Jason

Added eight films to the master table: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 Inception Shrek the Third Fast & Furious 6 Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull Deadpool Guardians of the Galaxy Also updated the exchange rate adjustment to be current as of September 23. Archived tables from September 9, for reference purposes:

Here's a regional breakdown of Frozen, Inside Out, and Zootopia, with ER-adjusted grosses shown for Frozen and Inside Out: Hard to make predictions this far out, but I'm going to assume Moana will be well-received. All the numbers of are guesstimates, but hopefully reasonable ones, neither conservative nor wildly optimistic. I'm predicting $325M domestic, I'd predict more but I think Sing is going to cut off Moana's late legs. ER-adjusted European gross for all three of these films has been pretty consistent, so $225M seems pretty reasonable. ER-adjustment for Latin America is not nearly as valid because of large increases in ticket price in local currency, so I think $90M is reasonable. Australia/NZ - $25M, Middle East/Africa and untracked territories - $20M. Asia is really tricky. Looking at a wider set of animated films (ER-adjusted grosses shown here), grosses in Asia are more variable than other regions, largely because the three large markets of China, Japan, and South Korea sometimes completely ignore films (Ice Age), but also sometimes go wildly crazy for them (Frozen in Japan, Zootopia in China). I'm not going to predict a breakout for Moana in any of those three markets, but I don't think Moana will be ignored either - $75M in China (more than Frozen, but I'm factoring in market growth), $50M in Japan, $40M in South Korea. Another $25M from all other Asian markets. $190M total. 190+225+90+25+20 = $550M OS $325M domestic + $550M OS = $875M WW, enough to put Moana past Pets and probably Sing, but perhaps not enough to pass Fantastic Beasts.

I've only seen Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Howl's Moving Castle, When Marnie Was There, and The Wind Rises. Can't really pick a favourite right now between Princess Mononoke and The Wind Rises. Saw them both fairly recently. TIFF will be showing all of the Ghibli films during the winter holidays, planning on seeing some of the ones I've haven't seen yet. Right now I'm thinking Nausicaä, Grave of the Fireflies, My Neighbor Totoro, Whisper of the Heart, Ponyo, Arietty, and The Tale of Princess Kayuga. (Open to being persuaded on the merits of others though!) Think I'd also like to rewatch Mononoke and The Wind Rises on the big screen.

Agree. I think there's another ~$15M to go in markets that opened up before Brazil, another ~$15M from Brazil, New Zealand, and Australia combined (mostly Australia), which would bring us up to ~$474M. Domestic should be around $366M. That adds up to ~$840M, ~$18M required from Italy/Poland to pass Inside Out.

Moana Beauty and the Beast Hacksaw Ridge Queen of Katwe Sing Arrival Fantastic Beasts La La Land Rogue One The Red Turtle

Can confirm. There's no statistically significant upward trend in the Italian market from 2003-2015 in local currency. The r-squared of 0.0953 has a probability of occurring by chance of about 75%. (This is in contrast to the North American market, where there is a clear upward trend: r-squared=0.7946, p=0.001.) It's worth noting that years as recent as 2012 & 2014 were actually lower than 2003. Here's a graph of the Italian market from 2003-2015:

I can't speak towards Peludo's methods, but it's actually extremely trivial for me to update the current exchange rate. I have one master column of current exchange rates that when updated instantly updates every single other film in the spreadsheet. I can pretty much do any date that someone is interested in, as long as it's after 2002-ish. Further back than that it gets more challenging to produce accurate numbers, because of spotty availability of currency data, as well as the changeover to the Euro. I actually could update the master list more often, but day-to-day fluctuations aren't very meaningful. I've decided on every two weeks-ish only because if I did it less often than that there's a risk I'd forget about it completely.

