jedijake

Gonna predict about $65 million OW and $170 million domestic. WW-I don't know and IDGAF.

No movie in the history of mankind has ever been "necessary" (except maybe Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan).

Well they won't. But even if Disney were to cancel everything that has been greenlit, they still won't make anything innovative. Not their style. Not anyone's style actually.

there was a worldwide pandemic at the time. plus it was the biggest box office success since the pandemic started

Some truths, half-truths and some non-truths. * MCU has weakened but had some triumphs (Shang Chi, GOTG3, MOM, BP WF.) Not all a loss. * SW-yeah probably some truth there BUT shows have been well liked for the most part. Writer's strike will put a damper on progress on the new films. *WDAS-that is false for the most part. Strange World-yes, total flop. But Encanto and Raya can't be judged due to the pandemic. Encanto created a bit of a culture phenom and would have excelled outside a pandemic. *20th Century-Avatar, Nuff said. Probably nothing else matters for them. *Pixar-Elementals will probably not do well. However, let's see what Inside Out 2 does. Pixar really seems to be the one impacted by D+ the most. * Live actions-TLM really should have been the last one made for theaters. It was the last of the true renaissance films to be made into live-action so there was no doubt. Bottom line is that Disney needs a new property-either something fresh or a book series (like Keeper of the Lost Cities). But we're talking MASSIVE risks because budgets aren't getting any cheaper for theatricals. And the writer strike won't help things.

I'm not going to touch that one. Better just leave that as "agree to disagree" and go from there. And define "hit". (DS MOM, AvWOW, BPWF,GOGT3, Shang Chi, even the panned ThLaT were all hits).

Then there's really something weird going on that would make an interesting investigation/study. I have theories, but don't want to make this a COVID/race relation thread. Been there done that. As for domestic, TLM should pull in $40-$45 million in its second weekend. WOM is great (despite what the conspiracy theorists here are saying). Thereafter, it should drop on average of 35% per weekend (emphasize average-some more some less). The mid-weeks should be at or close to the weekends since it's summer. So we're still probably looking at around $320-$330 million domestic which would be about 90+% of Aladdin. Pretty damn good considering all the backlash.

Any debate about TLM's domestic success is really just splitting hairs. Sure, most people wanted a $100 m 3-day and it fell short, But while it may not make over Aladdin's domestic, it isn't going to be all that drastically different. It will probably end up around $330 million which is pretty damn good. As for the foreign, I don't think there's any way anyone could ever have predicted what is happening in Asia unless they had an absolute pulse on the mentality there. Let's also wait to see what happens with Japan. When does it come out in Japan?

Okay, so you're saying it's all one big conspiracy.

So you're saying that the 95% is fake and most of those verified reviews are fake? And cinemascore is fake? Is that what you are implying?

WOM not great? It has a solid 95% audience rating. How is that "not great"? As far as creativity, what motivation is there? Anything that any studio does that is "new" fails miserably and has done so since the first Avatar. That's a LONG stretch of time without a successful new IP. Then along comes streaming which is the official home of new IP's. Disney's problem is that they are also not making new IP's for D+. Get some of the creative animated writers to come up with a new live action story or a popular book series (like Keepers of the Lost Cities) for a movie or series on D+. Then, IF it becomes popular (like Stranger Things), use it as a launch pad for a movie event in the theater. Or have an interesting series and have the finale of each season go exclusively to theaters for a while. Then a grand finale for the entire series also in the theaters but perhaps in trilogy form, with a bigger budget. I'm really shocked that executives haven't utilized the popularity of streaming to fuse their streaming services with major theatrical opportunities. At least Disney is trying to do that to revitalize SW (or so we're told) with Filoni's work.

LOLOLOLOL@ all the people arguing about which CEO is better, as if that has anything to do with a money's box office numbers. That's funny stuff. Someone said it best (can't find the post now). The overseas box office is SO low that the reason must be very simple. Just not sure what that simple explanation is. But I highly doubt that Asian markets give a rats ass about Disney or Florida politics.

Pretty much all of DC since the Nolan trilogy (except WW and Aqum)

All of this, quite frankly, is why I don't really care about overseas box office numbers. It's like trying to predict if a pet goldfish will be able to survive on Mars. It's for studios to worry about. This probably goes back to my days of obsessively following music charts (80's and early 90's) before Soundscan. Never cared how songs were doing on other countries' charts and never cared one bit about the sales chart since that is not what I heard on the radio.

It will be a debate for the ages.

Yes

Thanks. I found the US dollars on BOM anyway.

Oh boy! There is going to be a LOT of interesting discussion on this one.

We'll see how things pan out domestically and what it's drops are here on out. Internationally though, that will be and should be a VERY interesting discussion and debate for the ages. That's not just low. The overseas numbers feels like a kind of movement. Btw, does anyone know what the UK openings for Aladdin, Lion King, or BatB were?

Are they even having dwarves in it? And I think I read that there's no prince in it. If true, it's gonna be ugly!!!

Ouch!

There is nothing wrong with saying that and I think there has been a lot of truth to that all along. There's a little bit less of a "cool" factor in TLM than in TLK and Aladdin because it is SO female oriented. They may also have been a little bit heavy handed on the fact that this is a film finally for little black girls. That said, how does it explain the success of BatB though? Did the Beast and Gaston make it more male-friendly? But, to think that a few days ago people wondered if it could make $400 mill domestic and now wonder about $300 mill is a very quick downturn. Posting $100 million for the OW will look so much better for Disney than something between $95-$99 million. The former can be touted as a triumph. The latter feels like a misfire.

It would be very interesting to see the regional percentages (northeast, southeast, midwest, etc.) compared to Aladdin's regional percentages.

But like I said, I have a hard time believing they will just leave it at $98 or $99 million for the weekend. Actuals may be higher than the estimates we've seen.

If it makes $30 or $31 million today, do you really think they won't fudge it and bump it to make $100 million? I can't see them posting a $98 or $99 million opening weekend. A headline like "Little Mermaid splashes to a huge $100 million opening weekend" looks a lot better than "Little Mermaid missed the century mark with $98 million". The latter would help its legs. Actuals may tell a different story than what we've seen. What's interesting about this is that everyone was skeptical about using Aladdin as a comp because it was pre-pandemic. As it turns out, it was the best comp BUT, looking back, using that comp put the previews for TLM higher. So, the real question is why did sales peter out for TLM at the 11th hour before release?