hw64

It's an incredible run regardless, but it does have to be caveated somewhat by the movie's Wednesday opening and the fact that Christmas Eve fell on its first Sunday, both of which would have significantly dampened its opening weekend. Its 5-day opening was $13.4m, so with a Friday opening on a normal weekend with no Christmas Eve on the Sunday, it could probably have hit $12-$13m rather than the $8.8m 3-day that it actually managed after significant burn-off on the previous 2 days. A lot of the insane stats that you can derive from comparing Showman's opening weekend to other parts of the run, like its near-20x multiplier and its fourth, fifth and sixth weekends being higher than its first, are largely attributable to these opening weekend dampeners. It'd still have some incredible stats regardless, but they wouldn't be quite as amazing as they appear on the face of it now.

Mogged.

https://deadline.com/2023/01/box-office-m3gan-avatar-the-way-of-water-1235212918/ Deadline's Friday/weekend estimates: M3GAN: $11.4m Friday (with previews), $26.7m weekend Avatar: $10m Friday, $37m weekend Puss: $2.5m Friday, $10m weekend Otto: $1.2m Friday, $3.4m weekend

Can you tell us your actual thoughts on the existence of giants, for the record?

Oh yeah it's AI generated, of course.

I've looked everywhere. @IronJimbo it's not even your style of writing, where are you getting this from? What's happening? Why are three Jimbo fans immediately on the same page about giants as though you've all reached a consensus on this collectively before?

Is this pasta?

Luiz is once again terrible at analysing the box office. A $750m domestic minimum is silly — it'd require Avatar 2 running at 75-80% of Avatar for the entire rest of its run. $800m essentially requires it running at close to 100% of Avatar from here onwards when it's already likely to fall quite a bit behind Avatar's pace by this weekend alone, let alone in the coming weeks where it gets more likely to keep losing more pace against Avatar.

Avatar 2's third Thursday should be around double the admissions of RotK's third Thursday, so not as big of a discrepancy as the raw numbers suggest but still significant enough to expect the potential for a naturally lower multiplier with all other things evened out. Ah yeah, forgot RotK opened on a Wednesday — I'll ignore the first two days and keep referring to the days as if it opened on the Friday. New Year's Day (end of the holidays) was on RotK's second Thursday rather than its second Friday, which was 3 days earlier than Avatar 2's New Year's Day on the Sunday and 4 days earlier than the real end of the holidays for Avatar 2 due to the observed NYD on Avatar 2's third Monday. I think it's pretty self-evident that the end of the holidays (typically New Year's Day) falling at the beginning of the week results in a significant amount of people talking the subsequent days or even the entire week off as compared to when New Year's Day falls in the middle/end of the week (Thursday, Friday) and people have a few days/the weekend to recover before a full return to normality the next Monday; Avatar 2's calendar configuration is an example of the former, RotK's is an example the latter. In terms of its effect on the box office, I haven't done any actual number-crunching on this as I'm lazy, but just a quick glance at the Thursday-to-Friday increases on January 9, 2015 (RotK-equivalent calendar) compared to January 6, 2017 (Avatar 2-equivalent calendar) shows you how much of an effect this has on the Thursday-to-Friday increases for the two configurations. The problem with splitting the difference between Rogue One and RotK is that RotK is obviously heavily flawed due to the calendar differences and, to a lesser extent, the admissions differences, but Rogue One is nowhere near flawed enough in the other direction to balance it out to a reasonable result. For Rogue One, the calendar configuration is obviously the same, so the only real difference is the level of hold you're expecting for Avatar 2 compared to Rogue One, and that's not nearly as much of a flaw as the significant calendar issues for RotK.

It also had a Thursday of $1.65m which Avatar 2 will quadruple, and bigger numbers = lower multipliers. Not to mention the fact that Return of the King's third Thursday was 4 days further removed from the end of the holiday period than Avatar 2's, which, as other people have pointed out, makes a huge difference in the behaviour of the first post-holiday week. Avatar 2's third Thursday will be artificially bloated a bit by its proximity to the end of the holidays (only 3 days prior) compared to Return of the King's third Thursday which was 7 days (and an entire weekend) removed from the end of the holidays. So I don't think looking at Return of the King's Thursday-to-weekend multiplier is a good idea at all here, even if you're just splitting the difference between it and a more appropriate comp.

Avatar's post-holiday weekends were insanely strong as a result of its stratospheric word of mouth, and Avatar 2 is rapidly coming back down to Earth relative to Avatar after the holidays this week despite being significantly ahead of it during last week's holiday weekdays. Matching any of Avatar's weekends from this point on is a gargantuan task that shouldn't be taken lightly; there's a reason why its first three weekends aren't close to being records, but its fourth weekend and beyond are, often by wide margins. Avatar 2 matching Avatar's Wednesday and Thursday this week — which is largely a result of starting from a higher base point last week, and these first few post-holiday weekdays being a few days closer to the holidays for Avatar 2 than for Avatar — does little to make it more likely that Avatar 2 will match Avatar's fourth weekend. So there's no real reason to believe that Avatar 2 could match Avatar's $50m fourth weekend at this point — it's an extremely difficult feat in the first place, it's simply not trending that way, and it's almost certain to continue to lose more and more pace relative to Avatar as the weeks go on. Actually having some semblance of competition this weekend with M3GAN helps a bit, too.

Opening day was anomalous and the only day in which Avatar 2 significantly deviates from Rogue One, largely due to a difference in the size of the Thursday preview grosses. You could use the opening day comparison to say the same about any of Avatar 2's day, e.g. its first Monday of $16.3m was 31% of its opening day of $53.2m, whereas Rogue One's first Monday of $16.8m was only 24% of its opening day of $71.1m. Doesn't tell us anything except that Rogue One's opening day was anomalously large compared to Avatar 2's. Because of the anomalous opening day performances, it's best to take some other early measure of the two movie's runs, like the opening Saturday. Avatar 2's second Monday of $32.3m was 73% of its opening Saturday of $44.3m, whereas Rogue One's second Monday of $32.1m was 69% of its opening Saturday of $46.3m. Very similar.