Here's another way of looking at it. From the-numbers.com, a graph of Suicide Squad's box office run: The yellow line starts off low, which is typical for comic book adaptations which tend to front-loaded. After that, since the yellow line is neither moving up nor down (at least not significantly) it means that Suicide Squad's late legs are essentially average (at least for the sample being used in the model, for which no details are provided but I presume is all films in their database). For reference, this is what (really) good late legs looks like (guess which film I'm using as an example ):

It may very well be that there are many people here who were predicting under $300M at the time (my own recollection is that it was pretty mixed). But the fact is that a statistical analysis can easily show that Suicide Squad's current performance is well within the normal range of what would be expected from its 10-day performance. I am definitely not the only one who suggested a total over $300M was probable, and there were people who did it more confidently than I did (for example, @EmpireCity above). But since I don't have time to dig up anyone else's posts: Most relevant to the discussion at hand: For the record, I am quite happy about Suicide Squad's run.

I really enjoyed When Marnie Was There. Just watched it tonight so I'll wait a bit before I try and place it, but I think it's got a good chance of landing in my top 15 (of about 60). Thanks @chasmmi

I've collected data for the total box office gross in 2015 for a number of territories. The list is by no means comprehensive, it was generally much easier to get information for other English-speaking and European territories. This isn't the only way to put international numbers in perspective, I know that some of you have directly compared the top blockbusters. However, I think this is a pretty good way to do it. It also helps to give a sense of where Hollywood blockbusters do comparatively poorly compared to local releases - India being the most extreme example. Regional conglomerates are in bold. Total 2015 box office in US$ millions, converted from local currency using average exchange rate for 2015, where applicable. Ratio is US + Canada box office compared to territory in question, generally rounded to nearest whole number. Sources listed below table. Sources: Box Office Mojo - Yearly Box Office MPAA Theatrical Market Statistics 2015 Variety - China Box Office Growth Motion Pictures Producers Association of Japan - Statistics Variety - Korea Sets Box Office Records in 2015 German Films - Market Studies Variety - Hong Kong Box Office Screen Australia - Box Office Motion Pictures Distributors' Association of New Zealand - Press Release BFI - The Box Office 2015 Celluloid Junkie - EU Box Office Box Office Türkiye - Yearly The Hollywood Reporter - Latin America's Film Industry Paradox

It had an Oscar-qualifying run in Los Angeles county last December.

Here's a regional breakdown (plus China and Japan) for Dory compared to Nemo, Frozen, Inside Out, and Zootopia. ER-adjusted totals are also shown for Nemo, Frozen, and Inside Out. Finding Dory has done well in Latin America, especially taking into account the very substantial weakening of most Latin American currencies over the past couple years. However, even if Dory gets another $70M in Europe (which I think is reasonable although not conservative), that will put Dory at a total comparable to Zootopia and Inside Out but well short of even ER-adjusted totals of Frozen and Nemo. Part of the reason why we expected such high totals for Dory was because of how huge Nemo was, followed by 13 years of market growth due to inflation, 3D etc. I've finally managed to get good figures for the total box office for Europe/Middle East/Africa (EMEA) going as far back to 2005 (from various MPAA Theatrical Market Statistics reports). Europe appears to be about 95% of that market. Using that data and the EUR/USD and GBP/USD exchange rates, I estimate a 2003 European box office total of $6.6B. (I used a general trendline for the period from 2003-2008 to estimate the box office in local currency, then converted to USD.) EMEA box office totals shown below, with average exchange rates for that year. (Eurozone is about 70% of the market, GBP another ~20%). Italicized are my 2003, 2004, and 2016 estimates. Figures are in US$ billions. Data for the Japanese box office is here. Unfortunately they don't have year-to-date totals, but the year-to-year totals are pretty stable in Japan, so for now I'm going to estimate ¥220B total and ¥100B for imported films. Using the aforementioned estimates of total box office in EMEA and Japan for this year, as well as estimates for Dory's final European total, we can compare Nemo and Dory in terms of box office market share. US$ totals are in millions, ¥ totals are in billions. Estimates are italicized. From this we can see that Dory will have actually have a slightly higher share of the North American box office in 2016 than did Nemo in 2003. However, Dory will have a much lower share of the total box office in Europe and Japan (~50% and ~40%, respectively). In the case of Japan, a possible explanation is that the imported share of the total box office has generally been falling, which could be generally limiting the ceiling for imported films compared to the past (obviously Frozen would be an exception). No such data is available for Europe. For Dory to have a similar share of the market as did Nemo, the European total would have to be around $400M and the Japanese total around $100M. I don't know if anyone specifically predicted a European total that high, but $100M in Japan is in line with the predictions that were being made. Anyway, long story short, it's reasonable to have expected a lot more from Dory in Europe and a good bit more in Japan. Obviously Dory's North American performance has been great, as well as Australia/New Zealand. I think Dory's performance in Latin America has been pretty decent, although I haven't looked at the market statistics in detail.

