andrewgr

And when Megan Fox was still both Hot and Sane.

I refuse to believe anyone over the age of 50 could rank their 10 favorite comic book movies without including the original Christopher Reeves Superman. I am going to assume I'm the only old man in this thread: 1. Superman (1978) 2. The Dark Knight 3. Avengers: Infinity War 4. Into the Spider-Verse 5. Avengers: Endgame 6. Guardians of the Galaxy 7. Spider-Man 2 (2004) 8. Avengers 9. X-Men 10. Captain America: The Winter Soldier

It's okay, we irrevocably broke it for them first.

I didn't see either A Star is Born or Bohemian Rhapsody, but there's a decent chance I'll see Rocketman-- not because I'm craving a musical, but because I'm over 50, so I've been listening to Elton John from the time I could understand words up to today.

In Seattle at least, the big difference to me is the expensive tickets. Theaters here (at least the ones I've looked at) have maybe something like 6:1 ratio of iMAX to normal screenings, in favor of Endgame. I've given Disney $84 for Endgame so far-- and that's just my wife and I seeing it twice! I didn't think EG and DP would compete much for the same audience, and I thought there was more than enough capacity for both of them, but I'll sheepishly admit (because I think it was a really obvious consideration I should have thought of) that I didn't give any thought to the fact that there isn't actually enough premium seat capacity for both movies. I think DP is probably losing something like 10% per ticket sold, for people that would have popped for $21 iMax if they had the chance, but wound up settling for $14 normal. Even at the premium end, at my local 14-screen theater, it's not even showing in iMax, it's just got one late night showing per day on Real3D for $18.50.

Variety's updated projections based on early Friday numbers: EG $68M, DP $55M

It's not possible to calculate the largest franchise by revenue, but I can assure you it's not Pokemon. The list on wikipedia that everyone cites is pure nonsense; examples include not counting the Star Wars TV shows for Star Wars, not counting any Marvel Comic Books for Marvel, not counting any Spider-Man games or movies for Marvel, etc. The list of absurdities goes on and on.

I have no idea what you're responding to. Evidently you've built up some narrative in your head about what you think I was saying, and are responding to that. My first statement is both factual and relavent. The currency exchange rate makes an enormous difference in WW box office numbers. It was far more favorable for Avatar than it is for Endgame. If the exchange rates were equal, Endgame would not be struggling to beat Avatar's WW Box Office, it would be cruising past it. The End. If somehow you extrapolate from that statement that I believe that Endgame's achievement is bigger than Avatar's, or that adjusting for exchange rate and nothing else is a fair way to compare movies, or whatever other nonsense you imagined I was saying, that's your baggage. That's on you. I didn't say that, and I didn't imply that. I made a factual statement quantifying the impact of the exchange rate on two movies that are being compared to one another all over the place, and that's it. The second part of my post is a prediction about the future direction of the strength of the dollar, and a prediction that Avatar 2's delay will wind up helping its WW Box Office as a result. I think this is the potentially interesting part of my post, that I don't see people discussing when they are talking about WW numbers a year or two years or five years out. It is impossible to know whether my prediction is correct, but I think it's reasonable, and I think it's relavent when you're projecting Avatar 2's Box Office.

It's way, way, way too early to say this. Aladdin is a Disney movie. I don't think you really grasp what that means. It could bomb, but coming to that conclusion this far in advance because of advanced sales is not justified. You keep saying that DP is a kids movie and will play like a kids movie so we shouldn't be too alarmed by advanced sales numbers or totals from preview night, but it's not even certain that DP will play like a kids movie; Aladdin is the very definition of a kids movie, so using your own logic, we shouldn't be paying too much attention to advanced sales.

