Marathon

In general it would be interesting to find out all ticket price variation in mainland Europe.

How such cheap tickets in France? The cheapest ticket here for pretty much any film, even in a small town, is €10.

I definitely lost most of my interest in the franchise already back in 2013-14 when they decided, for whatever bizarre reason, to not make Janet one of the main players, and also make Hank Pym a 1000-year-old guy.

Officially over 4x the budget with worldwide grosses now: Total Lifetime Grosses Domestic: $138,450,545 49.4% + Foreign: $141,600,000 50.6% = Worldwide: $280,050,545

BlacKkKlansman opened here on 10th August, and the result is a pretty big (for the type of movie it is) 21 803 admissions. Apparently this is the best ever weekend for a Spike Lee movie here, but truthfully, it's explained almost completely by the presence of Finnish actor Jasper Pääkkönen. This reminds me of Blade Runner 2049, where the presence of Finnish actress Krista Kosonen carried that movie's Finland box office to an overperformance relative to the world average. As for legs? I have no idea, none whatsoever. If we use the aforementioned "Finnish" movie as comparison, BR2049 received a 3.87x multi, but with the caveat it benefited from various holiday periods in October, November, and December. BKKK is in the August, September doldrums, and has for more divisive subject matter, so matching BR2049's legs would definitely be an achievement. The holdovers are robust. Mamma Mia 2 had a very soft drop again, only 17.1%. It is already the most watched movie for the year* with 236 615 admissions, and will get past 300k admissions by the end of August. Mission: Impossible - Fallout also had a nice drop, 41.6%. The multiplier from the opening weekend is already 2.17x, so the weekdays have been very strong. As schools/studies begin, work vacations end, etc. I would expect the demand to shift more to weekends, which will also hopefully result in softer weekend-to-weekend drops. Hotel Transylvania 3 had another absolutely terrific drop, only 16.2%. It is now locked to outgross HT1 and HT2 combined. Amazing performance. *The top 3 for the year in admissions are: Mamma Mia 2 (236 615) Avengers: Infinity War (233 064) Deadpool 2 (195 599)** **DP2's mid and late legs have been very impressive, because at one point it looked like finishing quite a bit below 200k, but now it has a realistic chance of reaching that milestone.

In the poster... Keira Knightley (as was said) looks like Julianne Moore. Helen Mirren looks like Kathy Griffin. (Was also gonna say Freeman looks like Forest Whitaker, but that maybe isn't true.)

Also, does this mean that from hereon out every genre film will be "banished" into the popular film category? Or only those genre films which make big bucks at the box office? A loosely enforceable artistic quasi-segregation policy of sorts?

Selling the technical categories short is abhorrent for a multitude of reasons. For the Oscars themselves, it won't boost ratings, but it will piss off the people who would've watched your show anyway. Seems like a classic case of undermining your core identity to pander to people who have no interest in your product anyway. Everything about these changes reeks of massive, massive desperation. Instead of trimming some fat (the amount of time the hosts have for filler talk, various skits, montages, musical numbers, etc.), they decide to twist themselves into a pretzel in hopes of impressing, but this is just too transparent. Granted, the change in movie-going habits (heavy skew towards event movies) is presenting some difficulties to the industry's award shows, but surely this kind of naked ratings bait will only end in tears?

Would love a sequel.

Mission: Impossible - Fallout was the big opener, and from a normal FSS frame it posted 27 642 admissions, a +5.7% improvement on Rogue Nation (26 165 admissions from a similar FSS opening). Rogue Nation finished its run with 109 426 admissions, meaning a multiplier of 4.18x. A similar multi would thus get Fallout to 115 544 admissions, which sounds like a reasonable projection. Since M:I is almost completely a general audiences - driven franchise, I don't expect frontloading to be a factor. The Darkest Minds was the other opener, and it followed the pattern it has expressed everywhere else, i.e. it bombed. With an FSS frame of 2 733 admissions, TDM is one of the absolute worst openers of the year. I don't think anyone outside of a handful of people had even heard of TDM here, and since the movie looked like a bunch of X-Men knock-offs in a hokey, contrived YA setting, the movie's atrocious box office performance will not have come as a huge surprise. Moving onto the holdovers: I wished for great holds for Mamma Mia 2, and I was not disappointed. MM2 had an absolutely breathtaking hold, dropping only 9.2%!! The movie will zoom past 200k admissions later this week, and with no competition for its target audience in sight, I'm hoping for 300k admissions already some time this month. Hotel Transylvania 3 is another stellar performer in the marketplace, and in fact it had even softer drop than MM2's already ultra-soft drop: 5.5%!! The movie will (no pun intended) sail past 100k admissions later this week. Really, thank goodness for MM2 and HT3, as otherwise the box office landscape would be pretty bleak for exhibitors. Now, let's hope Fallout will join those two in the uppermost performance echelon. The August doldrums (and this year it already started July) can always use some effective anodyne, and this would-be trio of perfectly coexisting movies should carry exhibitors well enough to September.