@Corpse Do you have an estimate for what this year's total box office will be in Japan and what the share will be for Japanese/imported films? I can't find a source that has year-to-date totals.

Moana Beauty and the Beast Hacksaw Ridge Queen of Katwe Sing Fantastic Beasts Rogue One The Red Turtle Dunkirk Doctor Strange

I'll take it as well.

We've been down this road before. There is no doubt Dory has been a disappointment relative to almost all of our expectations, and certainly mine. (The lowest OS prediction I can recall was Agafin's at $710M. @Olive said "just hope for a billion WW" but didn't give a specific OS prediction.) Speaking only for myself, I looked at predictions of $900, $1B OS etc., and merely adjusted them downwards for exchange rate. I wasn't trying to be conservative, I was imagining gangbusters performance. That being said, while I think we are almost all disappointed, I would argue that our high expectations were part of the problem. Now having examined the ER-adjusted regional/territorial breakdown for most of the highest-grossing animated films (and all of the recent ones), I can see that even $600M in ER-adjusted OS gross is exceptional, and Minions is the only animated film to have done that without spectacular performance in either China (Zootopia) or Japan (Frozen). Also, while Dory has fallen short of Nemo in Europe and Japan, it probably wasn't realistic to have expected an increase there. Unlike the North American market, those box office markets have not grown substantially since 2003.

Re: Sing on Metacritic, it's hard to predict a final range because of the fact that Metacritic uses a weighting system. That being said, for the films I've checked, the unweighted rating is quite close to the final rating. Using that assumption, (and assuming random sampling, normal distribution etc.) there's a less than 10% chance of Sing exceeding Dory's MC score. However, my number one reason for being skeptical for a nomination is that Sing has still been noted to have some weakness in storytelling, and on top of that doesn't seem technically impressive (the animation is definitely not as good as Zootopia, Dory, or Moana). Even though it's just one example, I think @DamienRoc has made a pretty good case for the Lego Movie "snub" in 2014 being a result of the Animation branch placing a higher emphasis on technical aspects than critics or the general audience. From earlier in this thread (quoted in part, full post here) when there was a discussion about whether Zootopia could get snubbed: See also this post from the Lego Movie thread:

