1 $0.1 Ecuador $3 $3 $0.0 Hong Kong $10 $10 $0.0 UAE $5 $5 $0.0 Bolivia $2 $2 $0.0 Switzerland (Fr) $4 $4 -$0.1 Switzerland (Gr) $7 $7 -$0.2 China $66 $64 -$2.2

I estimated based on poulation proportion. Now that i think about that, that isn't really a great model since the Canadian dollar is weak. Canadian BO as a proportion of NA Bo should be more like 6% or 7% because of that. The list should look more like this: The Force Awakens Country Gross (M, USD) 2010 XR Gross Difference 2010 to 2016 Russia $24 $64 $39.7 Canada (est.) $55 $80 $24.6 Brazil $25 $57 $31.8 Germany $96 $127 $30.5

Yeah. Something like that. Avatar is still the clear winner, but exchange rates are brutal for US products abroad right now, and will certainly single-handedly cost TFA the #2 WW spot if it doesn't manage to beat Titanic (and that's not looking great right now).