Marathon

A quiet weekend in terms of newcomers. Tomb Raider got number one but with lukewarm 11.6k admissions. Lady Bird (7th place on the weekend) opened with an ok-ish (for an indie dramedy) 5.5k admissions. Nothing to get particularly excited about, to be honest. TR isn't trending high on the top-selling tickets list, so I would imagine its run here will be short and rather unspectacular. LB I guess could go either way from hereon out, depending on word of mouth. At least the local reviews have been great. The holdover business was much more exciting. Coco (3rd on the weekend) and Black Panther (4th on the weekend) continued their great runs. Coco dropped 23% as it crossed the 100 000 admissions milestone, with overall admissions now at 102.5k. Black Panther dropped 23.2% and is at 119.6k admissions. It is now guaranteed to go past last year's most popular CBM in Finland, Guardians of the Galaxy 2, in terms of admissions (123.5k). The Shape of Water (5th on the weekend) dropped 37.6% - an ok drop considering last weekend was a big increase. The overall admissions are at 57.7k. 100k admissions are probably out of reach unless it starts staying essentially flat the following weekends.

The weird and wild ride that is Coco at the local box office continues. After last weekend it looked like it had burnt up most of its demand and would start falling off, but instead, it sprang a surprise and went to number one, upsetting Black Panther's 3-week streak at the top in the process. Indeed, Coco fell only 12% from last weekend to grab number one spot, the first such during its run. The overall admissions are at 92.9k. Since this has been such a crazy unpredictable run so far (a lukewarm beginning -> an increase -> a somewhat big drop -> a very soft drop to grab number one), I'm not even trying to guess what will happen next weekend. Black Panther fell 33% to 2nd place. The overall admissions are at 107.7k. Unless BP falls off a cliff in the coming weeks (unlikely), then it should beat last year's most popular CBM in Finland, Guardians of the Galaxy 2, in terms of admissions (123.5k). As was expected, and as it was trending on the top-selling tickets' list, The Shape of Water increased a massive 141% from last weekend to grab 3rd place. The overall admissions are at 48.9k. Since this was such an unusual weekend for the movie (a massive increase due to the Oscars win), it's hard to say anything about the next weekend. It's still trending high (2nd, actually) on the top-selling tickets list, so it might not suffer a harsh drop. We'll see then. The only genuinely bad bit of box office news comes from the opening performance of local comedy Hevi reissu ("Heavy Trip" in English). It had the most screens (106) out of any movie playing but got only 7.7k admissions. In fact, The Shape of Water posted more admissions (7.8k) on far fewer screens (75). Hell, even Red Sparrow wasn't that far off despite playing only on 44 screens, with 6k admissions. Unless Hevi reissu starts increasing massively - and I mean massively - in the coming weeks, it is set out to be an absolutely mammoth box office bomb. With these type of admissions, it would have been a huge bomb even with a "normal" cost for a mainstream Finnish film (approximately €1m), but since it cost at least €3m to make - one of the most expensive local comedies ever, maybe even the most expensive ever - this could be an unprecedented bomb in the history of Finnish films, at least for comedies. Whoever greenlighted the film can only blame themselves, though. The subject matter, heavy metal, while of course popular in Finland, is still too niche to have four-quadrant and/or crossover appeal in cinema, so to give that type of niche comedy, even if broad in execution, a budget of €3m seems absolutely bonkers to me. The timing of the release is also pretty catastrophic because the hype hadn't yet been building up all that much, and there was stiff competition from two comedies already playing in the cinemas, a local one, and, of course, Game Night. Since Hevi reissu is apparently playing at the SXSW festival, they really should have waited until whatever possible positive reactions/prestige they got out of there before releasing the movie here. Now we might have the absolutely bizarre situation where an (way too) expensive local comedy is going to rely almost solely on overseas grosses to get into the black - IF it gains traction overseas.

This weekend will probably see a hefty bump for overseas grosses. Or at least here in Finland the movie jumped to 2nd on the top-selling tickets list.

Black Panther dropped 33.5% from last weekend. The overall admissions are at 91.9k. Next weekend will be crucial for its long-term chances to maybe even catch last year's most popular CBM, Guardians of the Galaxy 2 (123.5k admissions), but, indeed, BP will need to have an extraordinarily good drop. Coco dropped 35.5%. Unfortunately, it's looking like last weekend was something of a flash in the pan for Coco instead of a great upturn in form. Hopefully next weekend will be better, because at the moment it's not looking like Coco will have much more than 100-105k admissions at the end of its run - a disappointing total for a Pixar release with great reviews.

Black Panther dropped 18.2% from last weekend. The overall admissions are at 65.6k. Coco actually increased from last weekend by 5.4%. I'm assuming the word of mouth is thus very, very good. The overall admissions are at 54.7k. Will be very interesting to see if Coco can increase again next weekend or at least stay flat.

The novel it's based on isn't really known overseas, and the day-to-day scenes in the movie look pretty specifically "American" (I guess).

Well, the incoherent trailers were certainly a red flag. While coherent, easy-to-grasp trailers don't necessarily guarantee a good movie, incoherent trailers tend to guarantee a mess of a movie, because if the pros cutting the trailers aren't finding a core narrative, it most likely isn't there. Plus, the whole affair seems so culturally specific to (North) America that it's hard to see it resonating much with overseas audiences. In fact, cruel as it may sound, for overseas it's hard to envision anything other than major bombage for this movie.

Hi! Time to resurrect this thread, and for a good reason: local war pic The Unknown Soldier (which premiered in late October 2017) just passed 1 million admissions! The first movie to do so since Titanic. In fact, only five movies in the whole history of Finland have crossed the 1m mark. Titanic will be safe in 3rd place all-time admissions (1 114 954 with the re-release), and, barring a re-release for The Unknown Soldier (currently at 1 002 463 admissions), so will 1968's local pic Here, Beneath the North Star (1 020 000, a rough estimate as official statistics only begun in 1970), in 4th place. Still, getting over 1m admissions and cementing 5th place on the all-time list for the foreseeable future is remarkable in this day and age of box office. Yes, the movie obviously benefited from being part of the centenary celebrations of Finland, but in my opinion the performance is still definitely in the uppermost echelons vis-à-vis expectations. And what's been quite heartwarming have been the non-trivial grosses obtained from neighboring Sweden. Having said all this, the movie needed to do well because it is the most expensive Finnish movie ever made with a budget of about €7m. In other box office news from last weekend: Jumanji crossed 100k admissions. Nothing spectacular, but alright. Black Panther and Coco both opened, and the results are a mixed bag: BP opened with 26k admissions. Quite modest, but on other hand it played on the fewest screens (73) out of all of the three major openers (BP, a local comedy, and Coco) and got the most admissions, so it's not all bad (depending on the legs of course). Coco's opening performance was a flat-out disappointment, there are no two ways about it. It had the most screens (122) but posted the lowest admissions out of all of the three major openers with slightly under 19k. One glimmer of hope for Coco is that local reviews have been pretty fantastic across the board, so if word of mouth is in line with the reviews, Coco has a chance to recover in the coming weeks.