MovieMan89

I think Rowling needs to go back to books. She hasn’t really worked well as a playwright or screenwriter. If she had written this story as books first and then they were made into films, this FB franchise would probably be a lot better.

This critical reception is getting pretty bad for a franchise that previously went 9 movies without ever falling below 75%. Interested to see what the GA reception will be.

This decade definitely belongs to WDAS for animation in terms of quality. Pixar's decade was too hit and miss, WDAS has been one winner after the other since Frog.

Aladdin is far and away the one in the most danger of being cannibalized as things are, imo. It has absolutely no room to breath on either end if Pikachu is huge right before it and then SLOP and TS4 immediately follow to kill legs. Not to mention I'll stick by Ritchie being a horribly mismatched choice for the movie and what people want from Aladdin until proven otherwise. And on top of it all, there's the dreaded Disney Memorial Day curse...

I did think this club wasn't happening even when I thought it was just 300 DOM yesterday, but after all the buzz and awareness I've seen over this the past two days now, I am in on 300+ DOM. Obviously this club is still nuts lol, but it could open like 120-140m I think.

If Universal has any brains in their head, they'll use their theme park rights to the franchise to build a huge Pokemon land at the new park in the works for Florida.

I remember being a kid in the 90's and hearing all those silly adults talking about how Pokemon was "just another fad." Now here we are 20+ years later at biggest media franchise of all time and every new gen of kids connecting with the franchise and I freakin love it.

I can get behind that too, with one caveat: they CAN'T play any finale card in this one if that's the case. No advertising it like this is the big emotional sendoff for real this time, because they already did that with TS3 and doing it again when this is actually the start of a new trilogy would be extremely off putting. Also I'm pretty sure Pixar was actually initially saying that this movie is intended to be the start of a Bonnie trilogy.

I still think TLK takes a hit from the way the schedule currently is. That demo is going to be so over-served by that point that I see no way TLK doesn't take some kind of hit from it. It's the opposite of the family drought boost that I2 received. I'd also argue holiday is the easier season for family fare to co-exist. Legs will always be great that time of year and now we've firmly established huge OWs over the holiday are more than possible too.

I wonder what TS4 and I2's box offices would have been if they had swapped release dates?

That's why my idea of IX moving back a full year is perfect. Pikachu moves to Aladdin's spot giving Avengers mania proper time to subside. Then Pikachu has two weeks before SLOP 2, which has 2 weeks before TS4, which now only deals with Aladdin in July opposed to TLK. Aladdin gets breathing room opposed to being smothered under the weight of Avengers, Pikachu, SLOP, and TS4 in like a month span and now TLK gets the coveted holiday legs. IX gets an extra year for the GA to actually get hungry for SW again after the TLJ/Solo over-saturation momentum halter. Literally everything wins.

I wish Disney would just cave on Episode IX and push it to 2020. Then Aladdin moves to TLK's spot and TLK moves to IX's and suddenly all kinds of movies on the schedule have some room to breathe. And I still think making people wait longer for IX is a brilliant strategy to build back some of the hype for SW.

The biggest threat to the box office for this remains that batshit crazy summer schedule next year. We've never seen anything like it, especially for family demos. So how exactly everything will coexist remains to be seen.

I mean this has always needed to rely a lot on WOM given the state of the franchise. Marketing that has been a big step up from the past few can only do so much. WOM will have to be there to convince most to give it a try.

My brain is correcting these random ass Pikachu clubs to the only logical thing (i.e. 300 OW to 300 DOM, a LEGO movie coming out a couple months before Pikachu not half a decade ago, etc)