von Kenni

Yeah, but wasnt it depended on if the walkups are much better than Friday's...out of memory Friday was 128% of Dune 1 walkups and Saturday needed that comp to be somewhere around 140%-150? to get there? Doable increase if course and total in range of possibilities driven by WOM and the audience dynamics spoken here but wanted to be cautious since THU the same walkup comp was 133% which went down to 128% on Friday instead of up yet. Did you have earlier something to point that it would reach that 140-150% comp walkups on Saturday instead of keeping around 130%? (in my last post here I was pointing to comparing how the films I mentioned did on Sat)

Listening this at gym and reading Charlie's $29M estimate for Saturday. Feeling pre-etty good. Incredible achievement as a whole without sacrificing the artistic expression to make it more accessible.

With that number $80M number is a certainty (95+% probability). No way that Sunday is dropping 35%. Dune 1 fell 29% but even that's not going to happen here. Part 2 was totally different beast in presales and backlogged. The Batman with similar demo and released at same time of year (by WB too) had 21% drop. Avatar 17% and Oppy 12% with closest demo to Part 2. With this kind of WOM I'd say we're going under 20% with Sunday drop. Maybe I lose my cool head here but I think we're looking at $84+M (20% drop) or even $85-86M opening (17-14% drop). PS. None of those comps above had nothing close to 40% Saturday jump. Not even 30% if I remember right.

Who wouldn't want this beautiful creation?

Wow, this took a turn. I hope you're referring there to something in the story that I didn't now read myself all the way or something around that and not specifically what I said. I feel quite a tainted misrepresentation there deducted on what I said if that's the case. And I'm not denying that there can be something else regarding Garfield's firing/film cancellations and that this was just an excuse or just a part of the whole cancelation. There are cultural differences and suddenly deducting some "old racist" notion on Japanese here seems a bit overkill. Nowhere I or the context I suggested in my post implies somehow that Japanese couldn't work or do business with westerners or they would be socially somehow inferior or negatively different. I would see American studio head with a big ego rather doing illogical decisions due to personal chemistry or spite (heard second hand stories on these) than perhaps Japanese. I've always worked in a multicultural environment leading international teams and have made business with Japanese as well. I even studied the language in a University. There are differences with cultures regardless of whether we see them good or bad which relate to the culture and subcultures and generations in them. E.g. from experience I can say that Japanese don't like to say "no" directly to business proposals because of politeness even if they decline. And we can argue how hierarchical and traditional Japanese large corporational culture still is and how much less it is rhat today as the same progress has happened in Western cultures but how it is still different and what role respect and things like honor might play in those but I hope we don't start to conflate these things and throw casually words like racist here when we discuss box office dynamics here.

But, but...

The breakeven point rule of thumb is 2x but I usually use 2.2x to be on the safe side. Though generally I start to do a breakdown on revenues, residues, etc. to estimate it more precisely. But it's not 2.5x. Maybe someone else can elaborate on this this time...

https://www.koimoi.com/hollywood-news/andrew-garfield-was-fired-from-playing-spider-man-after-he-failed-to-visit-sonys-event-heres-what-happened-leading-everything-to-tom-holland/#:~:text=The actor was 'let go,the cause of his absence. The actor was 'let go' from the part after he failed to show up at an event where Sony CEO Kaz Hirai was meant to unveil The Amazing Spider-Man 3 for a 2017 release, it was disclosed in an email after the infamous Sony breach of 2014. Oh...and in Japanese culture that is a big no-no. Getting caught on faking to be sick and disrespecting. -- About the marketing budget, I didn't say anywhere that Part 2 marketing budget is lower than Part 1. I used the Puss $130M as reference in the first quick and dirty post, and you can up that to $135M from Batman if you like or go to $140M which still doesn't change the profitability that much at the $500M mark. If Dune Part 1 marketing budget was around $110M-130M after those extra spent due to pandemic, then Part 2 won't be much higher and without new sources on that it's likely around that $130-140M. You can pull numbers from your as..tute brain but try to at least back it up with some datapoints and sources which I've shared more than plenty.

Yeah, we're arguing about an imaginary scenario that is not going to happen (under 5% change). It'll do much more than $500M and is highly likely to go over $600M. Can very well do over $700M too.

