Cooper Legion

How close is it to IA3? Any chance to pass?

If I had to pick one of those for a China breakout, it definitely wouldn't be Onward.

Missing Link

Presumably the top 4 will be Minions 2, Onward, Soul, and Raya. I'm not expecting any to even hit 1B.

That would require way more unnatural plot contortions.

I think they mean expectations after the 2nd weekend, not e.g. expectations before ticket sales began.

In the famous words of Thomas Paine, “Give me December Eternals, or give me death.”

Me to WW top 10:

What is this supposed to prove? Obviously if it wants to make more, it will need bigger weekends than that. I could spend a couple minutes typing them out. Or I could type out 15 lower weekends ending at 148M. There’s no particular persuasive power either way.

Not quite the same thing, but WW peak rank of new animated record holders: 1992 Aladdin 8th 1994 TLK 2nd (!!!) 2003 Nemo 9th 2004 Shrek 2 6th 2010 TS3 4th/5th (sources differ) 2013 F1 5th 2019 F2 10th This is a bit like Nemo setting anew animated record with 9th overall after TLK hit 2nd overall 9 years before. While it will likely be the lowest WW rank for a new animated record holder, hardly by a historically remarkable margin. I see no particular reason to believe that animation won’t at least crack the top 6 again sometime in the 2020s.

PTA may be in top 3 for wide releases this weekend depending on how Grudge (and F2) actuals go. Weekend is essentially flat from 3 weekends ago, and with a still wide release the PTA is above 4 weekends ago, its 2nd weekend. Imo the word is out and something special is happening here. I am reminded of the January runs/first weekends of such movies as: The Greatest Showman — 8.1x wknd multi Lincoln — 8x wknd multi F1 — 6.3x wknd multi J:WttJ - 5.3x wknd multi Spider-verse — 5.3x wknd multi I’d like one more weekend of evidence, truly removed from the holidays, but I believe this will make a very credible run at passing Us for the highest grossing 2019 original (requires 6x multi).

1) Eternals Black Widow Raya Mulan Jungle Cruise Onward Soul No Time to Die WW84 10)Tenet

Hmm, the historical evolution of the top WW rank for an animated movie is an interesting topic. I’ll be back here in a bit with a line graph or something.

Thanks to Joker, it seems 2019 is actually putting 9 movies in the all-time top 45 and top 40, which seems to be entirely unprecedented this century. Even working relatively rather than with nominal $ figures, a truly stunning and remarkable year. I feel confident that 2020 will field at least 3, perhaps up to 7 (if I had to pick a single number, 4). That would be on the weak side but at least not 2014 tier.

I think they cater to the fandom more post-CC than in the CC era. They just understand how to do it better. It’s at least gray enough that I don’t think it makes a good example for your position.

F1 5th place peak F2 10th place peak Hope F3 won’t fall to 20 or 15 😛

Please no. Do 2024 so all the holiday dates line up perfectly with F1&F2 again

Also gives more time for D+ SW to build goodwill, and takes advantage of the weak Dec 2020 lineup on the best Dec calendar config.

I would be disappointed if the next Avengers (if one exists) did “just” 1.5B, but that’s the only one I can think of. 1.5B will be missing the top 10 by then, and Avengers has turned in performances hitting 3rd, 5th, 4th, 1st place WW all recently enough to be still meaningful comparisons.

I agree with your main point (GA appeal is way more important than appeal for hardcore fans) but this part is just ass backwards. Their crazy successful phase 3 coincides with the disbandment of the creative committee, yes. That is no coincidence, I agree. But the creative committee’s dissolution was a shift in power towards the really entrenched nerds at marvel, not away from them, so if anything the success that came from doing away with it undermines rather than reinforces your (still correct) broader point.

As for “1.5B is the new 1B” vs “2B is the new 1B” I actually lean more toward 1.5B for now. Of course if you just look at how many movies are over the threshold, the argument for 2B is very simple — we have 5 2B movies right now, vs 5 1B movies at the beginning of the decade. but, what I feel that misses, is that the 2B performances right now (Endgame, Avatar, Titanic, TFA, IW) are more aberrant than the 1B performances then (Avatar, Titanic, ROTK, DMC, TDK). What I mean is, look at how many movies are close to the threshold: within 95% of 1B, Jan 2010: 7 movies (+2 vs over threshold) within 95% of 2B, Jan 2020: 5 movies (+0) within 90% of 1B 2010: 13 movies (+8) within 90% of 2B 2020: 5 movies (+0) within 85% of 1B 2010: 19 movies (+14) within 85% of 2B 2020: 5 movies (+0) The prevalence of movies decent close to 1B at the turn of the last decade foreshadowed that while an extremely impressive and rare league of its own, it was also a reasonable goal for future blockbusters — take a strong-but-not-crazy blockbuster performance (Say, top 20 WW), power it up by 20% and boom, you were at 1B. Nowadays if you look at a performance good enough to hit the top 20 and power it up by 20%, you get... 1.456B, not remotely close to 2B. The top 5 has become way more separately from the next dozen. So, while 1.5B currently has 9 movies over the threshold vs only 5 for 1B last decade, looking at the numbers for nearby movies: within 95% — 10 now (counting F2) vs 7 in 2010 within 90% — 11 now (counting F2) vs 13 in 2010 within 85% — 16 now (counting F1) vs 19 in 2010 I think 1.5B is a more measured, attainable, actually analogous choice for the “1B of the 2020s.”

The 2019 yearly charts are insano bonkers, so I feel this is a bit disingenuous to look at. Now it will miss the all-time WW top 25, maybe even top 30 or 35. Unprecedented for a SW episode, and even much worse than RO (made the top 20).

KO over TGS is coming

Absolutely yes to both, Ultron by more than 50M quite likely.