Celedhring

This Monday is May Day, which is a holiday over here in Socialist Europe. It's a no brainer to open a big movie this weekend and take advantage of that. Workers Unite!

The largest electronics store in Barcelona had the trailer for this on all its Ultra-HD TVs. It surely makes for a lovely tech demo. The movie looks gorgeous, as long as the silliness doesn't reach Jupiter Ascending levels, I'll check it out. Jason Statham and Liam Neesson will be working overtime to make up for all the money this is going to lose though.

Kubo was a fantastic film until the very generic finale against a throwaway villain I didn't care about. Pity, because it was my favorite Laika film until that. Heck, it still might be despite that.

Anybody else rooted for Gargamel when he was a kid? I always found the smurfs so incredibly annoying.

It was dumped in Spain. Zero promotion whatsoever. Nothing. Whoever handles OS for this is either inept or just gave up and cut its losses with extreme prejudice.

The holidays will help a lot. BatB needs roughly a 6.6x multiplier to beat Fifty Shades' 38.3M take, which is the high watermark for a foreign movie since 2009. 6x and over isn't unheard of in Spain, but those usually happen in summer or winter, when the kids are out of school. Jungle Book attained a 4.5x, but it didn't benefit from Easter Holidays. Plus BaTB is already behaving a bit better (-23% drop vs 28% in first weekend). Right now I'm projecting 5x-5.5x and a low 30s finish. We'll see!

It should win the year unless Ep VIII has a softer drop than expected vs TFA. Moreover, it has an outside chance of of attaining Spain's largest BO take (for a foreign film) since Avatar, but it would need some best-case-scenario legs for that. I'll keep rotting for it.

It will bomb in Spain. Nobody takes the brand seriously and it doesn't look like the distributor is even trying - advertising is pretty much nonexistant. I suspect it will be the same in remaining Wester European markets. I mean, $2m in the UK? How awful is that. Might be big enough in China/Japan? I don't know. LG will turn a profit on their end, so they will be happy enough to go in for a second round if Saban somehow makes enough money.

That's a bit unfair since she's mostly done small films since she finished Potter. Noah was probably the highest profile film in which she had a decent role, and that did well enough. But it was still a biblical film directed by Darren Aronofsky. She's really not done much mainstream stuff post-HP. But yeah, I wonder what kind of projects she chooses now.

Nice sub-45 Logan drop, although PR wasn't much of a threat. Right now I'm seeing 220-225 for it, which sadly won't be enough for beating The Last Stand. I always begrudged the fact that the worst X-Men film is the top grossing one (no, I don't think Deadpool counts as an X-Men film since there's not a single character from the main saga in it).

I'm going to put it differently. Only three 150m+ openers have done over 3x without a December opening: Jurassic World, The Avengers, and The Dark Knight (and this one back in 2008). BATB getting there would be a massive achievement in this day and age, I don't think we can take good legs for granted when films open this huge. I guess that there's a legitimate case that it could behave like animated films that opened huge recently and did 3x without much of a sweat (Dory, Pets), but there's such a small sample of live-action family films that open big, that it's really hard to make a case for or against. That's what makes BATB so special. Closest we have is TJB which had amazing legs, but again we're comparing a 103m opener to a 174m one. It's uncharted territory. As I said, I'm really excited to see how this run pans out.

At the end of the day, BatB is the first non-animated family film (I consider late Potter to be YA things) to ever open north of 100m, so we're pretty much into uncharted territory. Will it really have >3x legs? Or will it fall on sub 3x territory like most non-christmas megaopeners? I'm actually pretty excited over BatB's run, and see what we can learn. Ironically, I don't care zilch for the movie itself.

I think Avatar 2 will make crazy amounts of money OS. People on here go on about lack of cultural impact - and I'm sure that might be the case in the US -, but I still saw people in blue Na'vi bodypaint during the carnivals a few weeks ago. But the exchange rate scenario will probably be worse than when TFA came out (and certainly much worse than when Avatar was released), and that could be a strong handicap. The Fed is going to be raising rates rather consistently from here on out, and the GOP/Trump seem to be hinting at some hard money policies (like the border adjustment tax).

DOM or WW? DOM I will go and say it won't happen. WW? A whole another story, and it would say a near certainty if the exchange rates weren't so likely to worsen in the next few years. Anyhow, go and make that club.

They are probably too lazy to rewrite all the post-mortem draft articles they had before the weekend. It has become such an awful site, I'm glad I no longer have to rely on them for advance BO news, since I found this place.

If Get Out reaches 200m it would become one of my favorite BO runs of the last years. I've missed this kind of run, a really small movie that people loves and goes on and on and on. My Big Fat Greek Wedding-lite.

Interesting. I liked the movie a lot, but the end was definitely unearned. How did you interpret it?

They really need to come up with a theme other than "should we live with humans or rule them?" - I mean the whole X-Men-as-racism metaphor is what made them so engaging in the first place, but that horse is beaten, buried, reincarnated with a new cast, and beaten and buried again. DOFP worked because it had the time travel angle that injected some narrative energy in the proceedings, and First Class worked because Matthew Vaughn and because the period setting was novel at the time, but they really need to move on. It's not like there aren't tons of X-Men stories out there to mine. I hope they finally move forward with the Phoenix Saga - unless they decide to reboot the whole thing *again*.

Well, I grew up reading tons of comics and I was bored. It was long, it had little tension, minimal actual stakes... Pfeh. As I said, I enjoyed the much less visually spectacular last fight much more.

The airport sequence bored me to tears. There, I said it. It was just noise and some random jokes, and overly long at that. I did like CW's last act a lot though. Probably the MCU's best villain and villainous plot. CW overall was a missed opportunity to me; it could have been MCU's best if 2/3s of it weren't so generic.

MMFR's story was lean and effective, something the modern blockbuster seems to have forgotten. This same leanness allowed the film to flesh out their characters and their interplay very effectively, plus creating a great sense of the world they inhabit. Having a lot of story doesn't mean having a good story. MMFR topped more than one snotty critics list, dismissing it as just a technical achievement is missing out on many things that made it great. It's also one of the best directed action films in recent memory. The camera is so dynamic, yet so precise. Honestly, I don't think that movie ever hits a false note. Everything is just right - it certainly doesn't need to be your cup of tea, but imho it was a triumph for modern blockbuster filmmaking. As for Logan, seeing it this Wednesday unless I can persuade my GF to see it tonight (hates superhero films, but thinks Jackman is hot). Can't wait.

Mad Max Fury Road was a sequel/reboot to a saga 30 years dormant, and which was never a box office force to begin with, despite its cult status. MMFR did great all things considered, imho. It beats the crap out of the other Mad Max films DOM, even adjusted. Agreed on the rest, too. The Raid were Indonesian films, I'm shocked they even grossed 6 figures.

The Friday bump is already a bit lower than spongebob's. Batman has grossed more during the week so I don't think there's enough "reserved demand" to replicate Spongebob's second weekend multipliers. Tomorrow will tell the tale I guess, I honestly want to be proven wrong and LB to break 200m, since I enjoyed it and I would like to get a sequel.

No chance that LB has a 41m 4-day with 7.6 friday. Which is a pity, I was kinda hoping this performed well enough to get a franchise that could coexist with the superserious live action character. LB will still make good money (the budget for these Lego movies is really low), but I suspect WB might look to other places to milk the Lego universe.

Completely agree. I thought the first half was powerful but the second was much more by the numbers and uninteresting. Patel/Kidman carried it, though.