EconomySize

I think you are forgetting the classic January R Rated horror films like Devil's Due, The Loft, and The Boy Next Door. Only the power of J-Lo got the boy next door to $14m, the others were below 10m.

@menor Pulse the way we used it was sort of an accident. Fandango had set up a data viz / marketing page which purported to show you who was buying tickets across the country and to what shows. These sales were a little scrubbed to be less identifying. In the back end of it, however, it got the data through an api call before the page scrubbed some info and posted the sales on a map. The akvalley rip was setup to pull the clean data from the api, and so we were getting hourly updates of the last 4000 tickets sold each hour. Fandango had already stopped linking to their dataviz page, and it was only a matter of time before somebody realized that they had no internal use for the api and killed it on an update. That stream of data is dead for now until we find another backdoor into fandango or atom.

So everybody has been wondering what exactly is going on with Aladdin, especially in regards to the anecdotal theater evidence and the fandango sales wildly splitting. I took a look at the Thursday Sales, Friday Sales, and OW Sales as of 12AM of Opening Day. Once I got the ratios for the days, I looked at the variance(calculated spread) between the ratios to find consistent comps across all 3 metrics (I know I should have used Saturday and Sunday instead of OW, but I'm lazy). This Thursday Friday Opening Weekend (TFOW) Variance should tell us which comps are most appropriate. I threw out everything over 1 and left the table down below so you could see what my other options were. Given these comps I got the projected Preview Gross and Opening Weekend. Aladdin Wrinkle Ant-Man Grinch Dumbo HT3 HTTYD3 I2 Spiderverse Sales As Of 15168 3632 18174 3538 4219 2380 6943 38044 9756 Thurs Ratio 4.176 0.835 4.287 3.595 6.373 2.185 0.399 1.555 FRI Ratio 2.502 1.921 2.573 2.614 4.232 1.922 0.497 2.987 OW Ratio 2.331 1.368 2.371 2.475 4.522 1.721 0.453 2.009 TFOW Variance 0.693 0.197 0.739 0.249 0.899 0.036 0.002 0.357 TF Difference 1.675 -1.086 1.714 0.981 2.141 0.263 -0.098 -1.432 Preview Gross 1.3 11.5 2.2 1.6 2.6 3 18.5 3.5 Proj PG 5.429 9.598 9.432 5.752 16.570 6.554 7.376 5.442 OW Gross 33.123 75.812 67.572 45.990 44.076 55.022 182.687 35.363 Proj OW 77.211 103.691 160.185 113.806 199.317 94.689 82.828 71.027 The average of all the PGs for the comps is $8.27m, but if you throw out the obvious Hotel Translyvania outlier, you get $7.1m. The estimate spread there is decently tight, so 6-8 is probably reasonable. That's... not great, as the models I have put that in the 69-74m range. The OW projections are way better, looking like $112m with everything, and $90.5m if you throw out the Grinch and Translyvania outliers. There are two known issues - One, I used the 7amCST pull from the fandango report, so that is fudging up the sales for Aladdin. Also, everything else here opened on a 3 day weekend, not a 4. So If you want to nudge things down a little for the extra preview sales, you should also nudge them up for a 4 day weekend. Let's put our range then for the 4 day weekend around 75-95m, with (over the past 5 years) an average of 82% of that being FSS, we are looking at 61.5-77.9m three day. The most consistent comp looks to be I2, which makes a lot of sense, and puts it in the middle of projections.. I'd say both the 3 and 4 day qualify it as neither a dumpster fire nor a tire fire, but also not up to Disney's preseason expectations. As promised, the rejected comps: Movie TFOW Variance Bumblebee 1.38 Christopher Robin 3.66 Little 5.28 Smallfoot 17.01 The House with a Clock in its Walls 3.74 The Nutcracker and the Four Realms 15.10 *Pickachu not included because of major Fandango issues. Shazam! not included due to giant early access sales.