So I first watched this in the spring. I wasn't feeling very engaged during the first and second acts, but the third act more than made it up. I felt like a fool for not realizing sooner why Riley needed Sadness, and the climax was very emotional for me. (Overall, I'd probably have rated it A- if asked at this point.) I rewatched this recently with a couple of close friends who hadn't seen it. We were deciding between Inside Out and Frozen (I've seen both), I think I said something along the lines of "I enjoyed Frozen more but Inside Out is more clever". On a second viewing I couldn't help but feel like I'd rather just skip through and rewatch the last 20 minutes or so, which is pretty unusual for me. (Usually I enjoy watching an entire film a second time, unless I outright disliked it the first time.) Anyway, neither of them liked Inside Out (exact words include "very disappointing" and "underwhelmed, to speak of it nicely"). It was a bit of a surprise to me, because Inside Out isn't just a critically acclaimed film, a lot of indicators suggest it was received very well by the general audience. And with both of them not liking Inside Out, it means that my entire circle of closest friends didn't like it. (The two I rewatched it with were not aware of the other's reactions.) The main overall criticisms: the resolution was very predictable an exact quote from one friend: Pretty much "called it" the moment that I saw Sadness being isolated in Headquarters I was apparently the only one who didn't realize in the first half or so that Joy needed to realize Sadness was needed for Riley to get help it was hard to connect with the characters the emotions themselves were very one-dimensional, particularly Fear, Anger, and Disgust (I agree, although it makes sense that they would be) Riley herself ends up not being the main focus - two friends didn't even feel that the climax was emotional (those that did thought it was mostly because of Bing Bong) two friends mentioned that her emotions were too simplistic for that age and she should have already had more complex emotions (which are hinted at only at the ending) one friend was particularly skeptical of Riley's plight in general and felt that she was overreacting ("spoiled brat") One of them briefly commented on facebook regarding being "underwhelmed" and followed up with a pretty detailed critique. The critique focused on the depiction of emotion as being "unrealistic/unwieldy" and a lack of empathy for the emotions and Riley, partially for that reason. The commentary on facebook was generally along the lines of "loved it, thought it nailed it", or "yes, it's not perfect, but I still loved it", or "underwhelmed at first, but turned around at the end" (closest to my initial reaction). What I'm most interested in (for purely academic reasons) is whether there's some underlying reason my circle of friends liked Inside Out a lot less than most other people. Of the things we share in common, most of them would apply to at least some people I'm aware of that really liked Inside Out. A couple of remaining possibilities thus far lacking counterexamples is that we are all either immigrants or first-generation Asian-Canadians, and (except for me) have watched a substantial amount of East Asian television/films. There are some reasons why I think this could make sense, but I'll hold back for now (to see if anyone else independently arrives at the same ideas). Of course it's also possible that it's just coincidental, or some combination of non-obvious personality traits or experiences. Is there anyone who really liked Inside Out that has watched a lot of East Asian television/films, or is otherwise strongly influenced by that cultural background? Does anyone else think it makes sense that this could have something to do with it? Any other insights or feedback are very welcome!

Was planning on watching Emperor's New Groove on Netflix but I either missed the deadline or it wasn't available in Canada. I just put a hold on it at the library though, as well as All Dogs Go to Heaven. The Road to El Dorado is on Netflix (just realized that) so I'll definitely watch that one as well. Only FYC I won't be able to watch is Grave of the Fireflies.

Current list has 53 films, in alphabetical order below. Waiting for from the library: Bolt, Howl's Moving Castle, When Marnie Was There, Wreck-It Ralph Will try to watch as many on Netflix as I can, more or less top-down (in ratings/reviews) of the ones I haven't seen. Coraline and The Book of Life are up next. I'm willing to consider any recommendations!

Added The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King to the master table. Also updated the exchange rate adjustment to be current as of September 9. Archived tables as of August 19 (for reference purposes):

$309M from OS markets opening before July 14. $7M Hong Kong $25M Mexico $68M Japan $56M UK $485M US + Canada =$950M Norway/Sweden/Finland/Denmark/Greece/Turkey - $15M, possibly a bit more ~$965M from all current markets Remaining markets: Italy/Germany/Austria. Only $35M required to hit $1B. $60M from those markets (seems reasonable to me) would have Dory just squeak past Zootopia with $1,025M.

Quick update of my most recent projection: China will produce a few more millions than expected, so markets opening up to August 14: ~$385M Russia will produce up to $10M more than expected, so markets opening up August 21: ~$45M Opening in Brazil or the Phillipines is not consistent with Minions-level performance but better than IO/Zootopia, so remaining markets: $75M - $90M OS Total: $505M - $520M I'm not examining the numbers super closely right now so there's a chance I'm missing somewhere it's substantially underperformed compared to last projection. But assuming I'm not, then $500M is nearly locked - a massive underperformance in Italy (compared to DM2 or IO) would cause it to miss. Beating Dory OS is very unlikely, since the upper range of Pets is $520M and that's the lower range of Dory.

Moana Beauty and the Beast Queen of Katwe Hacksaw Ridge Rogue One Fantastic Beasts Sing The Red Turtle Dunkirk Doctor Strange