AHepBurn

It is, but I think the criteria that makes a successful August blockbuster is really narrow. It really needs to be part of a franchise that has a lot of brand awareness, is something people want at the time and is decently received by the general audience. If it has those (or has one/two of those that massively overcome deficiencies in others) then it'll have enough interest in order to sustain it through the leaner back to school and returning from vacation period that August is. We can all look at GotG and SS as examples as to why an August blockbuster is good in concept, but it's not like Hollywood releasing blockbusters in August is a new thing. The other ones just don't meet one or more of the criteria above and unfortunately get lost in the end of summer period and people decide to wait until home releases.

I'm really disappointed with these SS numbers. They're good enough for WB to bite their tongue over the next couple of weeks with official announcements for the sequel, Harley Quinn spinoff and home video details. Just tell me about what I already know is coming!

I think number stuck because a theater attendant asked if we were watching Star Trek because of the 75th anniversary. Being a little tipsy, it wasn't until we sat down that what she said hit me and all I could think was "Wait, Superman's 75th was three years ago! Star Trek can't be 75! Wonder Woman is 75 this year... Did Star Trek have a book or something before the series that I never knew about all this time? It's got to have come out only in the 60s, right?" Apparently it's still bugging me.

Finally had free time and caught Star Trek. Figured I had to being a Trekkie and it being the 75th. Loved the Sabotage part.

There's nothing wrong with Power Rangers. A movie series about teenagers fighting monsters with martial arts skills and giant robots can be silly fun. It started in the US in 1993 and the super sentai genre has been in Japan since 1975. For it to have that kind of longevity shows it has fans and there's room in the market for absurdly fun entertainment. If Lionsgate were to have a Power Rangers franchise that consistently pulled in the mid to late $100mil and early $400mil worldwide it'd be a solid franchise. The main problem I see with this movie is it's reported $120mil budget, which is really too high for something that has the low budget camp value as one of it's big draws with it's fans. If it pulls the numbers I said above and pulls in the fanbase, Lionsgate can still eat the loss and readjust with cheaper, campier sequels.

I'd flip those two totals. None of the Harry Potter films save Sorcerer's Stone, Half Blood Prince and Deathly Hallows 2 crossed $300mil domestic. Adjusted for inflation it's a different thing, but I still can't see a spinoff without the main cast drawing as much attention as a series drawing from the main line of books. Conversely, both DC films this year have crossed $300mil, so the audience is there. Plus, anecdotal evidence of course, after taking my daughter to school this week with her Wonder Woman backpack and meeting five female teachers and aides she'll be with, each one of them without fail said "I love that backpack!" followed by "Did you know the Wonder Woman movie is coming out?" I think the demand and anticipation is certainly there.

I doubt Tsujihara is going away for a variety of reasons. Expectations that BvS would cross $1b just because they added Batman was ludicrous. Being a Batman movie didn't help Nolan's first, which took in just $374mil worldwide. It was the combination of Nolan, Bale and Ledger that made those films a $1bil franchise, not simply because of Batman. BvS featured a new Batman in a new continuity. Looking at various continuous franchises that feature reboots (ex: Bond, Spider-Man, Transformers) there isn't a continual increase in take simply because it's the same character conceptually. BvS acted like a solid non-breakout sequel to MoS with a 25% increase in take, which is reasonable in the unpredictable >$700mil range. With the same sort of solid non-breakout increase for JL, I would expect it to just kiss $1bil but I wouldn't be surprised if it just missed it. Did critical reviews hurt the take for BvS? Maybe, maybe not. We've all seen how true event films are largely critic immune because people are going to want to partake of the event anyway. Having amazing critical reviews didn't help CACW hit the $200mil OW mark and it seems like it the general audience treated it as largely an RDJ Marvel movie, since it matched well with IM3. Could BvS have earned more if it was more well received? I'm thinking it would have possibly given it a bit more casual interest to get that extra $20mil - $30mil to cross $900mil WW, but since it was both a tonally heavier movie as well as a longer running movie I think that's really the extent of it. SS having pretty similar numbers to BvS also pretty much indicates that this is just probably the audience level for that brand at the moment. I think the thing that will help Tsujihara the most is just the big picture between 2015 and 2016. The studio more or less gave up 2015 the moment they moved BvS to 2016. They knew that they didn't have everything in line that year and decided it to have a rough year followed by a good year instead of two okay years in a row. This year is the first year we're seeing their overall strategy in place, with two DC films anchoring a third proven tentpole (Potter this year, Lego next year) and a fourth unproven tentpole (Tarzan this year, Kong next year) with the requisite lower budget portfolio. From a sheer numbers perspective, it's been all a success so far. They're looking at possibly kissing $2bil D this year and their only writedowns are War Dogs, Nice Guys and Keanu, which is nothing. With things now in place, if this happens again next year and the year after then things are completely rosy. Structurally, they've already reigned in the budgets for the DC films. Critically they were savaged because of studio interference. But with the DC Films brand getting new heads and becoming more independent, I really don't think studio interference will be much more of a factor since the numbers indicate that the DC movies are an established brand now. I can see more of that attention being focused on newer, unestablished brands in order to get them off the ground. Fantastic Beasts should be fine but we'll see if that, along with their burgeoning Kong/Godzilla franchise falls under the "expensive tentpole remake nobody wants" category they and other studios have a problem with. Things could also be a problem if, as has been reported previously, Warners were indeed intent on doing less lower budget films in favor of a more tentpole-centric approach like Disney. As we see from this year, this sort of variety approach is a real strength for Warners.

