Marathon

Looking at my own market, the pre-sales are very strong for Thursday and Friday. Thursday in particular has lots of near- and practically sold out shows. Friday is also looking good. The matinees for Saturday and Sunday haven't sold much but those tend to be walk-up driven time slots anyway. The evening shows for Sat and Sun are looking promising. So, all in all, I would expect a decently strong opening at the very least, and possibly stronger depending on WOM. And I guess this applies to the rest of Europe as well...

Crazy that OS still under $200m.

The Disney live action megabomb triumvirate (John Carter, The Lone Ranger, Tomorrowland) will expand to quadrumvirate with Dial Of Destiny.

I wonder what kind of team-up moves we'll see between G & K...

That Indy global gross is just shockingly awful. Even if the budget had been lower.

December 2024 is very barren any which way, might as well stick DR II in there.

With regards to the Moore Bonds, I watched AVTAK a while ago and the first half is actually decent (if somewhat workmanlike) entertainment, and the focus on horses is refreshing and unique(?) for a spy film. However, as soon as Bond's cover is blown and they go to San Francisco, the whole thing falls apart completely. Should have kept it in UK/Europe and more in line with the first half, could have been a solid entry into the Bond canon.

Tom Cruise is starting to look like a middle-aged rocker version of himself.

A meh drop overall but I guess could have been worse. Decent drops in the mature markets.

How many markets' pre-sale data do we have for Barbie?

Next year's box office looks utterly dull on paper. Nothing is a lock for a billion, and I don't personally see much huge breakout potential in anything except for maybe a few movies. Hopefully this jinxes things and we see all-out craziness week in, week out. 😜

This coming weekend is absolutely barren in terms of new openers, so Indy should - at least in theory - be able to have a decent hold. After that, however, it's anyone's guess how the stacking adult-skewing competition will affect it.

Damn, these numbers are far worse than I anticipated... looks like there might be only a few markets with an ok(ish) performance and everything else is a non-starter...

Any early numbers?

Bumping this up now that the opening week is here. It's the top-selling movie right now in my market so maybe it can open decently. It has a 5-day opening here.

$45m budget means money loss incoming from the theatrical run (overseas gross will probably be miniscule).

Inflation continues to eat into purchasing power. Even a lot of mundane everyday stuff has gotten significantly more expensive compared to a few years back. People being pickier about a theater ticket is thus understandable, and it contributes to the depressed grosses of would-be-blockbusters. Until inflation eases to a more manageable level (even some deflation would be welcome), the grosses for would-be-blockbusters will likely hover on a lower plateau than "expected."

There's a chance that Mario stays as the only >$1b grosser until 2025. That's how abysmal the landscape looks.

Looks like people have already started depositing money in their pink piggy banks in preparation for Barbie.

What we've learned from the box office this weekend: that two bombs can coexist just fine.

On the other hand, "June Bombs" sounds like the family daughter name in an ultra-militaristic Pixar movie.

"Summer Bombs" sounds like a fragrance.

I miss the early 2010s era of mega-bombs. Disney in particular rained sacks and sacks of dollar bills on supposedly proven directors and reaped the rewards with three wonderful mega-bombs: John Carter, The Lone Ranger, and Tomorrowland. Even WB dabbled in this excess, such as green-lighting the one-and-done Wackowskis predictably bombing Jupiter Ascending. We need more lurid excess and delusions of grandeur from studios. When movies mega-bomb these days, it doesn't feel as fun anymore. As if things only bombed due to some slight unbeforeseen aberration in a future-proof movie/franchise optimization machine or something.

A grim year for box office when at half-way point you only have two movies over $700m and uncertainty getting more to join the club.

The vast majority of the animated superhero stuff by WB/DC has been either television or straight-to-video/streaming. I wonder if they should try theatrically released animated superhero feature films (or would it be a case of redundancy/oversaturation?). Since live action superhero stuff seems to be on shaky ground right now (even Guardians would have underperformed without the great word of mouth), maybe that's an option to explore.