TinRoyce

Within 10 years is compatible with inflation. Today, a film would need to open to the 2019 equivalent of ~327M to surpass Ultron. After an additional 7 years of 3% inflation, the bar would fall to 266M (versus TFA's 2019 inflation adjustment of 268M). You're not likely to get a constant 3% inflation of ticket prices, but we're currently seeing real inflation so it could average out to something like that.

Feels more like gay Dumbledore: feels like a goofy reveal but, in retrospect, both ideas were clearly but indirectly signaled in the text of the main Harry Potter books.

More of a weekend post but do we know if anyone leaked posttrak data for Matrix 4? Weird that we haven't seen audience response for that film from Posttrak

Does anyone have posttrak breakdowns for Matrix 4?

That basically matches cinemascore/RTverified user%. I mean, there's always a reason to exclude imdb ratings due to being fake polls but they may be less terrible than people often think. 60% of imdb votes gave Matrix 4 a positive grade versus 65% on Rotten Tomatoes (which mandates you buy a ticket through fandango to vote). They all line up to B-/C+ when you remember that when you drop 6-7 points on rotten tomatoes verified user scores that has a decent linear correlation to a single point decline in cinemascore. I wouldn't trust imdb in this sort of situation, but I also don't think it's lying or obviously a result of spam especially given how the film's flopping. The real problem is that a lot of the core divisiveness is "do you like the core concept they're aiming for." IMDb's never going to be a good way to capture that because it's leading to too many A/F grades. I mean, I probably would have given the film an F. I really dislike hyper explicit meta commentary which really tanked the film for me in a way that prompts a more significantly negative reaction than a film simply being objectively bad (Snake Eyes). There's more to my unincluded 1/10 grade (worse action, etc.) but I think it's expected to get extremes illustrated in this spread. More interesting to me is the IMDb gender split.

The quorum (publicly available tracking data) showed strong interest in Matrix. I think people probably would have responded well to a Matrix Reloaded 2.0 - a big, heady action movie that rewarded being seen in theaters. I really like @RRA's fury road (missed) comp. If Matrix 4 was to Matrix 1/2 as Fury Road was to Road Warrior, I think it would have made a lot of money. I also think recasting Weaving really messed with this film. The scenes with not-Weaving just don't pop and highlight the weak justification for the character's continued existence.

Sure, but we have 2 years of RT verified user score data. It lines up fairly closely with cinemascore. (1) fandom movies are a bit higher and (2) kids movies have a lot weaker correlation but they're pretty solidly conveying information that tracks with what we see from more reliable sources.

Is Dune any more of a remake than Lord of the Rings was in 2001 (given the existence of the 1970s animated films)? It's part of a wave of big budget adaptations of famous sci-fi "IP" but the first attempt to adapt Dune was a creative and commercial failure and almost no one watched it in the intervening years. It's not Blade Runner 2049 (even if the former is why Dune is treated as some underdog indie flick)

As there's no magical "ghostbusters effect" it makes more sense to compare each film to a broader set of big studio films. I don't think @Krissykins is right to say this is barely better than a B+ cinemascore because we don't have to just rely on cinemascore (otherwise I'd agree that we shouldn't care about a one level cinemascore gap). Films with an identical (+/- 1 point) verified user scores are 2:1 "A" cinemascores to A- (16 films) and I spotchecked the film's posttrak numbers against a few adventure-ish films with an A or A- cinemascore. While they're below many A's, it's identicial to both Free Guy (A cinemascore) and Dune (A-) on both % recommend and % favorable opinion and is significantly better in such ratings than some other A- scores like the second Jumanji reboot film. I just think this paints the picture of a very "strong" A- cinemascore and if you ran the survey 100 times you'd get an "A" result in x% of results (though critic reviews imply that 2:1 ratio is too generous). It just looks like a film on the borderline between an A and A- score. I don't think these are hyper precise numbers. Now let's pivot to GB2016. Verified audience scores are heavily skewed positive so there's absolutely no way Ghostbusters 2016 would have gotten anything close to a 70 (which is equivalent to a B/B- cinemascore). You get a pretty decent fit between verified user scores and cinemascore by subtracting 7 points of verified user score for each step down the cinemascore ladder (though there's still a good amount of overlap on edges). I have a weaker sense of posttrak than I do of verified RT user % but that suggests to me that it's closer to a "true" B+ cinemascore. Zombieland 2 had a 54% definite recommend. The best A-/B+ cinemascore comps I can think of pre-date deadline posting postrak data (Spy), or aren't theatrical releases. I agree with @AJG that we should completely ignore stuff like imdb that had brigades and all around weird skews.

Wikileaks' Sony hack involved a dump of the original(?) Spider-Man Disney contract that showed some explicit limitations on what the character could do. You could probably see if it specified "Peter Parker" as a good proxy for this.

I think this Walt Hickey article is out of date (and anecdotally may not still hold up), but it suggests that you'd expect another 5 points worth of RT% drop by release day. If you're talking about a release day review in the mid-high 60s, it makes some sense given Marvel's big pitch for this film was all about the film's quality. On the other hand, I agree this backlash feels overstated (and probably because of marketing's priming) https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/when-should-you-buy-into-a-movies-hype/