Good numbers for Sully and continues a very good year for Warners. Batman v Superman ($250M) $330M D Suicide Squad ($175M) $320M D Central Intelligence ($50M) $127M D Legend of Tarzan ($180M)$126M D Conjuring 2 ($40M) $102M D Lights Out ($4.9M) $66M D Me Before You ($20M) $50M D Barbershop: Next Cut ($20M) $54M D How To Be Single ($38M) $47M D Write-offs so far will be War Dogs, Nice Guys and Keanu, all of which aren’t really much of a write-off. Tarzan was looking disastrous for them, but that’s come back nicely. It really shows the value of their typical broad release strategy supplementing tentpoles that do well enough with lower budget films that could take off massively or not cost much if they don’t. They’ll need to take control of the budgets for their DC movies. But with Suicide Squad and Wonder Woman reportedly at $175M and, I would guess, Justice League being closer to $225 due to a lot of elements (concepts, costumes, cgi, etc.) pre-developed through BvS, it seems like they already looked ahead and took care of that. Critical reception and broadening the audience for the audience for DC needs to be worked on as well, but that also seems to have been addressed by setting up DC Films to be more independent under Jon Berg and Geoff Johns. I think Fantastic Beasts will be the lone $200M-$299M film for the year, which will be good enough to revive the Harry Potter franchise. Maybe even Storks will hit due to it’s slot. Next year they’re also pushing out two more Lego movies, so that’s another potential franchise in the making. So really, other than not green lighting high budget remakes that nobody wants (ex: Tarzan) it looks like Warners is in a good position after a rough 2015 and will be one of the few studios with multiple solid franchises and along with solid low budget films to round out their portfolio.

I say Fantastic Beasts in the $200-$299 range. That's it.

Big jump for Kubo. Along with its weekend numbers, I think this continues the idea that discount Tuesdays are largely just changing when families are watching movies instead of drawing in more people. I haven't fullly kept up with the foreign numbers but I'm guessing Kubo will fall in the continued Laika range of $50mil D, $100mil WW.

SS’s done well overall. It’ll ill end it’s run within 5% of GotG’s domestic total and has already surpassed it’s foreign total if you take out China. Could both BvS and SS have made more depending on if they were critically received? Maybe, maybe not. We’ve seen with the Marvel moves that high critical acclaim doesn’t necessarily translate to monster box office every single time. Their box office potential is now just really limited since it seems they’ve basically plateaued on their fanbase. AoU really never got as high as Avengers because the first movie was an anomaly with a lot of casual interest. AoU attracted good casual interest as well but largely played to fans of the franchise. CACW was expected by many to explode to Avengers numbers but didn’t. It played pretty much exactly like IM3 and probably safe to say the general public saw it as an RDJ Marvel movie more than anything. There’s still a big $800mil - $1bil “No RDJ Gap” that Marvel still can’t seem to pierce. The X-Men movies similarly all play at roughly the same numbers because they’re largely composed of their core audience that has stuck around since the first movie. DC’s movies are probably limited by their fanbase right now as well since they’re playing with relatively similar numbers. They’ve just shown slower growth instead of explosive growth since they haven’t gotten their one big breakout hit just yet. But the franchise is making a lot of money without showing signs of a dropoff yet, so like the Bond movies they’ll keep making films and it’s inevitable that something will hit massively at some point. Looking back, I think BvS did fine. There was expectation by many that it would easily crack $1bil because of the addition of Batman, but this is a brand new Batman and a different franchise entirely. That kind of continued increase just because it has the same brand name (ex: James Bond) really just doesn’t happen. Even though the character was well known, Nolan’s first Batman movie took in just $374mil worldwide ($207mil D, $167mil F), which isn't much. That franchise broke out to $1bil status because of Nolan, Bale and Ledger, not just because it’s Batman. We’ve also seen what happens when you essentially do a soft-reboot in Transformers, which showed steady growth with it’s first three movies then dropped off with Age of Extinction because, even though it’s still a Transformers movie with many of the same elements, it’s an entirely different cast and essentially starting over once more. Looking back, it seems like BvS played like it was a sequel to MoS, which makes sense considering the same cast and creative crew. A 25%-30% increase in worldwide is reasonable for a sequel considering it’s working in the unpredictable +$700mil range. Giving the same sort of sequel bump to JL, I’d see it just cracking over $1bil but I wouldn’t be surprised if it just missed if it doesn’t get ridiculously high reviews to pull more massive casual interest instead of just good levels of casual interest.