Yes, but even with huge China drops the collective markets don't usually drop that much. Goes to show how lackluster the performance is outside of China. And now Fallout has finished Skyscraper in most OS-C markets.

Yes, BOM has the drop from last weekend as 77.2%(!!).

2014 Godzilla should have been a far, far bigger movie at the worldwide box office. The hype and buzz were pretty much unprecedented for a monster movie - but they shot themselves in the foot with the inexplicable Bryan Cranston decision (and perhaps some editing/other creative choices). Therefore my expectations for this are somewhat tempered, as the taste from the original is still there, even if there isn't much continuity in terms of actors.

Indeed, before the release, I would have regarded under $600m worldwide as almost laughably pessimistic prediction. Little did I or anyone else know...

Mamma Mia 2 dropped 50.1% from its opening weekend, and has accumulated 128 132 admissions so far. That's a bit steeper drop than I expected, but I guess fan rush for the opening weekend inflated it a lot. Since MM2 doesn't have much in the form of any competition for its target audience for a while, I'm hoping for very soft drops the next month. Other than MM2, it's been and continues to be a very dull period at the box office. Several movies are chugging along fine, but are basically just waiting to hit a certain milestone in slow crawl mode. Perhaps the only highlight outside of MM2 has been Hotel Transylvania 3 which is having a surprisingly robust performance for a relatively mid-tier animated franchise. In fact, it is on its way to easily outgrossing the previous one (which finished with 88 538 admissions; HT3 opened on July 13th and has already accumulated 76 269 admissions, having posted 10 002 admissions this weekend). If it has especially strong late legs, it could even gross as much or more than the previous two combined (HT1: 34 380 + HT2: 88 538 = 122 918). In poignant milestone news, the local family film Supermarsu finally fell out of the top 20, just missing out on 6 full months of continuous top 20 positions. Farewell, you wonderfully leggy box office furry. 🙂

Is it safe to lock in $500m overseas already? 🤑

Yes, it's a fantastic opening considering it's only 40% of the total footprint and it doesn't include China.

Solid domestic opening and a great overseas opening for Fallout. Nice, nice.

The "A" Cinemascore and high RT audience score give confidence of at least $60m. Hopefully anyway, because under that would definitely feel disappointing considering the buzz, hype and reviews.

Time to update after a long, long time. The reason for the hiatus was pretty simple: the box office stats company (the only one that compiles box office stats here) kept a vacation for a week and a half after my last update, and provided no stats during that time. So, reporting drops and openers was impossible. They returned to "duty" last weekend, but since the admissions figures were relatively lackluster, I didn't bother with reporting. Now, this weekend is another matter, because Mamma Mia 2 brought some much-needed firepower to a stagnant period at the box office. Indeed, MM2 opened with a normal FSS frame (July 20th) and posted 53 389 admissions, second only to Infinity War this year in terms of FSS figures. In terms of overall openings, both Deadpool 2 and the aforementioned Infinity War are ahead of MM2 for the year, but they were 5-day openings. I can't the find the exact opening figure for the original Mamma Mia, and media reports here only use vague wording in the comparison ("MM2 had slightly over double the original's opening"). However, what is known is the overall total admissions for MM1, and that was a monstrous 404 112. Slightly speculatively, if the opening admissions figure was slightly over 25k, then the multiplier was a ludicrous 16x(!!!). Needless to say, MM2 will have its work cut out to even dream of a similar multiplier, if for no other reason then for the fact that we live in a very different box office world nowadays, with ever-shorter theatrical runs followed by quick and snappy releases to streaming of HD and now 4K quality. Although, perhaps the musical genre is among the best-equipped to fight the shortening theatrical release windows, being still somewhat unique and not that ubiquitous in terms of yearly releases. It retains an event status, and a collective experiential feel. It will be interesting to follow MM2's run here and everywhere else in the light of all this.

Soft numbers both DOM and OS. Global action audiences saving their money for Fallout.

Sad to see him go. He was a great, funny guy. Always had bold, interesting clubs. Also, reported Portugal numbers.

Haha, a bit of a crazy rollercoaster ride for AM&TW.

Great domestic run for Ocean's 8. Too bad about its international performance, which is frustratingly lackluster. But, I'm hoping it's more of a scheduling issue (it would probably perform better OS outside the summer).

Fascinating degree of frontloadedness for Ant-Man & The Wasp.