The exchange rate is the only reason EG isn't crushing Avatar's WW record beyond recognition. When Avatar made its run, every 10 Euros translated into $14; during EG, every 10 Euros translates into $11. It's the same story with most major currencies. Just a monstrously huge impact. With regards to A2's chances of getting the WW record back, one good thing about A2 being delayed is that it's almost inconceivable given the political situation in the U.S. that the dollar can remain strong for another 2 years. By the time A2 is released, it is easily conceivable that it will be even more favorable for A2 than it was for A1. If you told me you came from the future and on the day of A2's relase, $10 Euros translated to $16, I wouldn't bat an eyelid. I'm not predicting that big of a drop for the dollar, but the situation right now is all sorts of FUBAR, and there are a lot of ways it could play out that would make foreign governments and institiutional investors flee to Euros or the Yuan. I would bet a kidney the dollar will be significantly weaker two years from now than it is now, I'm just not sure by how much.

Plenty of people pay full price for Netflix, and you know it. I'm assuming this is just an unnecessarily obnoxious way of bragging that you got a great deal, because there is literally no chance that you actually believe that some huge percentage of people get Netflix at a discount.

Disney has already announced that the only way End Game will stream will be on Disney+. I think it's an open question how many people are going to pony up a monthly fee to subscribe to Disney+.

Perhaps I misunderstood the purpose of your post. I thought you were responding to the discussion of the drop from Monday to Tuesday, and the overall impact of the runtime on weekdays specifically. If I lost track of the conversation and you were speaking about overall Box Office and not the specific conversation about weeknights, my apologies.

I can definitively state that this is not true. It does have an impact, though it might be minor. In fact, besides my wife and myself, every other person in our circle of friends who has seen the movie has explicitly stated that they can't go on a weekday because they need to get up for work the next morning, so they've seen it on the weekend. My wife and I are seeing it a 2nd time, this coming Saturday; if it was 30 minutes shorter, we quite probably would have seen it tomorrow night instead. Possible additional information that may explain this: we're in our 50's, and so are our friends; even as recently as 10 years ago, this would not have been an issue.

I can't tell if this is bait or a joke. I mean, yes, it has the worst legs of any film to open north of $258M, but it also has the best legs of any film to open north of $258M, since it's the only film to open north of $258M. Assuming for the moment that it was a joke and not bait: I think part of the reason people who are rooting for EG to set records get their dander up is because they read a phrase like "worst legs" as being a negative or an attack, because in most situations saying "worst X" is a criticism. In this case, it's just a numerically true statement. It's not bad or good, it's just a mathematical fact. And it doesn't imply anything bad either. "Worst legs" is about a ratio, using opening weekend as the denominator. It's a useful number for making predictions and stuff, but in and of itself it doesn't matter. If Avatar 2 opens with a 5 billion dollar weekend and then does 1 billion dollars its second weekend, that will be the worst first to second week drop ever for a blockbuster, and it would set up the "worst legs" ever for a blockbuster. Using absurd numbers like this makes it easier to see why the phrase "worst legs" isn't actually a negative judgment. Endgame made almost $100 million more than any other film in history on its opening weekend. If it turns out that its legs aren't enough to get it to TFA or 900 million, that will accurately reflect the fact that the pent up demand for a new Star Wars movie was slightly greater than the demand for the final movie in this phase of the MCU. The poor legs will be due to the fact that so many people were so excited about it that they went in record numbers to see it opening weekend, not because it is any less of a movie. It has a 95% RT critics score, and with an 8.9 is the highest rated movie of all time on IMDB for heaven's sake, it's not like "bad legs" implies it's getting bad word of mouth or people don't want to see it twice or anything like that.

So it's sold an average of 12 tickets per theater? Do you have any idea how other films have done with presales so we have something to compare that to? Less than 48 hours before showings start, that per theater average seems low to me, but I wouldn't presume to say that I know what is normal for your area.

For Thursday, it's got 9 showings, several of them in really tiny auditoriums. None of them premium format. And none of them are even halfway to selling out; a couple of them that start around 7PM are maybe 40% full, most of the others are like 10%-15%.

I'm sorry, I don't. I know the numbers would be more useful with that context, but it didn't occur to me to keep track. I just happened to get interested because they didn't have any Endgame tickets up until the afternoon today, which seemed crazy to me.