Off the Endgame topic, but Pet Semetary numbers from Monday close look right on tracking: Pet Sematary A Quiet Place Escape Room Glass Halloween Hereditary The First Purge The Nun Us Total Tix 4454 3841 280 13853 27311 1356 1689 7605 26378 Ratio 1.160 15.907 0.322 0.163 3.285 2.637 0.586 0.169 OW 50.2 18.2 40.3 76.2 13.6 17.3 53.8 71.1 Proj OW 28.63 58.21 289.51 12.96 12.43 44.67 45.62 31.51 12.01 Pet Sematary A Quiet Place Escape Room Glass Halloween Hereditary The First Purge The Nun Us Thurs. Tix 1460 1398 99 4641 8927 605 887 2518 8788 Ratio 1.044 14.747 0.315 0.164 2.413 1.646 0.580 0.166 PG 4.3 2.3 3.7 7.7 1.3 2.5 5.4 7.4 Proj PG 2.40 4.49 33.92 1.16 1.26 3.14 4.11 3.13 1.23 PG Multiplier 10.42 11.67 7.91 10.89 9.90 10.46 6.92 9.96 9.61 PG To OW 25.02 52.43 268.40 12.68 12.46 32.82 28.48 31.19 11.81 Couple of highlighted numbers - I don't think any of the comps are on point here... But assuming we throw out escape room (sales charts are too far off), and the first purge(opened on a Tuesday), the cumulative tickets put it at 28m, while the Thursday presales are trending to 2.4m. Because horror is so front loaded, I trust a mean out of the comps rather than the model, so a multiplier of 10.42 gets it to 25m. This all suggests that we are looking somewhere between 23 and 30, Which is right over top of tracking. Shazam is such a corner case because of the previews, that all of this analysis doesn't work. I'll go easy and project a OW between 10 and 100 million.

Cumulative PreSales (COB Wednesday): Cumulative Sales Dumbo Wrinkle Pooh Grinch Nutcracker Total Tickets 23367 26306 12668 25867 9171 Ratio 0.89 1.84 0.90 2.55 OW 33.12 24.56 67.57 21.00 Proj OW 29.42 45.30 61.04 53.51 Thursday (Today!) Preview Gross Projections: Cumulative Sales Dumbo Pooh Grinch Nutcracker Thurs. Tickets 4195 2914 3538 1009 Ratio 1.44 1.19 4.16 PG 1.5 2.2 0.65 Proj PG 2.16 2.61 2.70 Running a little below yesterday, but that's partly me cheating - I pulled tthe data at different times. This is the more accurate time to comp. 2.5 in presales models to 42ish, I'd probably cheat a little high side being a kids movie, but wide range I'd go 40-60. Narrowing it down a little I'd guess it's gonna end up between the Christopher Robin comp and the Nutcracker comp.

Cumulative Sales Extrapolations (COB Tuesday): Cumulative Sales Dumbo Wrinkle Pooh Grinch Nutcracker Total Tickets 15222 15207 7313 15709 6604 Ratio 1.00 2.08 0.97 2.30 OW 33.12 24.56 67.57 21.00 Proj OW 33.15 51.12 65.48 48.40 Grinch, Pooh and Nutcracker are all solid numbers - I think DIsney would take 48-65 as a range. Wrinkle's off, but as has been mentioned before - it went after a pre-sale heavy female demographic. I actually removed wrinkle from Thursday grosses, because the other three had more similar pre-sale to preview gross ratio. This stability arguably makes it easier to predict Thursday numbers, but then it introduces the problem of a secondary PG:OW model and compounding errors. Cumulative Sales Dumbo Pooh Grinch Nutcracker Thurs. Tickets 2751 1774 2163 741 Ratio 1.55 1.27 3.71 PG 1.5 2.2 0.65 Proj PG 2.33 2.80 2.41 The Thursday numbers make me highly suspicious of this hitting its projections. While at this range of PG, there is a lot of variation to OW - Models generally put $3 million in PG at the high 40s-50.. If it matches the 2.3 at the low end here, would put it closer to $40. Now Grinch outperformed the model - but it is an animated kids movie, which generally lift above the model numbers . This is a benefit Dumbo may/may not enjoy. FWIW Pooh and Nutcracker both landed in the modeled range.

Filling in that table: 3,698 was the Wrinkle in Time number for Monday. Cumulative comps coming later today. EDIT: Dumbo Wrinkle Pooh Nutcracker Total Tickets 10549 10309 2667 4655 Ratio 1.023 3.955 2.266 OW 33.12 24.56 21 Proj OW 33.89 97.14 47.59 None of these are remotely good comps - I *suppose* nutcracker is the best, but It's still not good. Might be best to look at Thursday previews only - get an estimate for *that* number, and compare to Maleficent (which had 4m in 7PM Thursday previews on it's way to $69m).