I think those numbers are $5mil - $10mil too high and I don't feel like Suicide Squad would necessarily play well in China. But considering BvS hit $95mil in China, if SS played like a CBM there I would say yes with those numbers.

No, with a just a ~5% variance in likely average domestic totals and a ~10% variance in likely average worldwide totals among (admittedly) three data points, that's called a "consistency" and a "trend."

The numbers are good overall. I think with analyzing legs with a movie like this is that, like with anything, we can't really put everything out there in the same box because variables are different from film to film. The DC films are going to continue to have a huge opening week then steep dropoff the next week every time because the characters in their portfolio have been much more exposed to the public for decades compared to any Marvel franchise that isn't Spider-Man, Fantastic Four or X-Men. The initial rush to see the movie the first couple of weeks is going to be huge because of the size and rabidness of the fanbase. This happened with Civil War, which had monstrous first weeks because everyone knew everyone on the movie then tapered off once the fanbase rush abated. Compare that to, for example Ant Man, which had a decent opening and really good legs because the demand for the movie was much more spread out instead of being focused on one end of the spectrum than the other because the character just wasn't really well known. It's really going to take until the 3rd/4th weeks and where we really see what reception is like for most DC films and then looking at the final tally to see how successful it really is. I really don't know if it will. The numbers for all three DC movies are really consistent - ~+$120mil opening, ~+$300mil domestic ~$750mil worldwide. I've said it before, but that's a built in fanbase and one that will seemingly go to a movie because it's a "DC movie". Compare to the Marvel movies which have a lot of variance depending on if RDJ is in the movie or not. It's looking like those are pretty much the minimum numbers for any DC movie and I'm thinking those will likely be the baseline expectations for Wonder Woman and Justice League. I don't think continued poor critical reception will hurt them either, since the last two movies have had really wide scathing criticism but they're still pulling in really good numbers without a downtrend. I've said before that the current DC franchise and the Fast and Furious franchise seem to have a lot in common where they have a really solid core who will turn out for the movie because it's simply their thing. I actually think the worst thing for people who don't like the DC movies is to have Wonder Woman and Justice League be poorly reviewed as well. Because with the legs Suicide Squad is showing, it seems like things are turning and much like with the Fast and Furious films which were hammered for so long people are starting to think that critics just don't matter when it comes to this franchise. A critic-proof franchise that already does ~+$120mil opening, ~+$300mil domestic ~$750mil worldwide is really scary and, like with Fast 5/6/7, makes me wonder what an eventual breakout film in the franchise will do.

The only two modern Laika movies both received two reasonable ~20% bumps on their fist Tuesday. ParaNorman at $1,747,374 (20%) and Box Trolls at $862,914 (17.7%). I said in the Monday post that Kubo came in lower than I'd like at $12,608,372 when Laika movies tend to hit more in the ~$15mil range. I figured the movie would make up some of that ground on Tuesday and would receive a healthier than average bump, since Kubo was otherwise behaving step-in-step with other films in the studio. This is just part of the new paradigm of how big discount Tuesdays are right now for families with how expensive movie tickets are these days. I think it strongly supports the idea that discount Tuesdays aren't really bringing in more people so much as it is shifting around when audiences watch and pay for movies.

