krla

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For the issue about deadlines, you could keep the deadline as is, but maybe have extra points for people who locked in early. Could be something similar to how scoring works for the derby. If 6 people are in the 'early' group, then you'd go 6 points to first, 5 points to second. Though that's a lot of points, so you could halve them. Then it goes 3 points, 2, 1, 0, 0, 0. And you wouldn't want early birds to be guaranteed these points, so you'd only award them based on their position in that weeks derby. So if first place isn't an early bird, the 3 points don't get awarded. If second is an early one, they'd get an extra 2. Or could just do a modifier based on how early someone locks in. Start with a 2x multiplier if you lock in the second predictions open, and end at a 1x multiplier at deadline. The multiplier would decrease by roughly 0.02 every hour. Could even remove the deadline for those who come late, and accelerate the decrease to 0.1/hour after Thursday morning. Maybe that's unnecessarily complicated (and exploitable), so you could just slap a gold star next to people who enter early predictions and perform above average. Or a brown star on the last person to lock in their predictions, lol. After all, it's a game about predicting the box office, not about who is most accurate the earliest. So disregard everything I've said! lol

When do theater counts usually come out? I think I've typically noticed them on Thursday afternoon. Maybe a nice 'feature' would be the option of predicting based on PTA?

$65,432,109.87

How are you going to like your own post?

ONE HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS

I had a rough cold/flu a few weeks back. Cough was killing me. Green NyQuil was my saviour. I also find that if I lay in bed trying to recover, my cold/flus drag on longer. But that was impossible with my last cold, because I'd cough up a lung just getting out of bed. I also had a fever dream (though I had no fever, but it sure felt like I did) that Avatar 2 would only do like 488m. I ran out of red NyQuil and started using the green. Green is like drinking mouthwash, but it kicked in almost immediately, and allowed me to drag myself out of bed and power through the thing.

IIRC, it started when he said 500m for TGM was 'locked', which turned into an argument over what 'locked' means, and descended into EC being an asshole and having a meltdown. But I could be wrong, I don't follow much drama and haven't been here long. I'd thought he was only banned until the Avatar 2 OW. But I remember him melting down on Twitter afterwards.

Wasn't his ban supposed to be over by now?

Top Gun was in like 12th place back in its day, wasn't it? Obama tweeted his list of fav 2022 films on the 23rd. He listed the fablemans, which I believe is the only one on his list still in theaters. With such a low gross, it would only take a couple thousand people to swing that number. So the question becomes, is a tweet from Obama enough to get a couple thousand people to hit theaters the next day? And will this translate to more over the next week? Violent Night is available on demand now. My TV wants 25 Canadian loons to rent it, lol. I haven't seen any ads for it. The beauty of ad blocker, as well as being completely blind to commercials when watching TV.

Cap and SLAM! (and the few guesses between them) are all fake accounts created to steal the win from me. I'll be showing proof of this tomorrow, at a press conference in front of the Four Seasons (Total Landscaping). SAD!

Interesting that Wakanda and Violent Night both had miniscule drops and are both higher than Monday.

There were two major storms. One from December 16-20, and a second from Dec 22-28. So both the first and second weekend were impacted, as well as weekdays. There were also dozens of tornadoes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_2009_North_American_blizzard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_North_American_Christmas_blizzard

James Cameron should start tying all his movies together. The JCCU, James Cameron Cinematic Universe. Have the Avatar peeps fight Aliens (you can have Sigourney in 2 roles!), and finish it up with them going back in time, where Jake's avatar will be swimming in the water in the Atlantic, and find Jack and save his life. They take Jack to a future. His memories are all messed up, and he's given a new identity; Kyle Reese.

Inflation being lower just means costs are increasing, but not as quickly. But when you take into account the breakneck inflation of the past year or two, even 'lower' inflation is going to bite into the pocket book. Also, most inflation relief has been fuel prices dropping, but other costs have continued to increase at, or above, the summer rate. Food in particular. Interest rates rising is also hurting people. Don't know how American mortgages are, but in Canada they are 5 year terms, and tons of people are getting hit by sky high rates that are basically doubling their mortgage payment. I feel bad for the people who are currently blissfully unaware of rate hikes, and will end up facing a real shock when they have to renew. I wish 25-30 year fixed mortgages were a thing in Canada.

Just a touch lower than the first Avatar's Monday, unadjusted. So it's on track for over $760m, no worries. Since it's already like 55m ahead of A1, we can basically just call $800m locked. Write it in spaghettiOs, flush it down the pipes, post it on MySpace, carve it in ice. It's a Cold Stone fucking Creamery lock, Maybe "you have to see it on the best screen" is the cultural impact everyone talks about. Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters could end up being more profitable than Avatar 2, lol. Did $226m WW on a $50m budget. HG:WH2 when?

