REC

Jan 3-5 seem a bit optimistic? TFA was barely cracking 10mil in its Jan 4-8 weekdays (only hitting 10.8 that friday the 8th) and TLJ is definitely underperforming that. I think your 3-5 estimates need to be cut in half. RO from Jan 3-6 ranged from 3-6m per day.

A lack of repeat viewings from a wide swath of the fanbase, casual and hardcore. To be fair it may not be a statement on the movie, could just be more people are satisfied to do repeat viewings later on bluray/streaming for whatever reason.

Each new movie was essentially a soft reboot of the character and world. They basically adjusted the quality upwards as it went along, fine tuning it to give the GA more of what they wanted. I don't think that can be discounted.

Makes the Thor series a real anomaly doesn't it? Considering how each new movie grew the earnings by quite a bit.

Ok saying "everyone" was probably hyperbolic. Many people then. And thank you for affirming the number.

I'm honestly curious to see if it makes it over 650m DOM. Everyone thought this movie would make 800m DOM a month ago, now it's probably going to come short of that. The questions are how much and why. That has nothing to do with bias for or against TLJ as a product it's just very curious that it seems to be coming under expectations. Yes lots of details in the market and calendar conspire against it, but I think the key thing is that it's not overperforming against that backdrop when it had every ability to. And correct me if I'm wrong we still don't have TLJ actuals from Tues. I don't know what the real number is. It's been off it's estimates lately.

When do the saturday estimates happen?

This is what I meant with "consistency with the last movie". TFA established a simple but direct formula for the modern star wars movie, TLJ takes "big creative risks" with that. Some of the risks may have been in the wrong direction, or too far in a bad direction. And yes pacing problems, editing problems... Not talking about putting in tons of fan service either. If anything, superfans didn't like that and see through that anyway. Quite possibly for a SW movie to be truly a good movie it would need to thread some needles just right. Just saying TFA probably threaded those needles, on average, better.

There's a lesson here for Disney to not stomp all over what fans want. There's also a lesson to keep some basic consistency with the last SW movie. This isn't just superfans who are spreading bad WOM although that's definitely part of it. It's also coming from casual moviegoers who liked TFA as its own thing and wanted some consistency between films. I think its possible the Cinemascore system could have a flaw when it comes to culturally significant franchises like SW (not that SW has many analogues). Its anecdotal and not data, but I know a number of people who would've given the movie a positive rating initially but became more soured on it in the days after. A becomes B becomes C. Not everyone obviously but perhaps enough to generate bad word of mouth and become a drag.

Still only 6m more (roughly) than RO with some weekdays that were pretty close to RO numbers. The feeling is that TLJ still tops 700m domestic?

As someone who has been alive for just long enough, I know critics trashed Empire Strikes Back as stupid or unfunny for various reasons. Fans and casual moviegoers reacted differently and over time it's regarded as either the best or 2nd best of the series. It has been given near-positive review scores in retrospect or hindsight. Many professional critics I think are aware of this history and do not want to be "that guy"... the one to trash the new Star wars film for having some flaws. What if they're proven wrong over time like so many were with ESB? So it's possible some of them just go with the flow. They see the visual quality up on the screen, they tone down the critical thinking a bit, they don't question the details too much. Could be some carefully constructed herding going on with critics. Not in every case and not enough to make a 50 into a 100, but good enough to turn 65 into 75, and get enough tomatoes to gather up that 90+ score. They know TFA made a lot of money, they know its regarded positively by most everyone. All I'm saying is opinions don't exist in a vacuum and its hard for someone to shut everything out and look at it objectively or in isolation. This might be especially true with Star Wars as a brand and property. It's nearly completely unique in American (and maybe global) culture. This is not like Avatar in this way, there are 8 of these things now spanning a generation or 2. Could be there are things about that that are hard to objectively rate and digest.

http://www.indiewire.com/2016/07/ghostbusters-reboot-backlash-1201705555/ https://www.wired.com/2016/07/paul-feig-ghostbusters-qa/ https://www.vox.com/2016/6/30/12027882/ghostbusters-reboot-all-female-backlash-sexism-sony Actually lots of people argued that critiques were because of sexism. It even came from the director and actors in various interviews. Not saying it was or wasn't, but the creators of the movie certainly tried to paint vocal critics as manbaby sexist children. I don't know for certain, but it seemed like a concerted effort by Sony to try and squash negative reviews of the movie and marginalize people with opinions.

