BugsBunny

The all-time record for calendar October was in 2014, when we had $758mm. I'm calling for October 2018 to break $1bn. Say it can't be done? 18 months ago we had never had a $1bn+ February or March or April... October is ready to join the club! How do we get there, smashing the recent October range by ~50%? Venom - looking for the Suicide Squad so-bad-it's-good magic - $250mm First Man - after Gravity and Martian, we seem to love a little outer space in October - $200mm Star is Born - bradley cooper + gaga + oscar buzz = hit - $150mm Halloween - It showed us what's possible here - $150mm Those four alone could drive us to $750mm in the month. Then it's just a matter of the long tail taking us home. This would leave September as the only month to never hit $1bn. So will October act like a summer month??? YES! Surf's Up! BugsBunny School's in Session...

Both AMCs, one is just the top theater in the metro area, the other in a suburb.

CRA is gonna be a weird one. I'm in a major city, and the dominant, nicest theater is literally almost sold out for the most popular showtimes, and has a fair amount of tickets even at unpopular showtimes. Then I look across town and the theater almost hasn't sold a ticket yet.

If we are assuming A4, Lion King and Star Wars 9... what else could plausibly do it? Most likely probably Captain Marvel pulling a BP or Frozen 2 going crazy. SLOP2? Toy Story 4? WW84?

I tried a game last night - ask a roomful of people if they can remember a single plot point from Avatar. Most people remember that the creatures were blue, and that there was a crazy military guy, and that they were mining for stuff. As far as actual plot points - zero. That's where it ends. They better figure out a hook because they will be re-selling the movie from zero, without the benefit of being the first real 3D movie most people had ever had the chance to see.

Per HMNY's SEC filings, in Q1 their total cost of revenue was $136 million. Revenue from subscriptions was $47mm. So that gives us a range of impacts. If all these people would have not gone to any movies if there were no MoviePass, it was a $136mm boost to box office in Q1. If on average these people would have spent the same amount of money to see movies, but saw 100% of the "extra" movies they did above that cost thanks to MoviePass, it was an $89mm boost to box office in Q1. If on average these people would have gone to half those "extra" movies anyway, and just enjoyed the deal they were getting, then maybe it was a $45mm boost to Q1 box office. That's roughly the order of magnitude we are talking about, in Q1. Q2 hasn't been reported and I guess might never be...

BoxOfficePro out with 70 for MI and 17.5 for TTG

This is a great point. Walt Disney literally built his business by taking the best stories in the history of man and adapting them with incredible care and genius-level attention to detail within the new media of moving pictures. These stories are timeless for a reason. Which also explains why the most popular recent Disney classic (Lion King) is just a retelling of Hamlet with a little Exodus thrown in.

Is it an unpopular opinion to say this doesn't look awful?

https://deadline.com/2018/07/ant-man-and-the-wasp-opening-box-office-overperform-marvel-1202422128/ hmmm... this is so weird, it’s almost like it’s bang-on exactly the numbers I was saying it would be based on the MT percentages. Edit: my first look was 13.5mm. I later got bashful and said 12mm+. This was happening when people said just having some chance of hitting double digits would be a great showing.

Hard to know how much is for tomorrow or the weekend proportionately versus the other two of tickets sold today. Certainly higher, question how much. If it were even proportions, we’d be talking $15-16mm previews. My guess based only on this % tracking is that we’ll be around $12mm with room to the upside.

Ant-man roughly 80% above JWFK. And JWFK might do ~7.5-8.0mm tonight? Taking the lower end of 7.5mm and assuming Ant-man has slightly higher proportion of its sales going to later weekend shows than JWFK, maybe ~13.5mm or so in previews?

Also - this is a TRAILING 24 hour number. So here we sit at 4pm ET/1pm PT, still catching almost the whole moviegoing Wednesday, nationwide. If it were even at this point it would suggest momentum to smash the other two on Thursday, because Thursday is only maybe 50% of the data being compared at this point.

Good question - what will be the next one? Next bulletproof zero doubt $100mm is probably Avengers 4 Next most-likely gets there is maybe Captain Marvel? Next possibility is perhaps Fantastic Beasts? Barring an Ant-Man miracle... Venom is a possibility...

This would be more than 50% above your prediction from yesterday evening.