Chrysaor

A Haunting in Venice had 31,313 admission on opening day vs. Death on the Nile's 39,799. Unfortunately, it looks like Camille Cottin's casting didn't help boost its gross.

Yeah, I hope so. I mean DotN had an 11.6 PRE/OW multiplier, but since then other adult skewing fare have had noticeably better ones. For example, Ticket to Ride had 15x's previews. Of course, without Clooney and Roberts level starpower I'm not expecting this one to do that well, but without Super Bowl and omicron hopefully it can leg out a little more this weekend than DotN did. Of course, that all depends on if the older demo was scared away by the marketing. And the same can be said for it's overall legs, will the higher RT score/certified fresh distinction (and presumably at least slightly higher Comscore) result in better legs, or will that be offset by its being more of a horror movie?

I mean I think the first film grossing $350 MM off a $55 MM budget is plenty of reason to greenlight a third film, especially when it was hard to say at the time how much DotN's box office was hampered by omicron. I definitely agree that leaning into the horror element was likely a very bad call financially ("too square for horror fans and too spooky for old people" puts it pretty aptly). It's like they once again have an extenuating circumstance that makes it tough to tell how much appeal this potential franchise has in it, only this time it was self-imposed. DotN's success on Hulu was also a factor in why this one got the greenlight, so who knows, if this one can muster DotN level numbers and also be a similar sized streaming it, maybe we'll get a fourth. As BadOlCat pointed out, Branagh has a great working relationship with Dinsey. In fact, five of his last seven movies has been for either Disney or Fox. Maybe letting him continue the franchise, even if it's only moderately profitable at the BO, is worth it to them just to give them splashy Hulu product and keep Branagh in-house. Although, if we do get a fourth one, I'd be really surprised if it's not an adaptation of one of the better known titles (I mean, the only big screen adaptation of Roger Ackroyd is a lost 1931 film, so that seems like it'd be ripe for the picking).

Only $1.2 MM in previews, just head of Death of the Nile's $1.1. If this were to have an identical Pre/OW multiplier, that'd result in a $13.96 OW. Of course, the question is since the marketing leaned so hard into the horror aspects, is this going to significantly change the age demos from the previous film? Since older audiences were still yet to return to theaters en masse during DotN's run, there's an off chance that this could have an even better multiplier, but only if the older demo wasn't scared off by the trailers. Ticket to Paradise, for example, also had $1.1 MM in previews, but that put it at a $16.5 MM OW. I'm not holding my breath for those kinds of results here, but they sure would be nice.

Oof. Variety is reporting only $1.2 MM in previews for A Haunting in Venice. No mention of Wed early access showings being rolled into that figure, although I assume that's the case. For comparison, Death of the Nile did $1.1 MM. A similar Preview/OW multiplier would have this opening to $13.96 MM.

That is super fascinating, do you remember by chance where you heard that?

Yeah, that's one of the sites I used (the other two are here and here) which all gave similar (though not identical) figures for the salaries. I primarily relied on Showbizgalore though, since they seem to somewhat specialize in salary info, and the numbers that they list for several other films match those reported at more reputable sites. Anyway, since the trades have confirmed that the budget was $60 Million, I suppose how much of that was spent on the cast is pretty immaterial (though still fun to speculate on). Presuming that this is a similar sized hit on Hulu to Death on the Nile, what are we feeling like the bar for success is? Also, are we feeling that Deadline is being "typical Deadline" by downplaying it's OW (they claim $12MM) so that it can cry success when it outstrips that, or do we feel like this really is heading for low-to-mid-teens?

