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andrewgr

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  1. Just got back from a 7pm showing in Seattle, 2D Imax. The theater can't have been even 10% full, more like 5% probably. No idea why-- maybe 4th of July night shows are usually empty? In any event, just thought I'd pass along the datum.
  2. How is GvK a crossover? Are there actually people that are "fans" of Godzilla that see Godzilla movies, but don't care about Kong and won't go see his movies? Or the other way around? I don't see any way this can legitimately be labeled a crossover film. You either like Monster movies, or you don't. If you like them, you see the movies with the two most iconic monsters in the world. If you don't like them, you don't see any of them. You're not going to be magically adding a bunch of Godzilla fans together with a bunch of totally different Kong fans to get some noticably higher total.
  3. I am predicting that EG will make less than IW did over the course of the next 2-3 weeks, but will surprise most of you by having longer legs. I think it will stay in theaters longer than IW, and I think it will make noticeably more money in its long tail than IW did. I'm going with $875M before its run is over, with much of the difference from the $850M or so that most are projecting being something like an extra $20M after week 10 or so. Week 10 on, IW made around $25M; I think EG pulls in like $45M. I have no numbers to back this up, and no movies to compare it to that had similar behavior. I'm basing it mostly on intuition. I won't be that disappointed if I'm wrong, it's a really great movie and has done really well at the Box Office regardless, but every now and then it's fun to play a hunch, and this is mine.
  4. Wow! I paid $21/ticket on both the 1st weekend and the 3rd weekend.
  5. Nah, you didn't rile me at all. What you said was perfectly legitimate, and you didn't say or imply that Keanu wasn't great in the role. I think we differ a bit on how the credit for the movies' success should be doled out, but there's no question that the director has a consistent, compelling vision, and is getting the most out of Keanu and the other actors. We're probably splitting hairs.
  6. I don't agree with this. Keanu put in a tremendous amount of effort learning martial arts and gunplay for this part, a level of effort beyond what I think most established stars would have been willing to put in. As a result, I think his performance is exceptionally good in the action sequences, which make up a large amount of screentime. Also, I think Keanu's relatively low-affect bearing and facial expressions lend the character a certain amount of gravitas and implaccability that I do not think many other actors would have tried for. When you look at the amount of emoting done by, say, the actors in the Fast & Furious franchise and imagine John Wick being played that way, it's an entirely different movie, and one which I would find much less compelling. I'm not going to claim that Keanu is the only person that could play this role, but I think you're being too skimpy on the credit he deserves. He's made this role his own, and I don't think that it's a foregone conclusion that any random action star would have made this franchise the success that it is.
  7. 1. Endgame 2. JW3 . . . 3. Captain Marvel . . . . . . 4. Shazam And those are the only four movies I've bothered to see in the theater this year. If it's not something that's going to benefit from an iMax and/or an opening night, hyped up crowd, my wife and I will usually just wait for it to stream. Maybe we'll see a rom-com once a year just for a date night or something. Upcoming movies I know we'll see are SW9: TROS and FFH. I'll probably go on my own to see Joker, if I like the reviews. And I have a friend that wants to see Brightburn, though I almost never watch horror movies, so that's still iffy.
  8. My theory is Winston and Wick planned it. Wick was either wearing a bullet proof jacket and Winston was intentionally not shooting his head, or else he was shooting blanks. The fact that the guy was ready and waiting to quickly gather Wick up and take him to The Bowry King, who spoke as if he was expecting him, lends support to this. Then the question is, what about that ridiculously brutal fall? I think there are two possibilities. First, the film makers just messed up a bit and strained credulity too far by letting him survive; or second, that someone was ready and waiting to throw one of the many available corpses out a top floor window, while John was clinging to a ledge or whatever. This sets up new ground for JW4: with the world believing John to be dead or at least out of action (remember Winston "shot" him like 4 or 5 times before the fall), he could spend part or all of the next movie in unseen assassin mode, which would allow some new types of tension, action sequences, and world building.
  9. It's almost like you have no understanding of how numbers and percentages work. Like, none. EG made $146 million in its second weekend. For you or anyone else to use that as evidence that it had mediocre WOM because that was a certain percentage drop from OW is almost incromprehensible. It's third weekend, after already making $660 million, when the overwhelming majority of people who were really looking forward to seeing it had already done so in order to avoid spoilers, it made $63 million. I'm not sure how to phrase that so you actaully understand. In its 3rd weekend, after already having made $660 million, it still made another $63 million. I truly do not understand what could possibly be going through your head that allows you to see a number like $63 million and come to the conclusion, "Oh man, that thing has really mediocre WOM, only the hardcore fans are seeing it, it's so disappointing." My tentative hypothesis-- which seems to me to be pretty far fetched, but it's the best I've got-- is that you simply look at percentage numbers without understanding their context, or why they're so often used, or what they actually mean. Like someone who reads in an article that eating a certain food has been found to double your rate of some rare cancer and jumps to the conclusion that it's a dangerous carcenogen, when in reality it just moves the probability of getting that form of cancer from 1/600,000 to 1/300,000, and isn't worth sparing a second thought about. Like, "OMG, it doubles the rate of that rare form of cancer I can't pronounce, quick, get it all out of the house!" The percentage declines that EG is exhibiting mean that it's not going to hit the final totals that many people were predicting after its first weekend. That is a useful and interesting data point which can be used to help projecting movies that have many similarities to EG in the future. It shows the limitations of applying existing formulae and patterns to a new case that is so wildly different than all previous data, such as when a movie is so popular that theaters stay open 24 hours a day for 3 straight days and a movie grosses 39% more money opening weekend than any previous movie. And it is disappointing to people who were rooting for it to break some records it probably won't break. But it doesn't imply that the WOM was bad, or that audiences didn't like it as much as other movies that experienced smaller percentage week-to-week decreases, or anything of that kind, and it's ridiculous to argue otherwise.