Sequels to The Amazing Spider-Man 2 wasn't killed by lack of profit but Studio head's personal anger toward Garfield when he felt disrespected and didn't do the promotional/attendance stuff that the Studio head personally told him to do. This is widely reported and revealed afterward. Dune 1 marketing budget was somewhere around $110-120M if I remember from some sources. Here is just +-$100M. That said the budget was even bloated at least $10-20M or more because they did almost two campaigns. First one prior to the pandemic and later again because the pandemic screwed the first planned release. You can also use The Batman marketing budget of $135M from the same studio as a reference in 2022. You're just grabbing on straws man but keep going I'm interested to see what you find next..though might not care to continue this myself.

Puss in the Boots made $120M profit with $479M WW gross and had $110M production budget with a sizable $130M marketing budget. With a quick and dirty way, we can increase that budget to $190M and discount from the profits and resulting in $40M profit. Tieing up $190M capital for about 1-2 years (production costs are paid when they actualize) and spending $130M mostly at the last sprint would mean about 10-15% annualized ROI. ...and again, the most likely budget is around $150-155M after rebates which makes it even far more profitable.

I agree that when they make their investment decisions it's not enough to aim for breakeven there needs to be a big enough upside to justify the risky investment of time and money but also the profitability of theatrical releases is much more than the box office and I think this recap of the most profitable 2022 films by Deadline is very educational for that. The ancillary revenue and costs are correlated with the box office and even though they aren't always linear, you can think of them increasing as the box office revenues increase (e.g. tv/streaming licensing fees and home entertainment revenue). About the Dune budget, as I said even if you take Variety's $190M that is likely lacking the rebated, it is way successful enough with the overall revenue sources. You can see from the above quote a thorough breakdown of the Dune Part 2 budget based on Dune 1 budget information and Hungarian-reported production costs (most of the filming and production happened there) and rebates that are linked there. I welcome new information to refine those numbers from anyone but also hope that the arguments are more than just "I don't believe just because I don't believe" or "look at the Ant-Man 3 budget and how shitty the CGI was with that so no way Dune can be that".

Same number (and other demo info) for Dune Part 1 from Deadline: Interesting takeaway on PostTrak, of those who watched Dune in a theater, 30% said they’d watch it again in a theater Over 50% jump but how much of that materializes is a different thing and what that means in actuality. Most likely it isn't a linear progression.

Over $500M ok, over $550M with smiles, and over $600M is gravy. Messiah is most likely greenlit way earlier and they'll probably announce it on this Tuesday like they did with Part 2 to get extra publicity or save it a week later (they don't need it so much now than right after Part 1 opening). $500M with a true budget being likely around $150-155M after incentive rebates (there's a deeper breakdown on this in the Dune 2 thread which I'm still looking to update...) is waaay enough. The breakeven point is around $320-345M depending on the marketing budget size. $500M would be already about 3.3x the production budget....and if you want to use the $190M public figure that'll give 2.63x which makes it successful too. There are no real stakes here other than our self-in-posed expectations.

From Deadline SAT update: Of those who’ve seen the movie, 47% said they’ll watch Dune: Part Two in a theater again — more than any other home watching option. I wonder how much this can fuel legs this weekend and especially beyond. Repeat views will likely be on another level for this compared to Part 1.

If the previews are/were exactly $12M and not e.g. $11.7M. But in any case the MTC1 is just an estimate and not 100% accurate. If it estimated $20.5M and actuals would be $20.2M close enough (less than 2% error of margin). But strange that it would underperform with previews and overperform here. Maybe someone who has better understanding of MTC1 composition could chip in. That said, the rounding of previews can explain it too.

30% jump isn't far off. Based on the MTC1 comps above with the meh walkups it had yesterday it would give 26.6% jump. The SAT presales were very good. It just needs 10% better walkups today in relative terms

Adding the above here that I posted yesterday on the weekend thread. Should have posted here. Dune 1 MTC1 comps show $20.5M true Fri but if it underperformed with previews it might be some hundreds of thousands more or $21M. Interesting dynamics for Saturday based on MTC1 comps. If walkups are same relatively today compared to Dune 1, it should do $25.9M.