Yeah, it shouldn't be hard to get that "Certified Fresh" label now, which will hopefully help give it some small boost. The cast budget for Death on the Nile was $11.4 MIllion and on this one it was only $4.32 (Branagh got $2.5 million, same as on the previous film, and somehow Kyle Allen got $600k, but everyone else got $400k or less -- I wonder if the studio had originally planned on Rosaline being a theatrical release and figured that'd help put Allen on the map?). I talked to a couple of acquaintances who've been involved in casting smaller studio films and they said that with that sized cast budget that the overall budget would most likely be in the $20-25 Million range (although with how much DotN spent outside of its cast, who really knows). While this film's cast obviously isn't as starry as Murder on the Orient Express, I feel like it's pretty impressive for the budget, and I guess that's one of the nice things about having Branagh at the helm -- he's a director that actors seem to legitimately be excited to work with. He's also been responsible for quite a few fairly big actors' big breaks early on in their careers (Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston are the obvious ones, but also Lilly James, David Oyelowo, and even Kate Beckinsale) so I could see some of them (and maybe some of the Potter actors since they seemed to have gotten along really well together on set) appearing and taking smaller than typical paychecks in order to have an opportunity to work with him again and keep the franchise going. Branagh obviously has a great working relationship with Disney, five out of his past seven films have been for Disney/Fox. He's obviously passionate about this franchise, and if he really can turn them out on such a responsible budget then I could see the studio continuing to let him make them, as long as they don't lose money, simply to keep him in-house. In fact, I did find an interview with James Pritchard (Christie's great-grandson, who serves as an Executive Producer on the Branagh films) and, while I wish there was more context, he makes it sounds like as long as this one doesn't flop they're basically good to go for a fourth, it's just a matter of how soon Kenneth Branagh and Michael Green want to begin work on the story.

Yeah, I feel like, relative to its budget, Branagh was really smart with the cast in MotOE, and really unwise with the cast in DotN (not that he didn't get talented performers, just that with the arguable exception of Gal Gadot, none of them were Box Office draws whatsoever). He also made the mistake of having almost exclusively American/British casts in the first two films, and I think after the sharp drops that DotN saw, not just in the U.S. but abroad, he was very smart to include both a French and Italian star as well this time around. In terms of money expended vs. money generated, I imagine those two will probably be cash well spent. Additionally, hopefully Yeoh (who to my knowledge has never been a BO draw in China, but had a major "moment" there following her Oscar win) will help boost its Box Office in China, although it probably wouldn't have hurt to have included a German or Japanese star as well. MotOE DotN China $35 $11 Japan $14 $5 S.Korea $6 $2 France $13 $7 Italy $18 $6 Germany $16 $5 Spain $11 $4 Russia $16 $7 Nether $6 $2 Australia $13 $5 Mexico $3 $1 Brazil $6 $1

I've been searching like crazy to find out what the budget for this one is in order to get some idea of how successfully it'll need to be to get a fourth film made. No luck yet, but I did find a couple of fascinating articles revealing salaries for earlier Christie films. I'd never even heard of the below site before, but the $5MM figure that they report for Gal Gadot is widely reported elsewhere, so it appears their numbers may be legit (and there's certainly plenty of stories of stars taking role for surprisingly small paychecks). https://www.showbizgalore.com/death-on-the-nile-starcast-and-their-salary/ All said, Death of the Nile's cast cost less than $15 million total. I've found a handful of articles pointing to an expensive combination of hybrid practical / (cheap looking but apparently actually expensive) CGI paired with location shooting as eating up most of the budget (i.e. they spent a lot of money to recreate Egypt and then ultimately decided to film some scenes on location there anyway). One particularly expensive endeavor: recreating a life size replica of a period accurate luxury steamer. I also found that Depp was paid $10MM for his relatively small role as Ratchett: https://www.unilad.com/film-and-tv/johnny-depps-agent-breaks-down-actors-salaries-controversy-20220502 And this fun read about the salaries of the stars of the 1974 adaption of Murder on the Orient Express. https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2017/nov/13/how-we-made-the-original-murder-on-the-orient-express Anyway, back to the original topic of the upcoming film's budget: I imagine the ridiculous costs of the locations in the first two films are a big reason we're getting a less ambitious (albeit still gorgeous) setting this time (and also why they chose to not set it on a vehicle... sorry Death in the Clouds enthusiasts). Someone mentioned a $40 million estimate earlier, and honestly I think that's a decent guess, though I wouldn't be surprised if it was even less. I mean, if they can make The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel for $10MM and Downton Abbey for $13MM (and BEMH had arguably starrier overall cast than this) than figure on $1-2MM (or quite possibly significantly less based on those DotN figures) for your biggest stars like Yeoh, Fey, and Dorman and that could still leave this under $20MM. Honestly it sounds like DotN could've been made for well under $40MM if it wasn't for the titanically expensive locations. So maybe $40MM on the high end and $20MM on the low? If that's the case, I imagine anything over $100 WW would be a pretty safe win (especially since it sounds like DotN's streaming success factored heavily into this one getting the green light).

