Perfundle

Well Aladdin got bigger screens for its showings because it has IMAX screenings and Dolby Cinema, while DP has neither. Those two formats are dominating the ticket sales, and plenty of 3D and regular screenings are empty. In theaters that offer one at least one of those formats as well as regular or 3D shows, they make up 93% of the ticket sales despite only taking up 53% of seats. Strangely enough, the current Friday/Saturday ratio for Aladdin is 1.44, which isn't like a family film at all. I know that my other numbers were for presales 10 days out, but that ratio presents itself on the first day and basically stays the same.

Well, these are major theaters in the LA suburbs, so they're going to be some of the most frequented theaters in the country. That they're selling so well already is actually a problem, because the best seats in the best showtimes have all been taken, so there's not as much room to increase sales. Looking at akvalley's tracker, I see that Shazam sold 859 tickets 10 days out and 17154 tickets on its last day. But I don't think my theaters will be selling 6000 tickets on Detective Pikachu's last day...

Finally, I have two movies I can compare to each other. Detective Pikachu San Gabriel Valley, 10 days to opening night Sellouts Showings Seats sold Seats Left Total Seats Percent Sold TOTALS 0 55 1852 7617 9469 19.56% Date 4/10 4/11 4/12 4/13 Tickets Sold 534 198 110 58 Date 4/14 4/15 4/16 4/17 4/18 4/19 4/20 Tickets Sold 28 45 59 63 36 33 28 Date 4/21 4/22 4/23 4/24 4/25 4/26 4/27 Tickets Sold 35 72 57 44 92 64 79 Date 4/28 4/29 Tickets Sold 91 126 Aladdin San Gabriel Valley, first day of presales Sellouts Showings Seats sold Seats Left Total Seats Percent Sold TOTALS 0 55 677 11455 12132 5.58% 1.27x Detective Pikachu's first day of presales [Detective Pikachu has 29 days of presales compared to Aladdin's 24]

Anyway, I've been looking at the Friday/Saturday presales ratio to see if it can shed some light into what kind of movie it's going to play as (the good thing about using ratios is that they won't be affected by any tracking issues with Fandango). For non-summer non-holiday movies, family films have stronger Saturdays, both because kids have to go to school on Fridays and because Saturday morning is a great time to take kids to movies to get them out of the house, and the presales data bears this out. I chose to look at total presales numbers 10 days out, because as you near opening day Friday presales always pick up before Saturday ones. I also excluded movies that don't open on Fridays. So here are some ratios from akvalley's spread archive: Fri/Sat ratio Halloween 2.31 A Quiet Place 1.62 Us 1.54 Venom 1.48 Solo 1.47 Fantastic Beasts 2 1.33 Deadpool 2 1.3 Glass 1.25 Pacific Rim 2 1.23 Infinity War 1.22 Spider-Verse 1.22 Black Panther 1.16 Endgame 1.13 Captain Marvel 1.08 Shazam 1.03 HTTYD 3 1.02 Wrinkle in Time 1 Nutcracker 0.96 Dumbo 0.94 The Grinch 0.92 LEGO Movie 2 0.71 Incredibles 2 1.26 Jurassic World 2 1.26 The Meg 1.24 Hotel Transylvania 3 1.22 Ant-Man 2 1.18 MI6 1.05 Apart from HTTYD 3's higher than expected ratio nothing here is too surprising, with horror movies being the most frontloaded and family films and animation being the least. I also listed six summer movies, which don't show any pattern because kids can see the movies on Thursdays and Fridays as well. I don't know if these numbers are available for upcoming movies, but for the ten theaters I'm tracking, Detective Pikachu's ratio is at 1.01 and John Wick is at 1.19. I'll hold off on Aladdin until tonight, since some parents on the West coast are still at work and haven't had a chance to purchase tickets yet, but I expect it to be in line with the other three Disney family films.

Nah, there's no need. You've got enough to track already, and thank you for all of it.

Well, I meant in terms of how the movies are doing in the big cinemas versus the smaller cinemas, but I guess what happens is that people start going to the smaller cinemas when the bigger ones fill up.

I have no frame of reference for this, so how does this compare to JW2 and FB2?

Detective Pikachu San Gabriel Valley Premiere Night Date 4/10 4/11 4/12 4/13 Tickets Sold 534 198 110 58 Date 4/14 4/15 4/16 4/17 4/18 4/19 4/20 Tickets Sold 28 45 59 63 36 33 28 Date 4/21 4/22 4/23 4/24 4/25 4/26 Tickets Sold 35 72 57 44 92 64 Sales have picked up this week, though Monday is when we should see a real spike in sales. Also, with Aladdin tickets soon to be on sale, I'll finally have a movie to compare to these numbers. I expect them to be fairly close, since they have similar demographics and OW tracking numbers.