As of COB Thurs the numbers were (one hour to go in Us): US Halloween Glass Nun Thursday 42650 39608 29923 27817 Friday 34389 39096 10901 19253 Saturday 18887 15002 2901 7502 Sunday 5450 3877 741 1805 101376 97583 44466 56377 OW 76.2 40.3 53.8 Ratio 1.039 2.280 1.800 Forecast 79.16 91.87 96.74 However, it should be noted that walkups may be muted by the NCAA tourney. Deadline is predicting 4-5 mil thursday, which would put (via model) the OW between 54 and 66, which doesn't seem like too far off. If the thursday numbers get a little higher, based on higher fandango numbers, it could go 70+, but incorporating deadline, I'd say 60ish is probably closer to target, with a little more upside tail on the distribution than downside.

I hadn't checked that at all, and yeah, that's true and a little surprising (at least to me). I agree, frontloadedness is pretty difficult to project, and those numbers are significantly higher on the SAT/SUN, so you are 100%. Who the hell knows. I think we can toss out that part of the analysis, and just figure that if Us can keep pace with Halloween sales this week, then we can project a 60+ opening with room on the upside.

So, I have the preview numbers and prior sales for Us together, and it looks like I was mostly right. The gap between Halloween and Us last week was mostly related to a catch up in sales, since Us had more pre-sold in the weeks prior. As of the monday before release the cumulative numbers look like: Us Halloween Ratio OW Proj OW Total Tickets 25386 27307 0.929652 76.221 70.85899 The Thursday Preview numbers now look like this Us Halloween Ratio Previews Proj Prev. Thursday Previews 8964 8927 1.004145 7.7 7.731914 These are both plus projections on the numbers coming out last week, and give some backing to Us lining up for a probable 60+ opening, which is outstanding - and way above the initial tracking numbers. If you look at the ratio of tickets sold in presale between Us and Halloween it looks like Us has sold 92% of the tickets Halloween did up to the same point. However, Us has actually outsold Halloween in Thursday previews. To measure front-loadedness (if that's a word), we can figure out what the Thursday preview sales would have been if it had only sold as many tickets as Us by applying the presales ratio to the thursday preview tickets (.929 * 8927 = 8299). Once that is calculated, you can look at the ratio between Us's actual Thursday preview tickets, and the Halloween's expected Thursday previews, and we find that 8964/8299 = 1.08. So from this estimation Us looks like it may be 8% more frontloaded than Halloween. I have not done this analysis for a large enough set of movies, but the numbers make sense to me, and provide a data driven forecast for the relative OW/PG ratio of Us.

A Quiet Place is a really bad comp, based on how few pre-sales tickets there were, how it was a truly original horror, not part of what I see as a burgeoning Jordan Peele brand (it has been marketed extensively as such). Much better to look at Glass, The Nun, and Halloween, which all contain some franchise backing in order to generate higher pre-sales. Just realized I didn't update on the Sunday numbers: Tickets Sold Pre Sales Day Us Glass Halloween The Nun -11 1127 718 1577 413 -10 1107 867 1728 499 -9 1516 722 2464 630 -8 1775 568 2198 700 -7 1292 653 1730 775 -6 1267 1315 1281 631 -5 3747 3191 3842 786 Mon-Sun Total 11831 8034 14820 4434 Ratio 1.4726 0.79831 2.6682 OW 40.3 76.2 53.8 Projected OW 59.35 60.83 143.55 I'll get some better cumulative tickets sold numbers for tomorrow, as well as thursday presales, Us is at 7851 with 3 hours to go today, Halloween did 9678 on its Monday. If the cumulative presales prior to this week are what I expect them to be, then Us has a big chance to keep pace with Haloween. Having both comps currently near 60, at the least, is very promising. The chances of it hitting the last horror comp are slim and Nun.

Tickets Sold Pre Sales Day Us Glass Halloween The Nun -11 1127 718 1577 413 -10 1107 867 1728 499 -9 1516 722 2464 630 -8 1775 568 2198 700 -7 1292 653 1730 775 -6 1267 1315 1281 631 -5 3191 3842 786 Mon-Sat Total 8084 4843 10978 3648 Ratio 1.6692 0.73638 2.216 OW 40.3 76.2 53.8 Projected OW 67.27 56.11 119.22 While the Nun is looking less and less like a good comp (it's presales jump until wed/thurs) I'd say 56-67 is a higher than expected reasonable range. Sometime tomorrow, I will get the previous sales, as well as thursday broken out, so we can comp opening day sales too. This is a little bigger than I would have thought, and there's a little upside for more if the prior sales are way above Halloween/Glass. Tracking was 45-50 IIRC, so we can probably add 5-10 on top of that based on how sales have gone so far.