It's kinda like a fusion between the old Prequel defense + Ghostbusters 2016 defense.

Yes. Tied or less than. Somewhere between JW and RO.

There's no harm in admitting that is a lukewarm number.

You're saying there are known knowns and known unknowns, as well as unknown knowns and the even more rare unknown unknowns?

Ok I'll grant you that because I probably shouldn't have used the word fact right there, that's too extreme. It's an indicator that these social media boards are probably not being taken over by bots and extreme fans. As Disney would have us believe. That's their spin. They might be looking at lower than expected numbers so they're gonna try to put a positive spin on things right? They need to pre-butt any potential drop off, say its the fault of manbabies or superfans. It certainly couldn't be because they made a miscalculation with the product. I get that. It's the same playbook Sony used against anyone who criticized Ghostbusters 2016. Who knows maybe that spin will work for them.

Correct I never claimed it was.

Which points to the fact that negative reviews are not the fault of extreme fans, bots or trolls. There's no significant change in the social media landscape, you can look at data for RO and TFA just in the last 2 years. Social media and review scores from users were more positive on those movies, why the sudden negative backlash now? If anything the opposite is true. There's a history with star wars of extreme fans defending the material irrationally, like when the prequels came out. Even though they were clearly bad in many parts and had flaws, star wars fans would make excuses for them. They would try to claim the material was smarter and better. I'm getting flashbacks to all that prequel apologizing now. Critics can be really wrong on this too. Roger Ebert gave TPM 4/4 stars when it came out. He gushed over the visuals and storytelling. He spent years defending that and he wasn't the only one. Certain data points here aren't telling the whole picture.

I would just point out that BvS and JL point to the possibility that bad movies with bad WOM can cause much lower than expected results. There's the possibility of fatigue, too many of these movies too fast. If you want to say it has nothing to do with any supposed quality issues of the movie and blame the calendar fine, but that's a possibility too. All of these things could conspire to produce a much lower than expected result. I don't think 600m domestic is crazy if it just peters out for whatever reason.

I don't know about any of those supposed youtubers or channels, but SW is American culture. It permeates anything and everything and spans generations of casual film fans. Makes sense that everyone would be talking about it and have an opinion.

If the movie was really good they wouldn't have a need to do this. It would be a community of massive confirmation bias and their subscribers would support them in that. There's quite literally no benefit to hate on something that 90% of people would (in theory) love.

The youtubers are reflecting how many moviegoers are feeling about it. They're not taking the lead or herding, the movie has story and character problems. 600m domestic. I think it's a JL type situation.

So lagging just a bit behind TFA they claim.

I really don't think the problems with TLJ can be put on fanboys. Why not start with the more obvious issue? It's not a very good story or set of characters in the Star Wars universe. It's not a very good movie. I realize the spin from Disney is to make this about bots and trolls, maybe just maybe a whole bunch of people don't like a bad movie. Might be the case you know? They corralled the critics well, perhaps they could predict the movie would be at a minimum controversial, so they did everything they could to procure a high professional critic score. They hit that out of the park with a 93% on RT. But the actual moviegoer reviews tell a different reaction. Maybe some of that is an overreaction to the inflated critic scores, but not all of it can or should be dismissed. The truth might be somewhere inbetween. I honestly think this movie is going to do about 1.2bn worldwide. Maybe 600m domestic and the same foreign. It wouldn't surprise me if they end up with numbers that are only marginally better than RO. I'm sure it will still make them money and be profitable and all that, but what does this do to other movies they have going forward. I don't see this as a net positive development for them.