hw64

I have nothing against Whitney Houston, it's just my opinion. She has a few memorable songs, but none of them are any good, and the rest of her big singles are both forgettable and mediocre. The closest she gets is I Wanna Dance With Somebody, which is fine. It's just surprising to me because big pop artists typically stumble upon at least one great hit during their careers — not the case here. Anyway, no need to bring this up again.

This is why you don't extrapolate off of single days. Also not sure how you're getting $470m+ in the first place. Following Rogue One's holds off of a $30m Christmas would put it at $441.8m through next Monday; off of a $32m Christmas, $455.8m. You're not going to be able to extrapolate any higher than that using any other day or period because a $30m+ Christmas Day marks the biggest percentage increase over Rogue One that we've seen so far in Avatar 2's run.

I think you missed some sarcasm there.

I'll say it if no-one else will: Whitney Houston doesn't have a single good song to her name. Usually with these big pop artists with long careers you can find at the very least one or two standouts amongst the dross (Mariah Carey - Fantasy; Britney Spears - Toxic, Gimme More, Break the Ice; Madonna - Into the Groove, Like a Prayer, many more; Kylie Minogue - Can't Get You Out of My Head, Love at First Sight, more). With Whitney, there's nothing. All her big hits are forgettable and/or mediocre. Anyway, I don't think this has anything to do with the performance of the movie, but I wanted to get it off my chest.

Probably yeah, studios usually running on a skeleton crew around this time.

It's doubly unfortunate because it's happening on Christmas weekend where a lot of people who otherwise don't really go to the movies do so out of tradition, so if you lose a lot of that business due to external factors then a significant portion of it is probably just lost completely and won't be made back later.

It was nearly 2 years.

This will be on r/boxoffice within the hour.

That would be absolutely insane. 10% of gross profit I could understand, but 10% of gross revenue would be killer for 4 and 5's prospects. If that is anywhere close to true, then he'd either need to waive it or severely reduce it for 4 and 5 to be viable for the studio, I'd imagine. It does, however, align with Jim's comments to THR at the premiere of Avatar 2 that it needs to be around the 7th or 8th highest-grossing film of all time to break even, which is around $1.65b at present.

I'm here, just in observation mode at the moment — waiting for the weekend to play out, nothing to say yet.

You've gone off the deep end. Seemingly a calm and measured poster a few days ago, now just kneejerking all over the place to the point where you're saying under $2b is basically near-guaranteed off the back of some lowered opening weekend expectations. What happened?

With respect, that's not a particularly convincing argument to me — essentially boils down to just a "just trust me" in terms of what you're expecting the values to converge to. Of course we have to account for the relative presales differences between the two films narrrowing, but what would be more convincing to me would, as Menor suggests, to actually look at the pace at which the presales difference between the two movies for each day has changed over the past few days, and how it's likely to behave up until T-0 for each day. I prefer to look at each day relative to Thursday, so looking at the T-2 Thursday set of data vs. the T-1 Thursday data, we have: Friday (T-3): Avatar 2's presales are 1.18/0.612 = 1.93x as strong as Thor 4 on Friday relative to Thursday Friday (T-2): Avatar 2's presales are 1.10/0.595 = 1.85x (-0.08x) as strong as Thor 4 on Friday relative to Thursday Saturday (T-4): Avatar 2's presales are 1.98/0.612 = 3.24x as strong as Thor 4 on Saturday relative to Thursday Saturday (T-3): Avatar 2's presales are 1.86/0.595 = 3.13x (-0.11x) as strong as Thor 4 on Saturday relative to Thursday Sunday (T-5): Avatar 2's presales are 2.95/0.612 = 4.82x as strong as Thor 4 on Sunday relative to Thursday Sunday (T-4): Avatar 2's presales are 2.81/0.595 = 4.72x (-0.10x) as strong as Thor 4 on Sunday relative to Thursday There's narrowing here, sure, and that needs to be taken into account, but I'm not necessarily in agreement with you about the extent that the figures will tighten. 1.6x Fri/Thu? Sure. But 1.2x Sat/Fri and 1.1x Sun/Sat? That's expecting the 3.13x above to narrow to 1.6 * 1.2 = 1.92x in 3 days, and the 4.72x above to narrow to 1.6 * 1.2 * 1.1 = 2.11x in 4 days. I'm not convinced at all about that given the paces shown above — I think they'll be significantly above what you're suggesting.