Do all movies have very high Saturday morning presales or is that more of a family film thing? It seems like the sort of time that parents would take hyperactive kids to see movies. I ask because I just found out that one of the theaters I'm tracking has only sold 57 tickets on Thursday for Detective Pikachu, but has sold 101 for its Saturday morning showing, the most of any showing across all ten theaters I'm tracking. More than half of Saturday's presales have been for morning showings, and Saturday has sold more presales than Fridays. Could be a sign that families are going to make up a significant portion of the audience.

I mean, Bumblebee, MI6 and Alita all made between $130 and $170 million, so if you're going to compare it to the first two I don't see why you wouldn't include Alita as well. But OK, surely Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom's gross is a good target to shoot for? It also had a long presale run, and here are its presales. After 5 days it was at 1147k with 15272 shows, which is pretty comparable to DP's as well. It also made far more than MI6 on its OW despite worse 5th-day presale numbers, so it seems there's just really high variability with presales.

If I'm reading the numbers right, that's not true for Bumblebee. DP's presales Bumblebee's presales MI6's presales So as you said, DP has 948k with 12474 shows on its fifth day. MI6 is indeed higher with 2142k with 23231 shows, but Bumblebee is comparable to DP with 672k with 14329 shows. As for chugging along slowly, Alita did the same thing. After day 6 of presales, or 13 days before opening day (same as DP), it had a quarter as many presales with half as many shows, and it still opened higher than Bumblebee.

That still doesn't make any sense. So they take turns losing money? Surely, the money they make showing a movie that another theater is showing more than offsets the money they lose having another theater steal customers from them?

cdsacken's daughter:

Thanks a lot for this. I think I found the 2018 archive, the one called Fandango Pulse Purchase History, but it doesn't contain Detective Pikachu's data; where did you get those numbers? Also, it looks like the Incredibles 2 data is split into 2D, 3D and IMAX 2D, so your comparison is including all three ticket types, right?

Yeah, Scott Mendelson even called the third one (based on the trailers) "the 'most' video game movie this side of Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle." It's interesting that Jumanji and the Wick movies capture the spirit of video games better than most video-game movies themselves. I wish this came out later in the summer though. It's a shame that my three most-anticipated movies come out within three weeks of each other.

Oh, I'm quite grateful for what he's doing. It's just that I'd like to track other family films this summer, and I'm not sure if I should start tracking SLOP2 right now, or wait until a more official announcement. I also feel that the number of days out tickets go on sale and the kind of promotion they have for it is really influencing early presales (e.g. Detective Pikachu had the exclusive trading card promotion, and now John Wick has the digital download promotion). Did HTTYD3 and Dumbo have similar promotions? When did tickets go on sale for them?

Given how early tickets went up for this, and the complete lack of fanfare that they're even being sold, how do you make comparisons regarding presales for family films? Has there been any correlation with early presale numbers and opening weekend numbers for these films, or is it more about the final two weeks leading up to opening night?

Detective Pikachu San Gabriel Valley Premiere Night Day 2, T-29 days: Sellouts Showings Seats sold Seats Left Total Seats Percent Sold TOTALS 0 55 732 8737 9469 7.73% Total Showings Added Today: 11 Total Seats Added Today: 1134 Total Seats Sold Today: 198 The one dine-in theater I'm tracking got brisk business on its first day, with one of the showings at over half-capacity, so they increased their showings from 6 to 17, although I think that might have been a bit overkill. Also, there's already been 100 tickets sold for 4:00 PM showings, which is higher than I expected.

Oh, Detective Pikachu is very friendly. I mean, just look at him: jk, I know you mean family-friendly, though I can't imagine that it won't be. Anyway, I'm going to give tracking a shot. And since I don't have anything to compare Detective Pikachu to, I'll be tracking other family films this summer too; it's a nice change of pace from all the PG-13 and R-rated movies that I normally focus my interest on. I'll borrow Porthos' table, since it's a nice way of presenting the data. I'll look at 10 theaters in the San Gabriel Valley. And assuming presales don't increase particularly quickly, I'll be doing bi-weekly or weekly updates as well. First 24 hours, 30 days until opening night: Sellouts Showings Seats left Total Seats Percent Sold TOTALS 0 44 7801 8335 6.41% Total Seats Sold Today: 534

Yeah, I noticed that at one of my theaters too, when 15 of the same seats were taken in each showing. So what exactly is an unavailable seat?

Hey, Borat did quite well and audiences mostly enjoyed it.

After reading a few of the reviews, it sounds like the narrative is simply too cluttered. There's one main storyline, but there's too much happening around it and it lacks focus.

But that wasn't the high, was it? Unlike every other movie, they didn't provide a range. They only said $75 million+, and then picked $90 million as their prediction. Their prediction always falls around the middle of their range, so it seems that their actual range is something more like $75-105 million.