Kubo is behaving at pretty much textbook Laika - mid-$10mil opening followed by a steep drop down to ~$1mil on the first Monday. Corpse Bride (2005) - Really more of a contract job for them. $19,656,451 OW, $1,022,366 MON (-79.3%) Coraline (2009) $16,849,640 OW, $1,078,385 MON (-79.3%) ParaNorman (2012) $14,087,050 OW, $1,455,868 MON (-64.1%) Box Trolls (2014) $17,275,239 OW, $733,441 MON (-85%) Kubo (2016) $12,608,372 OW, $1,077,095 MON (-71%) Laika does love that $1mil figure for the first Monday. Final grosses are all really similar as well, with ~$55mil domestic and ~$110mil worldwide on a $60mil budget for each of their films. They have a fairly steady audience and history of performance, though Kubo opened up on the lower side of numbers that I would have liked. Fortunately, Laika is a unique company that's not really beholden to box office performance. It's owned by Nike owner Phil Knight and operated by his son Travis, who release films more as passion projects than for revenue sources. Thankfully for fellow fans of their work, it's inevitable that more of these films will be released.

The Kubo drop is steep, but it's par the course for Laika films on their first Monday. Coraline -79.3%, ParaNorman -64.1%, Corpse Bride -79.3%, Box Trolls -85%.

If we’re talking critic/audience reception, as I said let’s look at the Fast and Furious franchise and use RT, not because it’s perfect but it’s convenient: Fast and the Furious (2001) 53%C, 74%A 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003) 36%C, 50%A Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006) 37%C, 70%A Fast and Furious (2009) 28%C, 67%A Fast 5 (2011) 77%C, 83%A Fast and Furious 6 (2013) 69%C, 83%A Furious 7 (2015) 79%C, 83%A Compared to: Man of Steel (2013) 55%C, 75%A Batman v Superman (2016) 27%C, 65%A Suicide Squad (2016) 26%C, 68%A For years, critics and many in the general audience jokingly referred to Fast and Furious as “that shitty car racing franchise” and fans had to weather the criticism. But it maintained a steady following and good box office performance. It took some time, but people began to accept it for what it was and it drew more fans and grew. The fifth and sixth movies saw a good jump in revenue, especially worldwide and the seventh (propped up unfortunately by Paul Walker’s death) blew it up into a global phenomenon. Just because you personally don’t like the franchise, that’s fine. Movies are art. Art is subjective. You don’t have to like everything everyone does. But the numbers for the DC films are solid. The core audience is there and they show up. Like the Marvel films prior to the Avengers (which really wasn’t setting the world on fire) the franchise just needs to get polished up, people need to take it for what they’re doing with it instead of what they want and it needs that one franchise defining breakout. Fortunately for WB/DC, they seem to have a sizable group of people who are into it so far.

The combined domestic takes for BvS and SS alone are more than the entire annual domestic takes for the #5 Paramount, #6 Sony/Columbia, #7 Lionsgate, etc. studios thus far. The DC movies will be fine. Like anything, they'll be tweaked with until they get into their groove and are able to firmly plant a flag at a good place for themselves in the market. Adjustments have seemingly already been made behind the scenes just prior to the release of SS, since it looks like DC Films has become its own branch under John Berg and Geoff Johns. We'll see how WW turns out, as that will be the first movie produced under the new structure and they have a good 10-month period to work on the film prior to release. It's nice to see SS stabilizing. I'm hoping that means that word-of-mouth is better than initially expected and people are finally beginning to understand that WB/DC is going for something different than the standard capeflick faire of the past few years. Big picture, what I do find fascinating is that the numbers for MoS, BvS and SS are pretty similar - ~+$120mil opening, ~$300mil domestic, ~mid-$700mil worldwide. That seems to indicate that the DC movies do have a considerable audience and one that will watch a "DC movie" because it's a "DC movie" and not based on character associations. This is a pretty interesting contrast to the Marvel movies, which have a lot of variance based on lead character. This is the kind of trend that makes me wonder how the capeflicks really will be doing next year. There were quite a few who were really bullish on the potential for Age of Ultron and Civil War to hit Avengers-like numbers and beyond (+$200mil opening, $1.4bil worldwide, etc.) but that doesn't seem to be the case. At thirteen movies in, the MCU seems to have plateaued with their fanbase and aren't really adding any more. Barring a breakout, I think Dr. Strange looks like it'll hit the same sort of numbers Ant-Man did. It's the exact phenomena observable with the X-Men movies, who have seemingly retained a core audience from the first X-Men movie and haven't added much, leading to similar numbers. With DC as a newer franchise, I'll be curious to see how big the growth is. With the core audience seemingly already in place, I'm almost certain WW will hit higher than many here are expecting and get in right around the "DC range" of ~+$120mil opening, ~$300mil domestic, ~mid-$700mil worldwide, which will be another win on a rumored ~$175mil budget. I think the Fast and the Furious franchise is an interesting comparison for it, since the initial movies for it were pretty hurt critically but it had a solid following who supported it strongly and over time people started to "get" the franchise and it started seeing really sizable growth. Like with Avengers, DC just needs that one movie that triggers the explosion.