What boxoffice runs are unbelievable in retrospect?

[K1stpierre]

Obviously for me it's The Hunger Games.

 

-First film of a YA trilogy, and just knocks it out of the park. Not only beating the rest OW, but just completely destroying them, enough so to be close to even TDK's OW.

-It knocked the box office out of the park with probably the most weirdest, darkest, twisted story people could hear about, kids killing each other on national television. Definitely not the storyline you look at and go "oh man, that's gonna go big!"

-It took and still has the top biggest opening in March (again, it opened in March and not in the summer where usually big blockbusters open) ever, and did for awhile have the biggest opening for a non-sequel, now in second place.

- It had no 3D.

- It went from being an unknown months away when the trailer was released in November, to being one of the biggest blockbuster hits from the amount of hype that came from nowhere. It was never expected to do even half of what it did OW (unlike TDK and Avengers).

-No one would have ever guessed it to make over 400M DOM.

-Oh. And of course, the birth of a legend named JLaw.

Edited March 20, 2015 by K1stpierre

[jimisawesome]

ID4, JP2 and Titanic.

 

ID4 because it invented modern box office.  Batman and JP played roles too but ID4 is what changed everything.  First every tent pole marketing plan is a version of ID4s even Opening the movie on Thursday can basically be traced back to ID4.  Sure other movies did similar things but ID4 was just so big.  Also, ID4 basically set off the great theater building boom.  It was a trickle before it but by the end of its run every chain was racing to see how many 16+ plexes they could open with stadium seating and how fast.  The most important thing though is it changed completely who theaters and Hollywood split the money.  By that next summer the 65-60-50 split was over (65 opening week, 60 2nd week 50 the next week etc etc goes to the studio the rest theater) and Sony was getting 75-80 percent for Men in Black.    Also to note if ID4 opened with todays theaters and screens it really would have come close to 100 million opening weekend even with 96 ticket prices. 

 

JP2 because that opening weekend was insanity.  I worked in the box office at a theater at this time and JP2 was selling out 2 hours before hand for 5 o clock showings.  This is before Fandango and the like so you actually had to go to the box office to buy tickets and sure there was some presales but maybe 5 to 10 tickets for each showing if that much.  With today ticket prices and screens it would have done 180 at least with just 2D.  I went to see Spider Man, Star Wars Ep 1, Dark Knight and they where not as crazy as JP2 was. 

 

Titanic was not the opening weekend of the above two but the overall impact is OMG.  I am still convinced to this day that Paramount left at least 100 million if not 250 million on the table.  Paramount only sent out about 65 percent of the prints that where requested.  I worked at the time at the 2nd biggest revenue theater in a top 15 market.  The theater was easily one of the top 150 grossing theaters in the country at the time.  I point this out to give you an idea on how bad Paramount screwed up their end and how much of a monster the film was.  Before the release of the film during the negations that go on for every film we requested 2 because Bond was also 2 and we had 4 big houses.  We got 1.  The Monday after the first weekend we requested again another print plus a 3rd print yeah never got them.  Basically you only got a new print if yours broke.  The opening weekend of 28 million is bogus as it was completely supply related problems.  We ended up synching the film that first weekend (meaning using 1 print on 2 or more projectors) to our 2 largest theaters.  The next weekend we where synching it on 3 screens which is so risky its not funny and I cant believe the film did not break on our 3 largest screens or about 2400 total people per show time.  We did 3 screen synching I think 3 total weekends and I want to say the entire Xmas week but don't remember exactly that.  We where synching it on at least 2 theaters every weekend to after Valentines Day.   

 

If it opened today it would have been Avatar doing 70 million every week. 

[CJohn]

JW OD 

[Ethan Hunt]

JW OD

Reaching way back are we?

[ExcelFTW]

Of the new millienium?

 

Avatar obviously, then it is The Dark Knight, followed by Spider-man 1.

 

All three were simply unprecedented.

[Krissykins]

Scream opened to $6m four days before Christmas, when horror was completely dead, then legged it's way to over $103m ($183m adjusted). Never went above 2,000 theatres. On a budget of $14m. Whopping multiplier of 16x for an R rated slasher.

Yeh we have Avatar, Avengers, a Titanic etc. but for the horror genre, Scream was extremely surprising.

[75Live]

Scream opened to $6m four days before Christmas, when horror was completely dead, then legged it's way to over $103m ($183m adjusted). Never went above 2,000 theatres. On a budget of $14m. Whopping multiplier of 16x for an R rated slasher.

Yeh we have Avatar, Avengers, a Titanic etc. but for the horror genre, Scream was extremely surprising.

 

totally agree about Scream.