For anyone who wants to get a firmer grasp on just how much a tentpoles needs to gross in order to turn a profit, Deadline's annual Most Valuable Blockbuster tournaments are invaluable reads (they occasionally do them for smaller films/indies as well). Boxofficemojo also used to delve much more into profits in the pre-Brad Brevet days (so up to about circa 2015), and something that BOM used to tout all the time (and displayed at the bottom of each film's page right up until their 2019 redesign) was that on average studios keep very close to half of both the domestic and international gross. Now of course, that number is only 25% in China and it's much larger in some foreign territories, especially smaller ones. Pre-pandemic, some studios (most notably Disney) also started taking a larger chunk of the gross upfront for some of their larger films and some sites were quick to click bait-icize this, but even the headline grabbing "Disney takes 65% of Star Wars OW grosses" deals are (ostensibly) designed with the end goal of achieving a 50-50 split between theaters and studios (although the mechanics of that are an entirely different post). The point is, a quick look at any of the Deadline tournaments (which contain certified figured rather than estimates) will show that, at least right up until the end of the pre-pandemic era, this still held true with remarkable consistency. A film like The Batman likely costs around $400-450 when all is said and done (that's including all expenses: production budget, prints & advertising, participations, etc.), so it's much more than just the reported production budget. However, it will also likely make around $300-350 from ancillaries (there are outliers in these two areas, but everything from Joker to Wonder Woman to Captain Marvel falls pretty well within these ranges). I imagine The Batman will likely fall toward the upper end in both areas. Still, worse case scenario, that means the film probably only needs to actually gross about $300MM worldwide to make up the net cost-ancillary difference (usually a max $150MM for DCEU and MCU movies), and the rest will be where the studio makes its profit. So, if The Batman does indeed gross $750WW it'll be looking at a healthy profit of $225-275MM. That's certainly not as much as some films, but it's also nothing to cry about.

1. The Dark Knight 2. The Batman (Probably? Ask me again after I’ve had time to fully digest it) 3. The Lego Batman movie 4. Batman Begins 5. The Dark Knight Rises —— Also for the hell of it, also 6. Batman 89 7. Mask of the Phantasm (I know, I was probably the one kid in the world who thinks that this one while not bad, is severely overrated and now I’m the one adult in the world who thinks that). 8. Batman Returns 9. Batman v Superman (This is a bad movie, don’t get me wrong but I really think that Ben Affleck, while not a great Batman, is a fantastic Bruce Wayne here and that Batmobile chase is one for the books) 10. Batman 66 (Probably? It’s the only one that I haven’t seen in so long that I’m hazy about my feelings on it) <Justice League, if we want to include that> 11. Batman Forever 12. Batman & Robin

The first Sing received an “A,” so this isn’t too surprising, but I’m guessing that it was also helped by a lot of families who were simply happy to be back in a theater after two years and grateful that their experience was a positive one. The same effect might’ve been at play with No Way Home, although that film’s such a crowd-pleaser that I think there’s a good chance it would’ve received an “A+” even without the “It’s good to be back” halo.

