kswiston

Venom will need more than another $15M in China to clear $850M worldwide. Entgroup has $19.45M of $21.3M coming from China this weekend. Venom's run in the rest of the world has just about wrapped up.

Fantastic Beasts 1 only made about $78M more domestically past that Thanksgiving Sunday. FB1's second FSS was about $45M. For argument's sake, let's say that FB2 does $30M this weekend during FSS. With the same legs as FB1 going forward, you get another $52M. Or $169.5M total. $185M would be a lot more than just generous. FB1 has held better since the start. So to hit $185M, FB2 would have to have an amazing drop next weekend, and hold venues well through those december weeks where we are getting 4-5 openers. Low 170s is definitely possible without invoking crazy holds, but I am not seeing much evidence that things are heading that way yet.

At least sharks have been big in the past. Solo lost to a film adaptation of the Rampage video game.

175-180M domestic for FB2 is dead. It would have to outperform the drops first film going forward to hit 175M. FB1 made 12.2x its Thanksgiving Wednesday during the rest of its run. FB2 needs 13.6x Wed to hit 175M now. 160M domestic might be optimistic. So down over 100M between domestic and China. I think that we have enough to call 700M+ unlikely.

The first 3 Disney Star Wars films were 1st or 2nd for the year worldwide. Solo will miss the top 20.

At this point you have to incite better holds than FB1 going forward to get FB2 to that number.

Fantastic Beasts 2 is going to miss 160M domestic. Edit: same holds as FB1 going forward would be a 39.7M 5 day. But FB2 has held worse every day. FB1 made 1.19x its thanksgiving 5 day during the rest of its run. So even if FB2 matched the strong legs of the first film going forward, it would end at 162M.

China is going to settle at $55M or less. Domestic is looking like possibly sub $170M. So $700M is going to depend on strong holds elsewhere. It will need >$475M from the rest of the world. FB1 did around $495M international outside of China.

Box office predictions for one. It will probably matter less going forward as we get to mostly sequels for post 2015 films, but a lot of optimistic 2016 to present worldwide predictions were partially based on projecting growth off of 2013 or 2014 USD values overseas instead of local currency.

The exchange rate crash does make it hard to have apples to apples comparisons of USD international grosses in the first half of this decade vs now. I remember seeing someone mention in the Venom thread that the Spider-man franchise has pretty stable overseas business in the 500Ms (before we knew how big Venom would get in China. It's going to finish well over 600M internationally now). However, that's only true because the Amazing Spider-man movies got a big bump from favorable exchange rates over Homecoming and Venom.

If this film breaks the low 700s barrier of $730M in coming weeks, feel free to point out that I was wrong.

Outside of a few films that resonate with them, Chinese filmgoers have shown a preference for local films as the market continues to expand to less affluent areas. There hasn't been a lot of growth for Hollywood since 2015. Especially if compared to the growth from 2012 to 2015.

Because the domestic Friday was down 20% from Fantastic Beasts 1 when you screen out previews. And the fact that it is a sequel with poorer WOM, and has a much busier fall slate to compete against in coming weeks makes it unlikely to have the legs of the first film (which were pretty great). $63M this weekend, with similar legs to the Hunger Games sequels is $170-175M domestic. That might end up being generous, as the Mockingjay films were received better by most metrics. User reviews in China are pretty terrible, and the film will be lucky to hit $60M there off of what is looking like a $36-37M opening. Exhibitioners are going to prioritize Venom for holdover business as a bunch of new films hit there next week. The first Fantastic Beasts opened to ~$41M in China and ended up with around $85M.

Is it? Fantastic Beasts 2 is a bit more than $20M ahead of the first film internationally after 3 days. But $12M of that is China (which was delayed a week for FB1). FB2 also made more on Wednesday and Thursday. So basically, it's $30.7M overseas minus China on Friday for FB2 vs $29.7M for the first film's international Friday. https://variety.com/2016/film/box-office/fantastic-beasts-international-box-office-in-three-days-1201922980/ Domestic and China are likely to be down at least $90M from the first film combined. Possibly over $100M. If the rest of the international market drops off quicker than the first film, this could dip under $700M. I think that low 700s is probably the optimistic scenario.

My guess is that anything over $28.5M today will have Universal claiming the Oct weekend record from Venom tomorrow morning. Maybe even $28M.

Both of those characters were in the previous films. Any effect that they may or may not have had on box office appeal would already be factored into the 2015 films.

What is Dying to Survive expected to make on Sunday? 3-day total without previews is around 780M unless I messed something up. I assume 1B for the 4-day is locked. Can it pass 1.05B?

Mojo didn't update yesterday, so the domestic total was previously missing both Tuesday and Wednesday. Domestic total after Wednesday was a bit under $298M. So if we are throwing in Thursday, it will either break $1B today, or be like $1-2M shy. Assuming the International Thurs estimate holds up.

I am still having a hard time seeing Incredibles 2 over JW2 considering that it's 3 days vs 3.5 this weekend. But right now, it does seem that either Incredibles manages much better than the expected 85-90M, or Fallen Kingdom misses that 135M+ tracking by a fair margin.

How close are Fallen Kingdom and Incredibles 2 on those charts right now?

The noise made about Age of Ultron's drop was always overblown. If exchange rates didn't dip in late 2014, it would have been about even with Avengers 1 worldwide. Even domestically, it wasn't terrible. It wasn't great, but plenty of sequels to huge films dip in the 25-30% range. Just a drop in repeat viewing on sequels can be a big blow. 2015 just had a lot of big films, some of which were unexpected. So Ultron went from being what people had pegged as a contender for #1 of the year to being completely overshadowed. In the end, AoU held a lot better from Avengers than any of the sequels from the $1.5B+ 2015 films.

Sony Pictures Animation has a better track record than WB though. WB has released two animated films in that same Sept window as Smallfoot, and neither was anywhere near $100M. SPA released 5 films in that slot, and 4 were over $100M. The 5th still beat both of the WB efforts, despite coming out a decade before.

$100M is a low enough barrier, that we could get some left field surprises late in the year that wouldn't stand out as possibilities on a release schedule right now. But I don't see 2018 challenging the $100M+ record. The huge films are taking too much oxygen out of the room for films releasing in their shadow to break out. Rampage would have been over $100M if it had another week before Infinity War for instance.

Speaking of superhero films that clearly needed a fudge to boost their pathetic numbers: http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?page=weekend&id=avengers11.htm

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?page=weekend&id=pixar2014.htm http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?page=weekend&id=pixar1117.htm