$100,000,000

Tesla had never built a car when he took it over. SpaceX I'm pretty sure was founded by Musk, after he couldn't get ICBMs from Russia, so decided to build rockets himself. Twitter's failures from now on will be largely attributed to him; why wouldn't Twitter's successes? It's interesting how some see him as having little role in SpaceX, Tesla, and his other companies, and yet thinking how he runs Twitter is emblematic of how he runs those companies, and that Twitter's failure/success will lay directly upon his shoulders. Though let's be real, if Twitter becomes profitable and successful, many will say he had no role in it. "He only bought it." Then why wasn't it making money before? Why wasn't Tesla making bank? Why wasn't NASA flying reusable rockets? Pretty sure NASA estimated it would have cost them like $20B to do what Musk did with $200M. Musk doesn't seem particularly pleasant. But he seems able to get results that existing institutions cannot. Adoption of electric vehicles would likely have taken decade(s) longer without Musk. A big sticking point was that auto unions were firmly against electric vehicles, and largely refused to build them. EVs take fewer manhours to build, fewer manhours means fewer union dues. So it wasn't in the interest of unions to have EVs. Government contractors for NASA had little reason to build reusable rockets. Reusable rockets means fewer manhours, which means a lower price, which means lower profits (even if the margins are slightly better). This happens across the economy. There's little incentive to increase efficiency by many institutions, because the status quo is profitable. Without billionaires to bankroll startups that will challenge the existing players, there's no momentum forward. The need to grow quickly requires a lot of capital. There are of course examples of the opposite, like Amazon subsidizing the price of goods in order to wipe out competitors (like the diaper website), then raising the price again. It's a bit of a problem when companies use capital to undermine competitor prices by just selling at a loss, in order to secure marketshare, rather than using the capital to create a new efficiency or something. But Musk doesn't seem to do that with his companies. But there are a lot of billionaires who do.

Alright. To put it another way, Avatar 2's release window puts it in the best position to beat TGM's legs. If Mav were put in this window, its legs would surpass its own. This window has no competition, won't be losing PLFs in 2 weeks, has a higher ticket price. The things specifically applicable to Avatar, like demand for seeing it on premium screens and the long runtime, help to artificially lower its opening weekend and shift demand forward. The biggest thing against it, the next two Saturdays falling on low demand days, shouldn't impact the overall gross, because demand will just shift to another day. So what I'm not trying to say is "Avatar will easily beat TGM's multiplier." What I am trying to say is that the path to get there is unobstructed, and in some ways easier (especially with higher ticket prices, since the same number of tickets sold would put A2 ahead of TGM). The only factor is going to be the audience showing up. Bit off-topic, but what's with people flocking to theaters on Christmas day? I'd have thought that would be the quietest day of the year.

I liked the trailer. Super pumped to see the film. Though I don't know if I'll hit the theaters for it.

I can't speak to the criticisms of A2, since I haven't seen it, and being a descendant from the land of colonizers leaves me with little perspective. But as a colonizer, I can completely understand the view of how whites got to basically run ramshod around the world, exploit the hell out of everyone and everything, then slowly come to our senses like we're waking up from a horrible bender, and suddenly decide that the peoples we colonized (or attempted to colonize) have a duty to protect their environment, while we sit on a hoard of wealth created by our pilfering. It's basically like having a mansion on the waterfront, and when some dude comes to build a shack next to it, the mansion owner says "can't build here, this is protected land. Wouldn't want the environment to suffer." "But you built a 90 room mansion here? All I need to build is a simple shack." "Sorry bud, this was built by my very racist, slave owning, colonizing great-great-great-great grandparents. But slavery, racism and colonialism are over now, and we're equals. We both cannot build shacks on this land, and we can both buy existing mansions on this land." Guess James Cameron is a bit like the mansion owner..

I mentioned the Saturdays issue. Though A2 is unlikely to fall 53% on its first (non-holiday) weekday. It's unlikely to fall 42% in it's third weekend. It'll probably have better weekdays than TGM. Of course if it does do any of those, then that turkey's probably done. But still, in theory (theory being the most important word in my comment), it shouldn't have a problem beating TGM's multiplier. Christmas eve and NYE falling on a Saturday shouldn't vaporize demand, but simply shift it. That doesn't mean it will beat it, just that it shouldn't be a true obstacle,

Avatar 1, of course, dealt with not one, but two major winter storms (as well as 15 tornadoes). The first storm in its OW, the second from the first weekdays until the end of its second weekend. Cut a couple billion in holiday spending. War may have been a boon for TGM. Is the article in the second tweet really saying that Cameron fighting to save the Amazon is bad, since it means that Brazil can't exploit it, and Brazil deserves to exploit it because white people have exploited the environment, too? Interesting take. I guess it looks a bit white saviour-ish to advocate for non-white causes. If Brazil wants to clear cut the Amazon, like America was, then I guess that should be their right to self-determination.

The impossible what ifs were just jokes. As for Puss, I wonder if it might take away some showtimes at multiplexes that have multiple PLFs. Theaters like to stagger their showtimes, especially for the same film. So Puss in Boots' <2 hour runtime is an amazing film to throw in to help stagger times. Though I don't know how much freedom the chains have in this regard. How much would marketing be on this film? Also, I imagine that A3-5 will be much cheaper, as a lot of the costs for A2 will benefit the coming films. And much of the marketing right now is important to help build an audience for the franchise, which will make future marketing cheaper. So the studio might not be too worried about breaking even on this, as the next 3+ films could be their money makers. Also.. if A2 'underperforms', I wouldn't be surprised if we see the studios leveraging that to claw away backend deals for A3+, negotiate lower salaries, etc. Because they know that A2 will be in the hole financially, they aren't going to pay much out on the backend, and then they can wrestle away the potentially lucrative backend deals on future films. That's assuming anybody took a deal on the backend of this film.