JB33

Likely. TLJ dropping on a Friday is a good indicator. It's not going to have great legs. Jumanji is taking a lot of business away from it.

Well said. A lot of things just worked against TLJ this time around, proving that Star Wars is not invincible or impervious to any of these factors. It's kind of a sad reality check for me, as I thought this would cruise by $700M and be a tier above JURASSIC WORLD and THE AVENGERS.

This is no longer the calendar. This is people not bothering to rush in for this movie, which seems unthinkable. That's the WOM affecting it. It's also Jumanji slowly taking over. @JonathanLB @The Last Panda what are your thoughts?

No, not obviously. At least that's what I'm learning.

I'm hoping for a bigger jump than that, but I guess then I still would have learned nothing. We will see.

This might be an obvious statement but I think we're at the point where Jumanji is actually hurting TLJ, not just co-existing and excelling in its own right. That's new territory because I don't think you could say anything really hurt TFA or RO. RO and SING were neck and neck last year but I think RO rung in everything it could/should have. TLJ, on the other hand, could be doing a bit better but Jumanji is stealing a bit of its thunder.

@The Greatest Rth @EmpireCity Do you guys think this Friday drop for TLJ thing is rubbish as well or is Deadline on to something?

This should be a rather modest film for Disney. It doesn't seem to have any kind of hook. Opening weekend will be modest, total will depend on word of mouth.

Unless the Jurassic franchise somehow takes another big leap, I don't know what other studio will be able to gain footing at the top of the opening weekend list or any other big box office records. Warner Bros. had a chance with DC but they've bungled it. Fox just sold themselves out, otherwise they could have made a dent with the Avatar franchise. I think Warner Bros. has the best chance if they can do something big with Batman again, judging by how proven and lucrative the property has been in NA for years. If Fantastic Beasts can elevate the franchise back to Harry Potter heights with the next installments then that's possibly another card they can play as well.

Because an increase, no matter how big or small, at least makes sense.

It's because they're terrible. If you're going to put something out this early for the sake of it with almost no data to back it up, at least apply some logic to it. Throw a 5 to 10% jump on Thursday's number and publish that.

Different strokes I guess. After watching the trailer I was pumped to see it. However, maybe it's just the genre or backdrop of the movie that excited me and I didn't even pay attention too much to the actual trailer. Wish it didn't move but if there's no apparent reason - cast injury or other production issues etc. - then it must mean they expect it to be bad and they're dumping it. That or they're genuinely just changing their strategy. Maybe studios are realizing that any month can be lucrative if it's a good movie. Maybe Sony isn't dumping it, maybe they WANT it there.

I'm hoping for $21.4M to $22.4M, which is a 10-15% jump.

Yeah it's actually kind of embarrassing. I used to be all over sites like Deadline and Variety for box office news but it's now exclusively BOT.

Cool thread. It will be interesting to see how long certain movies can remain in the top 5. Right now I'm looking at THE AVENGERS. It's been there since 2012. 2 more bigger weekends and it gets booted out. It could happen in 2019.

What? A drop on Friday for TLJ? No that's not happening. I wonder if Deadline is purposely doing this to manufacture positive headlines (maybe pushed by Disney/Lucasfilm) amid all the backlash and negativity.

I'm finally back to work on the 4th (starting a new job after being out of the work force for longer than I'd hoped) so I'm looking forward to being able to catch up on all the smaller movies I haven't been able to go see. Looking like THE POST will be the first new wide release I'll see in 2018 (going wide on the 12th right?). Before and after that I hope to catch ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD, MOLLY'S GAME, DARKEST HOUR etc.

115% to 120% he said.

What about TLJ? Looking at 2006 numbers it looks like we should expect the Friday jump to be bigger than the Saturday jump.

Can TLJ stay relatively flat today? I'm hoping for a little over $20M.

Worldwide update:

Fantastic post. I've only been here since last year when ROGUE ONE came out, but I've been following and learning about the box office for several years now, and even I'm having to take a step back and re-evaluate how I'm contributing to the discussion. It doesn't mean I don't still stand by most of my opinions but I'm trying to remember to ask more than say until I've got as good a grasp on the subject as most here. It doesn't help that I'm a Star Wars fanatic either. I'm usually pretty level headed but the bias and emotions are a real thing. I sometimes call people out for being fanboys and getting emotional one way or the other about how their movies are doing and suddenly I've found myself on the other side just a bit.

Yeah, the calendar is really screwing with us, especially since we haven't seen this configuration since 2006. So much has changed and there are so many more variables that we can't really use data from that year as a comparison anyway. Well, actually to a degree it has been a compass for us in terms of very general behaviour and trends but it's still not exactly comparable. There was nothing like TLJ on the December 15 slot back then. As a very analytical person, I think that's what's frustrating me. I've got almost no data as a reliable predictor and the calendar is probably at its most impactful at this time of year so recent years are not helpful to refer to either. In the end, I'm way less disappointed in TLJ's performance than I look. It's just been a big lesson in box office and I'm still navigating it.

What are we looking at for JUMANJI's 2nd weekend?

Maybe it is more important. But that doesn't mean we're not going to discuss the finer details on a box office forum. I just don't understand the need to defend the integrity of TLJ's numbers for some here.