Or they could indirectly capitalize on Mando by doing a story about the Mandalorian Wars. That would have the scale audiences expect from SW stories while still offering a fresh angle.
Aquaman had a lower budget than many films with less impressive spectacle. Just shows that good spectacle isn't just about how technically well done the effects are but also about how imaginative and interesting they are.
That requires many things to go right including them putting more effort into the set pieces than they have been, proper execution, and great imagination, plus LF going in that direction in the first place. While Aquaman 2 is pretty much guaranteed to have exceptional action and visuals.
There's a reason that the first was so successful.
Who's to say it will? We don't know anything about it so far. Anyway I have not seen the level of spectacle in the last 5 films to make me think that there will be a serious effort to compete with Aquaman 2 on that front.
Aquaman crushed Solo pretty much everywhere. Who's to say how well a non Skywalker movie would do? Aquaman 2 is gonna be delivering crazy spectacle that I'm not sure the 2022 SW would be able to compete with.
If the Friday number holds.
25.5+26.5+21 = 73 million 2nd weekend.
That will leave TROS 5 million behind TLJ on day 10. Gap will grow from there on. Following Hobbit's drops it would be 29 million behind TLJ's running total by the end of Tuesday. And it has been dropping worse than Hobbit so far.
569 is doable though it would need to hold better than its doing now. But 600 is really optimistic, it would need to hold ridiculously better than Hobbit 2 for that. Let's say weekend is 86 and its 6 million ahead of TLJ by Sunday. Probably by Thursday at the latest it will be 20 million behind and so it would need exceptional holds to get to 600. TLJ will smoke it from Day 10 to Day 17 and will still be ahead for at least several days after that, I don't see TROS making up so much ground in post holiday play to hit 600.
If Thursday is just 30 I don't see it going much higher than 560. By Sunday it will be par with TLJ's 10-day total, but even if it drops like Hobbit 2 it will fall close $60 million off that pace in the following two weeks.
I think he means that MTCs may not close earlier but smaller chains will. That is what I'm seeing in my area as well. Plus is it low 20s drop in ticket sales or gross because ATP will be lower today since its a lot more matinee heavy.
On the Monday number post on Reddit, a bunch of people were saying the Monday drop means that the weekend was influenced by the bad WOM of TLJ and now the good WOM of TROS is taking over *facepalm*.
Idk I don't think TROS fights are anything more crazy and spectacular than some of the fights in TLJ like the Throne Room or hyperspace ram (I know fans were mad but that moment played really well to crowds in my theater). In terms of spectacle Aquaman is way better than either and delivers something people haven't seen before. In any case if TROS is really pleasing crowds better than shouldn't that be reflected in the exit polls?
And I talked to real people also and most of them thought it was much worse than TLJ. And these are people who mostly were not even huge fans of TLJ. We could do this all day since everyone has a different experience. Cinemascore and PostTrak are not internet metrics, they're audience exit polls, so looking at those is a much more rigorous (though far from perfect) way to predict WOM.
It will almost certainly have a better multi but that doesn't mean reception is better. Anyway you seem to be ignoring a significant amount of people who really enjoyed TLJ.