Dune Walkups Tomorrow for $80M OW Based on MTC1 comps when comparing Dune 1 and Dune 2 performance the walkups today were even lousier than yesterday with previews in relative turns. For previews, Dune 2 had 133% of Dune 1 walkups and today 128%. Based on Dune 1 FRI BO and ATP differences true FRI expected value is $20.5M which is aligned with the public $30-34M estimates ($12M previews + $20.5M = $32.5M). I made below three scenarios for SAT actuals based on Dune 1 comps. Presales are stellar 224% of Dune 1 but if the walkups tomorrow are as lousy as today, then SAT is around $25.9M, which would be 26.6% jump from true FRI but would need just -16.9% drop in order to reach that mystical $80M OW. It would need clearly better walkups (140% of Dune 1) to reach a feasible scenario for $80M OW. If the WOM is there and the other hoped dynamics, why not, but it needs to do much better than today in any case. That said, take all this with a grain of salt. Based on MTC1 Dune 1 comps THU previews should be $9.1M and based on industry reports it's somewhere between $9.5M and $10M. So if it is underperforming here too, FRI actuals will be a little bit higher and the SAT walkups don't necessarily need to be better at all or just by little to reach that $80M. Anyways, it probably won't go below $76M unless the rest of the weekend walkups are considerably worse than today and the Sunday drop is more than -28%. If the true FRI is $21M (MTC1 underperforming like with previews) then similar walkups as today and with Sunday drop under 25% it would be around $80M.

I thought that the last high-budget art house film was Master and Commander and especially that in today's Hollywood you cannot make anything like that. I was wrong. I am happy that they didn't turn Dune into new Star Wars or what they did with JJ Abrams Star Trek and try to reach wider GA spread. It is amazing to have this scale of artistic film that is also highly successful financially. I guess maturity of international markets makes it partially possible which mostly carried Part 1 too. Master and Commander was a financial failure. About Paul's transformation, for me it worked but I can imagine that if you haven't read the books, the experience might be different. Though I don't think we're talking about any switch on/off what happened to Anakin Skywalker in prequels. I guess if the visions foreseeing hints that Paul got about a future that he wants to avoid but then submitting to to drink the water in order to protect his people and loved ones wasn't enough to prepare for the transformation, then I can understand the suddenness. The visions are not actually magic but are real all knowing at least in part. Like we later learn it's not 100%. To my understanding it is taken further from the Benni Gesserat mastering of oneself. Frank Herbert envisioned that there will be a time when we confront AI and technology and as a result will focus on mastering the human condition, I.e. back to the roots. He is a prodigy of 60s, did psychedelics, and comes from a Jungian school of thought where reality is mental, we are finite minds in a vast Universal Mind that is eternal and time and space are illusionary. With right teachings (and spice) you can break your finite mind's barriers and at least glimpse beyond. You master your intuition, memory, and other abilities like the mentats do. Or fold space and time as the guild navigators do with spice who we probably see in the Messiah. For Paul, it went further than with Benni Gessarit Holy Mothers remembering past memories. He was the only one who could see the future too.

I wasn't really annoyed about the changes that the adaptation did and maybe some like Chani's and Paul's breakup are ultimately judged by what happens in the Messiah. I missed that we didn't get to experience a dramatic moment of Paul's son dying but I think it had to be cut due to not having that three year period living with Fremen. But imagine playing with the idea that Paul knew that his son dies on the path he has taken, I.e. did he sacrifice his son for Atreides House to survive and the holy war to happen. Now that could have been the ultimate tragedy and wedge between Chani and Paul even if Irulan was the tipping point. All-in-all, I was very satisfied how the movie treated the book. As another note, for me there were moments that I would have prefered even less dialogue than their was. I felt like I understood what Villeneuve meant by his comment about dialogue in films. This was as close to pure cinema that I've experienced. The audiovisual storytelling without dialogue was heavenly.

$75-80M+ give or take...this is almost therapeutic compared to Dune Part 1 OW when we were grinding our teeth if it even gets over $40M and if we ever see Part 2 (I'm still waiting for my Ralph Bakshi's LOTR part 2). Now I can just relax and wait for Dune Messiah to arrive.

Yeah, the 11pm shows for this seen like a bad idea. Saw it yesterday 6pm ($22+ IMAX) and seeing it again on Tuesday 6pm (special Tue price of $13+ IMAX). Planning to go third time too.

Maybe I'm slow today but can you open up more how that results inflated EA results in practice when comparing to those Dune 1 comps?

I started to dig deeper into MTC1 numbers (see the table below). I compared the THU Previews starting T-6 and ending in the deplorable fall from a cliff at T-0 (see the blue comps). Final ATP comp showed 6.03% higher ATP for Dune 2 and expected THU Previews of $9.12M. But then I went back to Early Showings to check what MTC1 predicted for them and was stunned. I compared the ticket sales to Dune 1 T-0 (finals) (47397/94843 ~50% + ATP 13.26% higher) and got an expected EA of $2.89M which combined with the expected previews results in exactly $12M for EA + THU Previews!? 1) Where did I screw this up and is it just a coincidence? 2) How could the reported previews be so much off? Instead of $2M, $2.9M?