  10. And by all accounts he's a kind, genuine person. I think he has real limitations as an actor, but I root for him and enjoy his movies.
  11. So, so good. They should lock everyone associated with this movie down for three more, they can just re-use the same actors over and over again for different roles for all I care; how are they ever going to top this?
  12. Saw John Wick Chapter 3 tonight. It's a masterpiece. Really enjoyed it. Keanu is getting older, I'm not sure how many more of these he has in him, but I feel like he owes it to the cause of Art to make as many as he reasonably can. He can't possibly have any higher calling as an Artist than JW4 and JW5, at least.
  13. Some highly-scientific additional data points to add into your models: John Wick 3 is a masterpiece. I don't think the bar it sets for this particular art form is likely to be surpassed anytime soon. My theater was about 2/3 full for an 8:00PM showing, and he crowd definitely enjoyed it, there were more than a few highly audible reactions. Also, of all the trailers, Brightburn got the largest amount of buzz.
  14. In the last couple of decades, investors have demanded immediate return on their stock purchases. The idea of holding onto a stock for 20 years while it slowly but steadily pays out dividends and appreciates in value is now the exception, not the norm. We see the effect of that in all industries, not just in entertainment. But focusing on the entertainment business, if the time horizon you're being judged on and promoted on and compensated on is 2-3 years, not 20-30 years, you fund different projects and make different decisions than you would otherwise. A famous example that's often cited is that Seinfeld almost certainly would have been cancelled after its first season if NBC had been using the same criteria then as they are now. A less-famous but much dearer to my heart example is Firefly, which could have become a huge hit for FOX that paid dividends for many years, possibly even becoming an entire TV/Movie franchise; instead, despite enormous critical acclaim and a devoted fanbase, it was cancelled after one season because it wasn't doing well enough immediately. In the past, critical acclaim and devoted fans would have been seen as a solid base to build on, rather than a disappointment. Launching a new potential franchise on a modest budget with a bankable leading man isn't likely to go so wrong that it eats into your profits that year; the same can't be said about, say, The Mortal Engines. It sucks, but it's the same incentive structure that leads companies that are making billions of dollars per year in profits to lay off entire teams and business units, rather than repurposing them over a couple or three years. Laying them off now makes the stock go up immediately; retraining them and finding uses for their skills pays off ten years down the road, and that's not what the CEO is being rewarded for.
  15. Gold has been used to barter for goods since before recorded history. There has never been a time that it has not carried value, and in modern times, it actually has functional value in electronics and other applications. Bitcoin has been around for a few years, and is literally just magnetic 1's and 0's that a small subset of people have agreed has monetary value, though how much value fluctuates wildly. There is substantial evidence that the price has been artificially manipulated on more than one occassion. I do not see Bitcoin, or any cryptocurrency, ever replacing gold. Until/unless we are able to mine gold from some huge extra-terrestial deposit, I think it will always be a store for value. I've held substantial amounts of physical gold at various points over the years, although I don't own any now. I'm old enough that if things were to go so wrong that the dollar was worthless, I'd rather just die than try to survive amongst the ruins bartering gold. But for your average 30 year old parent of 2 living on $100K+ household income, I think it's not a bad idea to buy a single Gold coin from the U.S. Treasury every year and put it in a safety deposit box-- not as an investment, just as an emergency backstop for if some extreme but recoverable crisis makes currency worthless for a while. If you can sell it when you retire for a profit, so much the better, but just like you shouldn't buy your home counting on it to appreciate, don't take gold into account when doing financial planning. (Or for that matter, I bet a gold coin makes a spiffy high school graduation gift for a grandchild!)