Yeah, I just posted screen counts from my local Regal theater over on the Electric Boogaloo thread, but TL;DR version is that for this Saturday, they have 50% more screenings of Endgame (22 to 15), and of those screenings, Endgame has 7 premium format showings and DP only 1. They didn't have most showings of most movies up until within the last couple of hours, they did their screen allocation today. They've had some showings of DP up for presale for a while, so presumably they allocated screens based on presale demand. The 4:20 showing of DP is one that I'm certain has been available for presale for a while, and currently it is 1/6th full. Make of that what you will.

The local Regal theater has 14 screens. Weekend showtimes for Endgame just went up within the last two hours (Detective Pikachu showtimes have been available at least all week for presales, at least for some showtimes, not sure about all). For Saturday May 11th: Detective Pikachu: 15 total showings. 14 of those are normal format, 1 is premium (Real3D, at a 9:50pm showtime) Endgame: 22 total showings. 15 of those are normal format, 7 are premium (Mix of IMax 2D, IMax 3D, and Real3D) Out of curiousity, I looked to see what seats are avalable for the Real3D showing of DP. The pattern of seats available is really strange, it can't be from normal customer purchases. Basically the back two rows are shown as not available, and the leftmost 3 seats in every row are marked as not available, and then there are two seats side by side in a normal place that looks like where someone would normally buy seats. Every other seat is shown as available for sale. If anyone is interested in seeing for themselves, it's the Regal Thornton Place Theater 14, in Seattle, WA-- the 9:50 Real3D showing on Saturday May 11th.

Interesting that Avatar 2 got pushed back a year, but Avatar 3 got pushed back two years. Then Avatar 4 pushed back a year, and Avatar 5 two years. This seems consistent with the notion that it's just taking longer to make the movies than expected; the two year delays would account for the 1 year delay of the prior movie, plus another year of additional work on the current movie.

It's pretty awful. I mainly lurk and seldom post, but I enjoy following the Box Office of event films, and it's fun to talk about with my wife. But nothing about Box Office Theory has been enjoyable for this history making Endgame run. Page after page of people demonstrating how primitive and tribal we really are a species-- deliberatly baiting, insulting, and annoying other people because they aren't rooting for the same movie. We all participate in an incredibly obscure, niche hobby, and instead of building a community, we remain true to millions of years of our primate ancestery by flinging poop at people that aren't part of our little sub-group. And if the tribalism wasn't depressing enough, the sheer futility of the entire enterprise is. If you're measuring who has the most dollars, you're measuring who has the most dollars, and there's nothing to debate. If you're using a number of dollars as a proxy to judge how commercially successful a movie is, or how much of a phenomenon it was, then you're tilting with windmills: these are multidimensional concepts that cannot ever be meaningfully reduced to a single number. Perhaps you could build some N dimensional construct and rate movies by supplying a coordinate in that construct, or maybe a vector; but believing that a single number can accurately capture complex notions like how "important" a movie is shows what I can only interpret as a lack of serious thought about the matter.

Very small chance of this. Unless there is some currently unimagined scientific breakthrough, climate change will create a world in which luxury entertainment like movies will be out of the reach of the majority of the planet, well before the end of the century.

Dude, come on. If you haven't bothered to watch any of the many interviews with the Russo Brothers, or read any of the many articles about them, then you shouldn't be posting speculation like this. And if you have, then it's farcical for you to throw this out there as a possibility; no one who has seen or heard them interviewed could doubt the enormous impact they had on the movies they directed, including the months spent working with the writers on each script.

I assume it's much more than that. Titanic did a huge percentage of its business during a very long tail. It was in theaters for over 40 weeks, and was raking in money that whole time. If it was released this year, it would have been available on streaming services and Blu Ray long before that. That wouldn't have cut out some trivial amount of money the way it does for the overwhelming majority of movies; for Titanic, that would have cut out a substantial some of money.