Yes, those were just placeholder numbers, mainly I just wanted to get my OW & DOM locked in. Hopefully, I'll have the chance to put in some actual guesses later for the subsequent weekends, but I just updated them with some slightly less ridiculous placeholders in case I don't. I'd already seen your previous post about American Sniper counting for 4th & 5th weekend, but the reminder's a good one in case you get some latecomers who aren't already aware.

I'm not sure what sections are still eligible for submission, but I'll just enter this and whatever counts counts and whatever doesn't can just be for fun: I'm torn between a more "modest" $720MM and a totally go-for-broke $850MM. I think that beyond stellar word-of-mouth, the holiday corridor, and crucially, the fact that this is the first true event movie in two years is going to result in insane legs, either way. If it manages a 3x multiplier or close to it, then I think it'll naturally top out around $840-850MM but Marvel and Sony will do everything in their power it to help it just barely out-gross Endgame. On the other hand, I could just as easily see it "only" having a 2.6x and grossing ~720MM (with this kind of reception and the holiday corridor, I really just can't fathom it getting anything less than a 2.5x). Oh well, I might as well go for broke. Username Chrysaor DOM rank 2 DOM gross $858,676 1 2nd ($276MM) 2 5th 3 3rd 4 3rd 5 3rd 6 4th 7 6th 8 9th 9 11th 10 22nd 11 67th 12 157th

I'm shocked that Videodrome didn't make the top 100. I really thought it'd be a shoo-in to make the upper half of the list. Equally surprised that Candyman placed so high. I'm very, very happy to see that The Innocents and Les Diaboliques placed so highly, and to whoever else voted for Vampyr, I salute you, such a genius film that deserves all the praise it gets and serves as one of the great textbook examples of atmosphere done absolutely right. Sad to see Dr. Caligari fall of the list, though.

I'm shattered that Wait Until Dark came so close to making the list (well, comparatively at least) only to ultimately miss the cut. Not necessarily surprised, since it didn't make the 2018 list, but shattered nonetheless. I'm still at a last why that one wasn't stuck around in the cultural consciousness the same way as Charade or Breakfast at Tiffany's has, especially since it's aged quite a bit better than either of those two. If any of you haven't seen it, really go check it out. Although it's not completely accurate the "Audrey Hepburn in Rear Window" descriptor gives a pretty good sense for the feel of the movie, and it's every bit as intense as that Hitchcock masterpiece while also boasting one of the all-time great forgotten screen villains. I'm also sad that I Walked With a Zombie didn't make the cut, but frankly I'm just happy that one made it as high as it did. If 1970's and 160’s arthouse horror has a tough time cracking the list, you can't exactly be surprised when one from the1940’s ones doesn’t.

To whoever else voted for One Cut of the Dead, I salute you. For a second, I was excited that somebody else voted for Spanish Dracula, but it looks like that wasn't the case. For those who might not know the anecdote, during the filming of the Bela Lugosi classic a separate Spanish-language version was shot using the same sets, props, and costumes (and script, although some noticeable revisions were made) but a different cast and crew. More than just a cheap, knock-off of the English production, the Spanish language film, is a treasure in it's own right, and more there are those critics and historians who consider it to be superior to the Browning/Lugosi version. Definitely worth checking out if you haven't.

Ah, finally. I've been looking forward to the update all day. Thank you for the level of care you put into each of the write-ups. This really feels like a gold standard for how "slideshow" style countdowns should be done and certainly feels much more professional than the level of effort I see many paid employees on professional sites put into theirs. It's always both refreshing and and disheartening to see how many others (and yet on the other hand, how few) vote for the same films as oneself. I thought about gaming my list by simply stacking the personal favorites that I worried would otherwise get overlooked at the top, but decided I'd try my best to maintain a semblance of objectivity and rank them in order of what I truly felt were the best. As has been pointed out (and the list so far clearly demonstrates) there certainly is an element of recency bias (which is to be expected, of course it's going to help for a film to still be fresh in the public consciousness). However, overall, I'm really happy to see such a balance between old and new films.