You can't rely on this sort of analysis on its own, no, but I do think it's useful, and I was particularly pushing back on the idea that the analysis supports or even paints a worse picture than the BOT "8-8.5x multiplier" narrative, which is what Legion suggested here: I do actually think that this kind of analysis may credibly suggest an IM quite a bit higher than the standard 8-8.5x that's been pushed here as of late.

Damn, If only I'd have bought that $15/month gold account subscription to BOT, then my opinions would be so much more credible to the masses!

Do you? Let's take Inceptionzq's data here: Relative to Thursday presales, Avatar 2's Friday presales compared to Thor 4's are 1.10/0.595 - 1 = ~84% stronger, which is slightly lower than BOP's "35% more than vs. 30% less than" data which works out at +93% stronger presales on Friday relative to Thursday for Avatar 2 as compared to Thor 4. So this seems like good data to use — it agrees relatively well with BOP's data. For Saturday, using the data above, that increases to +213% for Avatar 2, and for Sunday it increases further to +372%. Now let's weight these properly for each day. Thor 4's Friday contributed about 1.4x to its IM, its Saturday contributed about 1.45x, and its Sunday contributed about 1.12x. Putting that all together, that's 1 + 1.4*1.84 + 1.45*3.13 + 1.12*4.72 = a 13.4x multiplier. Obviously you have to adjust down quite heavily here for the higher presales = lower "PSm" — as you call it — effect, but I have a hard time seeing it adjust down to the 8-8.5x range. In fact, to get that 13.4x multiplier down to an 8x, you'd need to make that assumption that Avatar 2 is going to have 56% of the overall Friday to Sunday PSm as Thor 4.

Entire analysis is predicated on the assumption that the presales disparity between Avatar 2 and the other listed movies on Friday remains the same for Saturday and Sunday. From the data I've seen in this thread, that is not the case — Avatar 2 actually increases in presales strength compared to these other movies on Saturday and Sunday relative to Friday. If that is the case, then using the same methodology as above on a per-day basis rather than using the Friday disparity to project both Saturday and Sunday, the IM estimate would actually increase significantly.

Seems misguided. Avatar 2 isn't going to be primarily compared against 2022 blockbusters — it'll blow past all of them — but instead the highest-grossing movies of all time, most of which had significant help from China.

People keep saying this, but who's actually getting worked up here? The only people I really see dooming are new posters who barely, if ever, show up here, and even then a lot of it is just concern trolling to try to provoke a reaction out of the regulars. Ironically the regulars, the people you'd expect to be most likely to have meltdowns, are some of the most calm posters here.

Yes they have. Trust me, as someone who's been lurking and posting in this thread for years, nobody new has come out of the woodwork to jump on the perceived bandwagon over the past months or so. They have been here for years, and they've been incredibly consistent in their predictions for years. Nobody has kneejerked their predictions massively upwards because of some domestic opening weekend projections. I don't know where this is coming from because outside of some important milestones like teasers and trailers, I can't remember you really posting in this thread at all over the past year or so.

This is complete fiction. The $3b predictions predate the opening weekend projections by literal years, and I saw absolutely nobody jumping on the $3b bandwagon just because of the projections. And everyone's been around long before the summer — the regular posters have been here for 5+ years. Everything in your post is completely false.

The costs for the sequels are heavily frontloaded on Avatar 2. 3 and beyond won't cost nearly as much.

Golden egg rating just went up at 91%.

Isn't the 99% just pre-egg i.e. the pre-release expectations? I don't see a golden egg rating yet.

This is weak stuff, my man. You're not even getting any reactions -- step it up.

Outside of a little bit of ineffective concern trolling, I don't really see anyone freaking out here. Thread regulars are calm and confident.