PreSales Dumbo Wrinkle Pooh Dumbo(Agg) Pooh(Agg) -30 124 124 -29 280 404 -28 152 556 -27 131 687 -26 62 749 -25 51 800 -24 76 876 -23 119 995 -22 81 1076 -21 105 1181 -20 93 1274 -19 57 1331 -18 910 58 910 1389 -17 631 124 1541 1513 -16 466 8 2007 1521 -15 399 593 94 2406 1615 *agg is the cumulative number Because Dumbo is so upscale from Chrisropher Robin, the numbers aren't even close enough to comp. In terms of aggregate pre-sales, it took Dumbo two days to accomplish what Christopher Robin did in two weeks. Maybe we could use -14 and on as comps, but it doesn't work right now. I was wrong about wrinkle, so using first day sales, Dumbo is 1.53*33.1 = 50.8 OW Small sample problems abound with Wrinkle...

So I have slightly different numbers for Us than CoolEric (based on pulling the data at different times I'm sure), but a little bit more in the comp space.: Tickets Sold Pre Sales Day Us Quiet Place Glass Halloween The Nun -11 1127 132 718 1577 413 -10 1107 123 867 1728 499 -9 1516 191 722 2464 630 -8 1775 171 568 2198 700 -7 141 653 1730 775 -6 211 1315 1281 631 -5 597 3191 3842 786 A couple things to note here: - Release day is day 0, so the Thursday previews are technically day -1. -A Quiet Place isn't really a good comp. It's sales really ratchet up on the Tuesday/Wednesday prior to release - Glass, Halloween, and the Nun are better comps, however... - I don't have great data prior to this past Monday (new feed), but I can tell you that part of what we see here between Us and Halloween is related to the long term pre-sales part. Halloween had sold prior to Monday a total of 2810 tickets, and if you back that up another week, it had only sold 121 tickets. For the better part of a month, Us had been moving around 50-100 tickets a day, and in the hundreds per day over the previous week. So at this point, it has sold way more tickets than Halloween in aggregate. Whether that will hold over the weekend is anyone's guess. I will have a total ticket take sometime on Monday, so I can get a sense of the backlog of Us tickets that were sold. Also, I have a Wrinkle in Time as a comp for Dumbo, but similar to Eric's analysis, Dumbo is crushing it like... well like a 10,000 pound elephant,.

Looking at the akvalley fandango sales for thursday previews historically, and CMs total as of last night - I took CoolErics ~70k in sales for BP and proected them out to Captain Marvel (using the same ratio of dates as has been bought previously). That way we can compare thursday to thursday *like* fandango sales. Aquaman and AMTW have been removed for being holiday related: Movie Thursday CM as of Proj Movie Tix midnight CM Total Ratio Previews CM Estimate AvengersIW 205486 83760 107061 .521 39 20.31 Deadpool 2 89501 83760 107061 1.19 18.6 22.25 Solo 67099 83760 107061 1.60 14.1 22.50 Jurassic W 46033 83760 107061 2.32 15.3 35.36?!? Venom 46724 83760 107061 2.29 10.0 22.91 Black Panther 112340 83760 107061 .849 25.2 24.02 As has been mentioned however, BP had three weeks of presales, and giving the AKValley data a quick once over, it looks like ~15% of sales were in the first week. I think it would be reasonable then to either assign BP extra sales for comp purposes *or* to remove the projection of the last days worth of sales from CM (Assuming last day sales rougly equals first week sales). That nets us the following projection Black Panther 112340 83760 83760 .746 25.2 18.79 If you want to quibble with the BP sales adjustment, that's fine, but I would be hard pressed to get that number up above 20. Considering (outside of JWFK), the MCU movies look around 20, while the non MCU movies look about 22, that gives us a general range for presales. Given the following multipliers Preview to OW multipliers from boxofficereport IW 6.607641 DP2 6.747688 Solo 5.987234 JW2 9.674837 AM2 6.592348 Venom 8.0256 FB2 6.831099 We can assume somewhere between 20-23 in presales with a 6.5 to 7 multiplier which nets us a range of 130m - 161m using the low/low and high/high estimates. I had previously built a log model and an exponential model of OW/PG ratio, and the ranges on that one are 144-163, which is a little more optimistic (it uses data from a few years ago if it fits criteria which skews the sample) - Those numbers look like the prospective range. I just want to tap the breaks on everybody who is getting wound up about a projected 160+m opening. Yeah, that's in high end of range, but upside/downside are usually equal so it is seemingly just as likely to hit 175 as it is to hit 125. The numbers over the past few weeks have generally looked ~130-140ish mean projections, and nothing has really moved the needle *that* much. Middle of the range says 145 - absolutely great opening.