Thanks for doing your part to help a truly great film make the list. I’d be curious to know who the third voter was.

After reviewing the criteria for inclusion, I'm pretty sure that all of these films should meet them, with the possible exception of Blue Velvet, so I leave the determination of it's qualification up to you (if you decide it'ls not eligible then I'd like to sub in Trollhunter, 2010 as my 100th film). I will say that I was disappointed to see the ruling against Terminator 1. The sequels are definitely each action films first and foremost, but to me, that first one is pure horror through and through, and one of the absolute finest examples the genre has ever produced. However, I understand that the ruling is what it is (and I was equally surprised to see that it genuinely is not listed as a horror film on either IMDb or Letterboxd). 1. The Shining 2. Psycho 3. Night of the Hunter 4. Werckmeister Harmonies 5. Vampyr (1932) 6. Eraserhead 7. Under the Skin 8. Blue Velvet 9. Rear Window 10. Let the Right One In 11. Don't Look Now 12. Repulsion (1965) 13. Dead of Night 14. Wait Until Dark 15. Hour of the Wolf 16. Diabolique 17. Repulsion 18. The Innocents (1961) 19. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919) 20. Nosferatu: The Vampyre (1979) 21. The Killing of a Sacred Deer 22. Freaks 23. Berberian Sound Studio 24. Frenzy 25. Under the Shadow (2016) 26. Suspiria (1977) 27. The Witch 28. Spanish Dracula (1931) 29. Let Me In 30. The Wicker Man (specifically, my vote is for The Wicker Man: Final Cut, as the traditional cut would rank lower on my list, but I'm happy to see these points go toward the film in general) 31. Dracula (1931) 32. I Walked with a Zombie 33. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) 34. Get Out 35. Zodiac 36. Shadow of a Doubt 37. The Fly (1986) 38. Side Effects (2013) 39. Jaws 40. The Babadook 41. It Follows 42. Only Lovers Left Alive 43. The Host (2006) 44. The Devil's Backbone 45. La Llorona (2020) 46. The Endless (2018) 47. Night of the Living Dead 48. Cape Fear (1962) 49. Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary 50. Island of Lost Souls (1933) 51. Train to Busan (2016) 52. Eyes Without a Face 53. Dawn of the Dead (1979) 54. Shadow of the Vampire 55. It Comes at Night 56. A Field in England 57. Alien 3 58. Carnival of Souls (1962) 59. 28 Days Later 60. Seconds (1966) 61. Horror of Dracula 62. Shaun of the Dead 63. Cape Fear (1991) 64. The Wolf House 65. What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? 66. Nosferatu (1922) 67. The Lighthouse 68. Joy Ride 69. The Loved Ones 70. The Witches (1990) 71. In Fabric 72. Gremlins 73. Frankenstein (1931) 74. The Gift (2015) 75. The Haunting (1963) 76. Cronos 77. Alien 78. The Orphanage 79. The Thing 80. The Invisible Man (2020) 81. The Cabin in the Woods 82. Duel (1971) 83. 28 Weeks Later 84. Cloverfield 85. The Invisible Man (1933) 86. Something Wicked This Way Comes 87. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) 88. Near Dark 89. Zombieland 90. The Dead Zone (1983) 91. One Cut of the Dead 92 Cloverfield Lane 93. Coraline 94. Phantom of the Opera (1925) 95. Creature from the Black Lagoon 96. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1950, segment of The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad) 97. Signs 98. A Quiet Place 99. The Others 100. Fright Night (1985) (Backup: Trollhunter, 2010)