 

I am out of likes so I decided to reply

[Truckasaurus]

JW, Furious 7 and AOU be damned, I still think the real box-office story of the year is American Sniper.

[Maxmoser3]

Scream opened to $6m four days before Christmas, when horror was completely dead, then legged it's way to over $103m ($183m adjusted). Never went above 2,000 theatres. On a budget of $14m. Whopping multiplier of 16x for an R rated slasher.

Yeh we have Avatar, Avengers, a Titanic etc. but for the horror genre, Scream was extremely surprising.

that also had good word of mouth too which is good for any film Edited June 15, 2015 by Maxmoser3

[Maxmoser3]

A box office result that has been surprising for me this year has been Jurassic World a film that I only suspected to make at least 125 million this weekend. Last year was God's Not Dead and how it went from it's 9 million debut to 60 million domestic. 2013 was World War Z's opening weekend which is hard to predict the zombie genre. But if I had to go back to adjusted and that involves with M.A.S.H. The movie adjusting to over 500 million adjusted while the show was popular in the 60's/70's during the Vietnam war era, another being The Exorcist grossing close to a billion domestic which is different for a horror film and an R rated film as well.

[Krissykins]

Yeh the Exorcist was a phenomenon.

Love watching old videos on YouTube from the cinemas of people collapsing and queuing outside round the blocks.

[TServo2049]

Actually, M*A*S*H the TV series came after the movie. But yes, that movie did crazy business at the time.

However, M*A*S*H doing $500 million adjusted and Exorcist doing over $900m adjusted may not be accurate; they did amazing business of course, but there is little to no documentation of first run vs. re-release grosses of pre-1982 films, so adjusted figures for anything prior to '82 should be taken with a grain of salt (especially because the 1970s was a decade where inflation was out of control in the U.S.) The Exorcist was released in 1973, then re-released in 1976 and again in 1979, so dividing the entire lifetime gross up to 1982 by the average ticket price of 1973 makes it look like it sold more tickets than it did. (How much it's overinflated will probably never be known, due to the aforementioned lack of separate gross totals for each release of the film.)

Still doesn't change the fact that these films were absolutely massive.

Edited June 15, 2015 by TServo2049

[The Futurist]

Titanic is the biggest initial run of all time.

It will never be matched.

 

The only true 4 Quadrant movie.

Edited June 15, 2015 by The Futurist

[Kalderic]

My Big Fat Greek Wedding... like... wtf?

[blackspider]

Its run isn't neccessarily unbelievable but I feel like a BO run that gets kinda overlooked is Dead Man's Chest. A true monster for its day as it was only the 3rd film to clear 1B WW in a time when that was extremely hard to do. It's 135/423m OW/total is still impressive to this day and adjusted it is essentially TDK with 525m.

 

Spider-Man is another one for its sheer jaw dropping performance particularly on the weekends. Its OW today ranks 22nd but its 2nd weekend ranks 8th and its 3rd weekend is still third highest all-time and that is not even adjusting for inflation where its 2nd weekend is 100m and its 3rd is 63m despite opening against Attack of the Clones.

[Krissykins]

The Sixth Sense, Paranormal Activity and Blair Witch Project too.

[langer]

My big fat greek wedding was something very incredible.  You have to remember that this was at the time where a frontloaded movie was still getting a 3.0 multiplier... MBFGW never recorded a week-end over 20M and it broke 200M in total over 6 months. 

 

Shrek 2 was an oddity...everyone was thinking that it would break out real big and it went DOA on its Wednesday opening...People were in "What went wrong" mode and trying to figure out what the F happened for it to open that low until we saw its Friday number and it went on to record the 2nd biggest OW ever at the time (with some demands burned off).

 

Watching Avatar's progress was nice.  Everyone kept saying : this is the Week-end it's gonna drop normally and it would drop 20-25% and we would all say the same thing for the next week-end...Even after the 2nd week-end I was thinking it would end up between TDK and Titanic...never thought it would reach 750M.

 

Not a big fan of Frozen,  but from a numbers point of view,  the box office run and DVD/Blu Ray run was incredible. 

 

I also think any sequels that opens over the entire run of the original movie is something impressive (Austin Powers, Terminator, Pitch Perfect...etc...)

[redfirebird2008]

We're watching one unfold right now. JP4's performance is incredible, especially compared to expectations and the previous performance of the sequels in this franchise.

[Maxmoser3]

The run of Beverly Hills Cop back in 1984 Eddie Murphy was at the top of his game with Trading Places and 48 Hrs. But both didn't do a 100 million so for Beverly Hills Cop to be the highest grossing film of 1984 and the top grossing within Eddie Murphy's live-action career(ignore Shrek) that is pretty amazing

[The Futurist]

Tom Hanks wife must have won a lot of money with that Greek wedding.