I wouldn't say that. Christmas Day was up on Rogue One for specific reasons but Monday was basically flat with Rogue One, and the other two days of the weekend were below. Tuesday is up again, but so was last Tuesday and that wasn't indicative of a longer-term trend, it just seems to be that Avatar 2 plays especially well on Tuesdays compared to Rogue One (due to PLF skew, presumably — cheaper tickets are more enticing). If Wednesday is up on Rogue One, then we can talk about it moving ahead of Rogue One on a consistent daily basis.

The 3-day weekend came in $0.7m under but the Monday came in $0.7m over. Did Disney just shift some gross around to secure the second Monday record?

Will need about $300m post-holidays compared to the $420m-ish it makes during the holidays (or 71% of its holiday gross). The Force Awakens: $750m pre-holidays, $182m post (24%) No Way Home: $621.5m pre-holidays, $183m post (29% - aided significantly by Canada re-opening in January) Rogue One: $441m pre-holidays, $91m post (21%) Essentially, good luck.

Also, another example of Luiz's incompetence: reporting the overseas Boxing Day gross as $60.2m because he attributed the entirety of the increase in the overseas total to Monday, when actually around $8m of that was due to an increase from estimates in the proper overseas weekend.

I'm in agreement with this, I think $1.4b by the end of next Monday is too high. I think around $1.3b through this Sunday, around $1.35b or so through next Monday.

Hard to tell, Christmas Day Sunday was around $50m I believe and Monday has seen big drops in some key markets for Avatar 2 like China ($10.3m -> $4m), South Korea ($7.6m -> $2.3m), and India ($3.7m -> $1.9m) due to lack of holidays/normal weekday. The UK reopened cinemas on Monday and a lot of European markets should increase, but not sure if that'll be enough for $55m+. If the Fri-Sun weekend increased from estimates overseas, then that'd make it easier for $950m I suppose.

Luiz is incompetent and not a reliable source for numbers. Avatar 2 should be at about $895m through Monday domestically and through Sunday overseas. We don't have overseas estimates for Monday yet either from the studio or elsewhere, so $55m+ seems to be little more than speculation on his part.

Yep, roughly agreed. I've got it at around $430m through next Monday, January 2, so around $130-$135m Tue-Mon compared to Rogue One's $122m. That's contingent on a $30m Christmas Day and a $35m Boxing Day for a circa-$100m 4-day; if it doesn't meet those, then $430m might be a little high. Assuming it gets to $300m by the end of this 4-day weekend (through Monday), to hit $475m through next Monday with a $65m third weekend youd need $110m across Tue-Thu this week and next Monday. Pencilling in ~$20m for next Monday, that's $90m Tue-Thu this week, or a $30m average. Do you really think that's achievable?

Edited to $450, but the point still stands. The problem, again, is that you're extrapolating based off of a single anomalous day (i.e. Christmas Day), which you should never do. If Avatar 2 has Rogue One holds off of a $30m Christmas Day then it'll make $142m Tue-Mon this week, but that's contingent on a $37.2m Boxing Day which Avatar 2 is not likely to hit. And if it doesn't hit that number, then the entire analysis pretty much breaks down. Overall, $140-$150m Tue-Mon isn't completely inconceivable but it's at the very top-end of what can reasonably be achieved. On the other hand, $475m by the end of next Monday, i.e. $175m+ Tue-Mon this week, is just absurd. That's something like $80m Tue-Thu for a $27m weekday average, then a $75m third weekend (a big increase from the second), and then a $20m Monday. There's absolutely nothing to suggest that's possible unless you're attaching far too much weight to the Christmas Day number.

The most you can reasonably hope for through Monday, January 2nd is probably around $450m, which would be around $150m from this Tuesday to next Monday inclusive (Rogue One did about $120m in that period). That's $90m above Avatar's $360m at the same point, and Avatar itself made a further $390m. Avatar 2 would need to make $300m, or 77% of Avatar for the rest of its run to reach Avatar's first-run gross, and $335m, or 86% of Avatar for the rest of its run to reach its overall domestic total of $785m. And that's coming off of a third weekend that's ostensibly going to be quite a bit lower than Avatar's $68.5m (albeit with a worse calendar configuration than Avatar, with NYE on the Saturday). Either which way you slice it, it's just not feasible.

Yeah I'd say that's reasonable as a best-case — it'd be slightly above what The Force Awakens ($186m) and No Way Home ($183m) managed to do past their third Mondays.

Absolutely I do. A reminder of the kind of things you've got to achieve to reach that $390m: A $50m fourth weekend; A $43m fifth weekend (-15%); A $35m sixth weekend (-18%); A $31m seventh weekend (-10%); A $23m eighth weekend (-27%); A $23.5m ninth weekend (+3%) Top Gun: Maverick was Top Gun: Maverick and Avatar was Top Gun: Maverick on steroids, but Avatar 2 is neither Top Gun: Maverick nor Avatar. And even with Avatar-level word-of-mouth which Avatar 2 doesn't have, being able to replicate these kind of legs in a post-COVID world would still be unlikely for a myriad of other reasons — too much has changed since 2009.

Avatar 2 will be at low-to-mid $400s at the end of its third Monday. Avatar itself made $390m past its third Monday, and that's pretty much what Avatar 2 would need to reach No Way Home. I think it's pretty fair to say that challenging No Way Home domestically stopped being a possibility quite a while ago.