Posted this in the tracking thread earlier today, but probably more appropriate here: Call me overly optimistic, but I still think there's an incredibly strong chance that No Time to Die bests Spectre's opening weekend. Maybe even an outside chance that it bests Skyfall's. Yes, I know that traffic has dropped off a lot the past few days, but Bond has always been a franchise that's about legs than rather a big splash up front and that's true of the opening weekend grosses as well. For comparison, Spectre only did $6MM in previews on it's way to $70.4MM opening weekend. If the $5.25MM figure holds then sure, that means that previews are down (while preview grosses have continued to play a larger and larger role over the past 6 years), but it also means that an older audience skewing film will have grossed 80% of what it's predecessor did during the pandemic (according to NATO, the avg. ticket price is $916 for 2021 and was $8.42 in 2015, this works out to 573,144 vs. 712,589 tickets) that would be absolutely huge for the older demo. Does that mean that the opening weekend is going to be 80% of Spectre's? No, I don't think so at all. Again, Bond's always been a leggy franchise even on OW, and we've seen some fantastic day to day holds in the opening weekends of recent tentpoles. I don't see any reason why this won't be just as true, perhaps even more so for Bond. If LTBC can have a 15% second day drop, I see no reason at all why NTTD can't too. LTBC benefited from, not just the overall trends of the marketplace in general right now (leggier weekends than usual) but also the fact that it was a much better received film than it's predecessor -- a fact that NTTD should absolutely benefit from as well. Now granted, word of mouth will definitely factor into this, but critics and audiences aren't usually as far apart on the Bond franchise as they sometimes are on other blockbusters and with a solid 90% RT audience score so far, I think it's set up to be in great shape. Will this have the kind of holds that Shang-Chi had? Probably not, but if any tentpole can put up similar ones it's probably Bond who has that baked into it's franchise history and is about un-reliant on preview showing as a major action franchise can be in 2021. What's also absolutely key to remember in the NTTD vs. Spectre comp is that the latter was a huge anomaly in regards to how frontloaded it's opening weekend was -- not in terms of it's preview gross, but in terms of it's day to day -- it posted abysmal day to day holds at -52.2% SAT and -55.3% SUN. Compare that to Skyfall which had a higher SAT than true FRI (and if you want to go back that far, CR saw a FRI to SAT bump too, and even QoS only dropped 4%, although the latter posted a steep SAT to SUN drop). Spectre simply did not play like a Bond film opening weekend. And while I'm not sure that NTTD will go so far as to play like Shang-Chi over the three day, I think it will almost certainly play more like LTBC than Spectre. This is all to say that I think No Time to Die is in excellent shape to beat Spectre's opening weekend record. Even if it has a $27MM opening day, the holds should be enough to get it over Spectre's opening weekend, and if it tops Spectre's opening day then I think it has a shot (how good of a shot remains to be seen) of topping LTBC's (Skyfall did $88.3MM based on a $33.5 opening day and those kinds of holds would be much less of an anomaly now than usual). In any case, with this film, as with any Bond title it's all about the holds rather than making a big bang from the get-go. UPDATE: Now that previews are in, this doesn't change anything for me except make me confident that Spectre's OW is in the dust and there's a chance that Skyfall and LTBC's are too. A guarantee? No. A chance? Absolutely. We'll see how things pan out today.

