LordNox

Shazam and Dumbo are both going for the family audience, so it will be interesting to see if the reviews will do anything to drive that audience away from Dumbo into Shazam. Or if Shazam's darker tone make the families more likely to still go to Dumbo instead.

Shazam and Dumbo are both going for the family audience, so it will be interesting to see if the reviews will do anything to drive that audience away from Dumbo into Shazam. Or if Shazam's darker tone make the families more likely to still go to Dumbo instead.

How does it look for Shazam at tomorrow's prescreenings? Is it selling well on Fandango?

I think this movie has the potential to do well at the box office. No chance that Gunn will make a movie that gets a bad RT score. And this movie will probably be released in china and have the chance to earn over a 100M there if the action is good. I'm thinking at least 700M at the box office if its a good movie. It does have the chance to earn more than the first one and more importantly if it gets a good RT score the suicide squad franchise have the potential to continue to do well in further intallments as well.

The similitaries seems to be that neither Whedon or Gunn seems that interested in their DC projects compared to what they were doing at Marvel.

Not to be too much of a conspiracy theorist here but it does seem likely that Gunn has just straight out used Suicide Squad as his leverage to get his dream job at the MCU back. You gotta question how committed he will really be in making Suicide Squad or if he will just fast track to get it done as quickly as possible to take over his passion project Guardians of the galaxy.

Now that its clear that Gunn will return to GOTG after Suicide squad 2 lets speculate a little. What if Suicide Squad 2 becomes a Guardians of the galaxy style hit. Will he return to direct another one or will WB get another director?

Well the difference in interest has only grown lately. Captain Marvel which almost every reviewer seems to agree is inferior to Shazam is still likely to earn more than double at the box office. With Shazam earning 500M or less and Captain Marvel over a billion. Had Shazam been a marvel movie the buzz would be enormous by now.

Spiderman made huge numbers at the box office. And that is why i pointed out that WB is kicking themselves right now. If they hadn't made all kinds of mistakes at the beginning they would have a big inbuilt fanbase. The interest was there, but too many bad movies were made which made DC lose a lot of trust.

There are times like this that WB is kicking themselves for previous mistakes. Everything points to Shazam being the better movie compared to Captain Marvel and if Shazam were made in the MCU the buzz would be enormous for it right now. But DC due to past mistakes have a much smaller fanbase than Marvel which means that even when they make a very good movie like Shazam the interest is pretty low because the inbuilt fanbase is too small. Marvel has reached such high level of trust and so many fans that even when they make a mediocre movie the level of interest is so high that the movie inevitable explodes. While for DC it isn't enough for the movie to be great, the audiences will continue to see DC as the lesser version of Marvel. It will take years for DC to change this reception and to grow a fanbase.

Interesting. The rumors say that the review embargo also will lift on the same date as the early screenings. So WB want both very good reviews as well as great word mouth coming out at the same time to increase the hype before release.

The pessimism seems to be about Shazam being ignored due to Captain Marvel and Endgame. I'm in the middle. I think Shazam will do well. About 500M give and take. But it will be hard for it to much further if nothing unexpected happens. It has to overperform in places like China to become a break out hit.

Yeah people will only look at the box office result and not at the budget. If the budget is 80M and the movie earns 500-550M that is a hefty profit. Not to mention the fact that Shazam being a kids friendly movie will probably sell a lot of toys as well further leading to more profit.

It broke out in the way that it did well, but not huge numbers by any means.

I think WB are pretty realistic with Shazam. What they want is great reviews and a solid box office run. They have bigger expectations for the sequel breaking out more. Just like Iron Man started pretty low and then burst out with his sequels. This movie is mostly about the public getting to know an unknown character and creating some expectations for the future movies, as well as doing pretty good at the box office.

According to rumors the review embargo will be lifted on march 23. But who knows if they lift it even earlier. WB seems very confident that Shazam will receive great reviews and they want to use that to increase the buzz for the movie.

Early tracking predicted a 45M opening of Shazam a month ago. So lets see if WB will be able to get that higher. The fact that Shazam has tons of early screenings and early reviews shows that WB desperately want the good reviews and word of mouth out as quickly as possible in the hope that will give Shazam an added momentum to get the movie a higher than expected opening. It will be interesting to see if this strategy will succeed or not.

I've tried looking at all the trailer viewings in Youtube for Shazam's second trailer. If you include all views including from the official WB channel to Eminem's channel as well as many other channels, the second trailer for Shazam has reached about 17-18 million views total in one weeks time. Decent amount of interest but more on the level of Ant-man rather than Captain Marvel. The highest possible opening for Shazam in NA is probably 80M while the lowest possible opening would be in the 40-50Ms.

The diversity comes from his foster siblings. Shazam has 2 white foster siblings, one girl and one boy, one chinese sibling, one mexican sibling and the youngest foster sibling is a little black girl. None of the foster siblings have been shown much in the trailers except for Freddy. So yes lots of different etnicities are in Shazam.

Many are questioning the buzz of Shazam and argue there is a lack of interest. I think Shazam is exciting to speculate. It isn't a typical MCU movie where you just know beforehand that the movie will be a hit. There is a question mark if Shazam will break out or not. I think its impossible for Shazam to bomb but its possible that it only becomes an ok success, like Ant Man for example.

Venom was super popular in China. The American movies that do great in china are usually big action feasts and Shazam doesn't fit in with that much.

I guess what my point is that if brand was super important wouldn't every Marvel movie automatically make more than every DC movie? If brand was important it would be near impossible for Aquaman to outgross every Marvel solo movie in China as it did. In the end the Chinese obviously cared nothing about the brand and instead made a DC movie their biggest solo superhero movie.

Will Shazam really do that well in China? Its not an CGI or action heavy movie. Far removed from the likes of Venom or Aquaman.

But the quality of the movie is much more important. Look at RT and Cinemascore and almost every Marvel movie is rated much higher than almost all DC movies. Of course such large gaps in quality will lead to a big gap in box office numbers as well. If ever DC start making movies that are comperable in quality to Marvel i expect any box office gap will be minimal between them.

Doesn't the success of Aquaman in China prove that the brand thing is overrated there? I don't think the Chinese really care about that by a large. The reason that Marvel usually does better than DC in China is less about brand and more about Marvel generally having made better movies. Same reason why Marvel usually outsells DC in the US as well. But when DC do make a good and well received movie the audiences doesn't really care that it isn't a Marvel movie.