  16. The first six months of 2018 saw the dollar weeken substantially against the Yuan. By my estimate $1.64 billion over the first 9 months of 2018 tranlsates to about $1.81 billion over the first 9 months of 2017. Adjusted for currency exchange, the first 9 months of 2018 did 83% as much as the first 9 months 2017. But then, the movies over that time period weren't as popular all over the globe in 2018 as in 2017. In the first 9 months of 2018, the worldwide take was something on the order of $7.5 billion. Over the same period in 2017, it was around $8.1 billion. So worldwide, the first 9 months of 2018 did about 93% as much as the first 9 monthos of 2017. If we again adjust the 2018 take to control for the worldwide popluarity of the films released in their respective years, the number goes up to $2.0 billion. So now we're comparing $2.17 billion to 2.0 billion. That would mean the first 9 months of 2018 did 92% as much as the first 9 months of 2017. I am not going to do the calculations for the last 20 years or whatever to determine if that 8% is statistically significant or not, but my intuition is that there's probably at least 5% variation in any year over year 9-month comparison just due to randomness or the particular appeal of certain movies in the East vs. the West, that have nothing to do with any long term trends. Note: I have not the slightest notion what's going on with Hollywood movies in China. None. I just see extremely specific numbers for extremely specific time periods being thrown around and interpreted as evidence of a long-term trend and get suspicious and want to actually do some basic sanity checking, that's all.
  17. So? You're allowed to see it more than once. My wife and I saw EG for the 2nd time last weekend. We were talking about Tom Holland as Spider-Man, and his chemistry with RDJ/Ironman, and that made us think that we never watched Homecoming for a second time, so we watched it last night. That's the sort of effect people are hoping for. The number of people who see Far From Home and are triggered by a scene or a quote or a character into wanting to watch EG again will be greater than zero. It's just a matter of how much greater. I personally have no clue, but just the fact that everyone who wants to see it will have already seen it does not imply that they can't be motivated to see it again before it leaves theaters. Also, I seem to be the only person that thinks this could potentially be a factor, but I keep wondering if there will be some late legs due to people who aren't planning on paying for Disney+ wanting to watch it one last time while they still can. Again, I know that number of people will be greater than zero, but I don't know whether it will be a perceptible effect.
  18. Deadpool 2 only did $5M less than Deadpool 1, WW; I think it was a success by any measure, but for an R rated movie, I think it was a strong success. But yeah, I don't think his name on a movie is going to get people to say, "Oh, it's Ryan Reynolds, we should see that!".
  19. I enjoyed Mortal Kombat more than any of these. It's not a good movie, but I genuinely enjoyed it-- enought that I saw the horrific sequel opening day.
  20. Yeah, and we still don't know where this ends. It's obvious that EG was front loaded-- how could it not be, with that OW? But frontloading means that viewers who would normally wait X amount of time before seeing it, go out of their way to see it much earlier in the run, usually opening weekend or at least in the first two weeks (as evidenced by the Russo brothers giving their blessings to spoilers after the seconed weekend.) Once that fronloading period is past, you're back to whatever the movie's normal numbers were going to be, frontloading or no. And we're just now hitting that spot. This 3rd weekend is probably going to be about what it would be if Endgame had made a hundred million less OW; the bulk of those first weekend sales probably would have been spread out over the days since then. So, where does it go from here? I don't think comparing EG's multiples to other movies is nearly as straightforward as it would be otherwise, given the number of unique things about the movie. I don't have any better method to offer, and if I had to choose a method, yes, I'd look at its multiplier so far and compare it to IW's and do some math and project where it's going to end. But my confidence in the projection I would come up with would not be nearly as high as it would be if the film had opened at the same level as IW, if it wasn't the culmination of 22 movies, if people weren't becoming aware that it will only stream on Disney+, which maybe they're not intending to buy, etc. etc. I think there is a small but non-zero chance that from this point on, EG decays normally until it's down to like $8M/weekend, and then holds steady there for a lot longer than most people are expecting. I can imagine it making more money on its tail end than any MCU movie before it, bringing in appreciable amounts of money throughout the summer. I think the long-tails on two recent MCU movies, Black Panther and Captain Marvel, suggest that this might be possible; and I think the A+ Cineascope, 95% RT (remember, IW was only 85%), emotional connections with departing actors, and other factors could be enough to make it happen. So I haven't completely given up hope on 900M. It would take an atypical, er, endgame to come to fruition, but I think there are signs that it could be possible. I don't know how to go about putting a probability on it, but I feel comfortable saying it's greater than zero.
  21. Yes and no. I think Rogue One is the best Star Wars movie ever, and maybe even in the discussion with Clone Wars for best Star Wars media ever, so I was really, really excited about the idea of more one-off movies set in the Star Wars universe. I think that caused a lot of us to be optimistic. But when they announced Solo, I was really disappointed for a couple of reasons. First, I think they have made their theatrical universe so unbelievably, unforgivabely small; an entire galaxy to explore, and all we ever see are the same freakin' 10 characters or so over and over and over again. (Which, incidentally, is why I think episodes 7, 8, and presumably 9 are like half as good as they could have been without bringing in the original cast.) So when I heard they were doing an entire movie about Solo, I was bummed. Second, I thought it was making a movie unnecessarily risky by trying to do a younger version of an iconic character. Yes, I believe it could be done; but it's by no means a sure thing. If it fails, well, you wind up with Solo. I didn't understand (and still don't) why you'd burden a movie with that sort of risk when you have literally thousands of stories already written to be told in the same universe.
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