Call me overly optimistic, but I still think there's an incredibly strong chance that No Time to Die bests Spectre's opening weekend. Maybe even an outside chance that it bests Skyfall's. Yes, I know that traffic has dropped off a lot the past few days, but Bond has always been a franchise that's about legs than rather a big splash up front and that's true of the opening weekend grosses as well. For comparison, Spectre only did $6MM in previews on it's way to $70.4MM opening weekend. If the $5.25MM figure holds then sure, that means that previews are down (while preview grosses have continued to play a larger and larger role over the past 6 years), but it also means that an older audience skewing film will have grossed 80% of what it's predecessor did during the pandemic (according to NATO, the avg. ticket price is $916 for 2021 and was $8.42 in 2015, this works out to 573,144 vs. 712,589 tickets) that would be absolutely huge for the older demo. Does that mean that the opening weekend is going to be 80% of Spectre's? No, I don't think so at all. Again, Bond's always been a leggy franchise even on OW, and we've seen some fantastic day to day holds in the opening weekends of recent tentpoles. I don't see any reason why this won't be just as true, perhaps even more so for Bond. If LTBC can have a 15% second day drop, I see no reason at all why NTTD can't to. LTBC benefited from, not just the overall trends of the marketplace in general right now (leggier weekends than usual) but also the fact that it was a much better received film than it's predecessor -- a fact that NTTD should absolutely benefit from as well. Now granted, word of mouth will definitely factor into this, but critics and audiences aren't usually as far apart on the Bond franchise as they sometimes are on other blockbusters and with a solid 90% RT audience score so far, I think it's set up to be in great shape. Will this have the kind of holds that Shang-Chi had? Probably not, but if any tentpole can put up similar ones it's probably Bond who has that baked into it's franchise history and is about un-reliant on preview showing as a major action franchise can be in 2021. What's also absolutely key to remember in the NTTD vs. Spectre comp is that the latter was a huge anomaly in regards to how frontloaded it's opening weekend was -- not in terms of it's preview gross, but in terms of it's day to day: it posted abysmal day to day holds at -52.2% SAT and -55.3% SUN. Compare that to Skyfall which had a higher true SAT than FRI (and if you want to go back that far, CR saw a FRI to SAT bump too, and even QoS only dropped 4%, although it posted a steep SAT to SUN drop). Spectre simply did not play like a Bond film opening weekend. And while I'm not sure that NTTD will go so far as to play like Shang-Chi this weekend, I think it will almost certainly play more like LTBC than Spectre. This is all to say that I think No Time to Die is in excellent shape to beat Spectre's opening weekend record. Even if it has a $27MM opening day, the holds should be enough to get it over Spectre's opening weekend, and if it tops Spectre's opening day then I think it has a shot (how good of a shot remains to be seen) of topping LTBC's (Skyfall did $88.3MM based on a $33.5 opening day and those kinds of holds would be much less of an anomaly now than usual). In any case, with this film, as with any Bond title it's all about the holds rather than making a big splash upfront. UPDATE: And the previews are in -- $6.23MM. This is officially topping Spectre's weekend and Skyfall's and LTBC's are definitely on the table.

Some really fantastic looking numbers so far this weekend. If you had asked me four weeks ago, I would have thought a $60MM opening for Venom: LTBC was pretty optimistic (even following Shang-Chi's success). Even a week ago, I wouldn't have thought there was a slim chance of it surpassing the original's gross. However, the signs just kept getting better and better as the week went on, and thankfully it looks like that's paying off in an excellent opening night. Going into the weekend my prediction was $77MM DOM for Venom and $105MM INT for No Time to Die. Glad to see that it looks like there's a real chance of at least Venom surpassing my expectations. The real question after this is whether the upcoming non-superhero tentpoles like NTTD and Dune will be able to have strong openings as well. I'm confident in the former and hopeful for the latter (that it will at least have a stronger than expected opening considering it's HBO Max availability). I really think by this point that anything targeting the 18-34 demo that has sufficient hype and solid reviews is capable of grossing at least 66% of pre-pandemic figures, quite possibly significantly closer to normal.

I just discovered this site and it's community a few weeks ago, during Shang-Chi's opening weekend: I'd really hoped to see Deadline do frequent updates throughout opening night and multiple updates per day throughout the weekend like they did with Black Panther. I wasn't surprised when that didn't happen, but it sent me looking for more up-to-the-minute Box Office predictions and data, which eventually led me here. While this is my first post, I've been predicting box office results for many years and it's been great to find others who get as passionate and enthusiastic about this stuff as I do. It's been particularly fun to watch the roller-coaster comments of Shang-Chi's opening weekend morph into near universal excitement regarding it's box office run. This may sound overly optimistic to some, but I really think that $230MM domestic is almost all but guaranteed now with $240 being far from a sure thing, but within the realm of possibility. Worldwide remains much more in the air, however, both give me a lot of hope regarding the prospects of the remaining superhero films on the docket for this year.