mcneil039

From Deadline:"France - Opened #1 on Wednesday and has grossed $8M at 799 dates and 40% market share and is more than 1.5 bugger than Despicable Me. It’s the third biggest opening of 2013."'more than 1.5 bugger.'Appears she's still on drugs.

DM2 for the 2nd biggest UK release of the year after Hobbit 2? I mean THG1 did $37m so if DM2 can top IM3's $56m then it should be locked for #2.

The 4:30pm screening I attended with friends today was sold out. The crowd loved it as usual. The kids go absolutely nuts with the minions. Weather or no weather this is just so big.

Except in HK of course where it opened lower than Epic Turns out they dont like minions.

The Heat actual is bound to be lower. 40.0 sounds very good in headlines but smells very fishy.

I wouldnt exactly call 26C as hot since Beijing was like above 30C since late April but judging by the weather we've had this year it probably qualifies as hot. Maybe sports/music in general have something to do? You know, with Glastonbury and Robbie Williams having a concert at Wembley, and with F1 and Wimbledon. I'm prob talking rubbish here. Still amazing numbers though.

Things at my local Vue cinema are also notably quieter than y'day. Like you said it could be the weather (lol only in England would a GOOD day have a bad impact on box office) so maybe 15 is out of reach but hope it can still do 14.5M for the weekend

Is there a big chance that MU might fall by 50%+ next weekend? You know, if DM2 does open in the way some of us are expecting it to do.

But that chart from BoM is strictly domestic box office gross, not revenue for the studio, so yes Sony is having a terrible year.

I don't think the international audience is interested in this type of heavily politicised narrative, as is shown by OHF, so it'll prob do about 120m OS, 150 tops. Unless they go nuts and go for the impossible anti-US angle aka the hero actually burns the house down or something, in which case it'll do very well in the middle east, but terrible elsewhere so it still won't do more than 120m OS.

So in other words,Even factor in inflation, for DM2 to open to (potentially) 15m, almost Shrek 2 level, and it did this with significantly weaker previews, is completely out of this worldly amazing.

Out of curiosity and general laziness, how did Shrek 2 & 3 do in GBP terms? I too am lost for words now, I actually witnessed one of the UK's greatest B.O. day in history in one of its busiest cinemas. Talk about getting more than your money's worth.

It's Minionmania! Now just wait til the US cathes it too

How is DM2's performance in OZ compared to the UK? Is it just as massive, or slightly less great but still very good?

Baumer's club is looking more and more like a real possibility with every passing day, if the UK performance translates to the US it will be really, properly massive.

I can totally vouch for what PhilipJ2001 has said. I mean I don't run a cinema chain or anything but I've been living in London for the past few years and I go to the cinema a lot. Usually I go to the Vue Finchley Road one if I'm seeing a movie by myself, it's not a particularly busy place, for example when WWZ came out each of the two screenings I attended (both during the weekend) there had like 10 people or so. I watched DM2 last Saturday at 3:30pm and not only was that show practically sold out when I bought the ticket using one of the machines (very handy because you can check out how well/bad the films are doing) at 1pm (aka almost sold out two and half hours before the show which is ridiculous for any film let alone an animation) but also every other screening that day from 3pm onwards were close to being sold out. It was completely ridiculous, which is why I wasn't surprised at all when reading that DM2 had grossed more in 2 days than WWZ did in its proper debut weekend. And the audience loved it, yes there's less (but still some) 'heart' in it but as mass entertainment it is absolutely fantastic and superb fun for all age groups, the jokes and gags are there almost non-stop, and the minions were universally loved and adored, quite often even the ADULT ladies/guys around me were also laughing hysterically, and there were quite a lot of them too. Quite a few people clapped at the end. At the end of that screening my impression was quite simple: we have a monster hit in our hands. Guys, this seriously resembles far more towards Shrek than KFP. Then I checked out a few cinemas today as well, again at both Vue Westfield White City (Londoners will know how big that one is) and Vue Finchley Road every single show from 1pm onwards were either sold out or close to sold out, even the Sunday afternoon shows were like 2/3 booked already. For a comparison: I watched MoS with a friend at Vue Islington at 1:40pm on its release day, and there was like 15 people there. If you consider how ridiculously expensive cinema tickets are in the UK these days (a standard 2D ticket with a 'student discount' cost me 10.95GBP for crying out loud!) DM2 really is performing at a level I've never seen during my years in the UK. Thanks for reading the post, by the way.