Weekend Estimates (Page 92): Pets 103.2M (biggest OW ever for an original movie) | Tarzan 20.6M | Dory 20.3M | M&D 16.6M

[Ezen Baklattan]

Back on the BOM boards, Despicable Me had a lot of support (I know even DM2 did on here), to the point where I think most disdain for Illumination comes from relentless repetition within marketing circles, (and really really stupid facebook posts with Minions in them) kind of like how Frozen got a great deal of backlash from its insane popularity in the months after its peak.

 

Illumination is so not the worst studio out there, their only real screw-up was their atrocious Lorax film. They can be obnoxious at time, but usually they're simply fun, if a bit disposable, afternoon times.

[Johnny Tran]

10 minutes ago, cannastop said:

Right, because people with real knowledge of film make no distinction between two movies in the same genre.

 

I'll buy that the animation at Disney is superior. That's a no-brainer. But the look and style only take it so far. The same grievances people have expressed with Illumination are present in MOST Disney animated features.  No, not Zootopia. Don't go crazy on me, I loved Zootopia. Frozen though?  People complain about the lack of interesting characters or a compelling story.  Frozen tells the same story that every Disney animated feature has told before it. It's the same princess/Mr. Right story that they've always told. It's the same love ballads. It's fine for a new generation to experience that on the big screen but for people like myself who have been there and done that, I'm not going to pretend we are seeing something new there.

[Blankments]

20 hours ago, MovieMan89 said:

Yep, that's your best bet if you can't afford the year. See a bunch of movies and cancel when you've seen enough that the fee still doesn't cause you to lose money. 

I'm probably gonna be an asshat and try to actually cheat them out of some if it's still August and I caught up. Heck, I'm only $70 of movies to go before I break even haha

[TalismanRing]

Quote

It's the same princess/Mr. Right story that they've always told. It's the same love ballads.

 

I like Frozen but it's not a favorite but 1) the story isn't about that 2) the biggest songs aren't love ballads at all.  Thinking on Disney Animation musicals going back to the 90s Renaissance few of the biggest and most popular songs have been love ballads

[GiantCALBears]

Wow, haven't been around this weekend just saw the $100m number. Insane, @Baumer you must feel a little redemption.

[GiantCALBears]

Great ad campaign, people love their pets.

[DAR]

1 minute ago, GiantCALBears said:

Wow, haven't been around this weekend just saw the $100m number. Insane, @Baumer you must feel a little redemption.

Except he hated the movie

[Fancyarcher]

43 minutes ago, LexJoker said:

 

Bruce Almighty....Wow.....maybe Carrey and Aniston during their peak popularity if I had to guess.

 

It was Carrey at the peak of his popularity, (Aniston had pretty much nothing to do with the opening weekend, she was barely a part of the marketing really). Plus the fantasy concept was a huge sell.

[GiantCALBears]

2 minutes ago, DAR said:

Except he hated the movie

 

Well, they can't all be winners. Of his crazy predictions this summer, this was his closest to good lmao.

[James]

 

3 hours ago, Jonwo said:

Don't forget Me Before You which was a modest hit as well. All those films came from New Line who have done better this year than WB 

I don't think you can call it modest. It's at 158m right now on a 20m budget and it will likely end up close to 200m. That's 10x it's budget and profit wise, just like Conjuring and Annabelle, it will probably make more for WB than most big blockbuster movies (let's not forget than in 2013 for example, Conjuring was more profitable than The Hobbit 2 according to Deadline). 

 

3 hours ago, a2knet said:

 

Wow, yes. 20m prod budget, 139m ww (54.5 dom, 84.5 os) so far.

BOM updated it to 158m (54.8m DOM, 103m OS).

[UrosepsisFace]

Problem isn't Disney being Disney. Heck, we can blame Shrek, HP, and LotR for dorks winning, animation, and franchises. Disney relatively recently just acquired Marvel and Star Wars.

 

The problem is every other studio requiring the same approach to remain competitive. Fox is currently second and will come in third due to its CBM and animation output (w/ nice help from Revenant admittedly). Third place is WB and will most likely come in 2nd because it has another animation and two franchise movies left. Universal is a distant fourth and would be an even more distant fourth if not for Pets, and the next breakout hit Sing (which people are doubting now and will be surprised yet again come December when it starts crushing Moana because a pig with a funny accent singing Lady Gaga is more adorable than a Polynesian demigod). We can see what these studios have planned for 2017 and beyond, and the writing is on the release schedule. Franchises and animation are the future. At least for the recent future...That said, there are exceptions to he general rule, and I hope those have some success. Let's go Mag 7 and Dunkirk!

[GiantCALBears]

M&D # is not good, it may sneak to a profit but was clear from the marketing campaign it was a very uneven, generic comedy.

[cannastop]

16 minutes ago, GiantCALBears said:

 

Well, they can't all be winners. Of his crazy predictions this summer, this was his closest to good lmao.

Pets $300m dom was never that crazy.

[GiantCALBears]

2 minutes ago, cannastop said:

Pets $300m dom was never that crazy.

 

Look below at the club I bumped, that's what I'm talking about. It could've been close if Dory wasn't well recieved.

[GiantCALBears]

Alice now $270m WW, looks like it's a way bigger "success" than Tomorrowland although that's a low bar to clear.

[MovieMan89]

The thing about Illumination is they've had these massive openings since the very beginning. DM1 debuted with the highest non-sequel/non-Pixar animated OW at the time. The Lorax one upped that and fell less than 250k shy of beating The Incredibles' long standing original animated OW record at the time. DM2 likely would have come within spitting distance of beating Shrek 3's all time OW if it had opened on a Friday. Minions actually did come within spitting distance of beating Shrek 3's OW. And now finally we have Pets crushing the original animated record. All of these impressive openings just strengthens the proof that Illumination's marketing has always been on another level among animation studios. And yes, they are 1000% a brand name now, if they already weren't back when DM2 came out. 

[Webslinger]

Awesome opening for The Secret Life of Pets. It's hard to believe that it took so long to get a $100 million opener that wasn't based on pre-existing source material, even if this one did ride its (edit: get it together on your its/it's differentiation, Apple!) studio branding hard. It's success is a case of taking an appealing premise and selling it to audiences perfectly. It should be at least fairly leggy, and while it has no hope of catching Finding Dory as the year's top-grossing animated film, it should be able to make a strong run at Zootopia's domestic total.

 

Legend of Tarzan continues to outperform expectations. The budget is still troubling in terms of gauging it's degree of success, but it should still be able to get to around $125 million, which is a darn sight better than most were expecting prior to its release.

 

Finding Dory took a big hit (as did its chances at the $500 million milestone), but that's to be expected with the Pets breakout and the level at which it had been performing (yes, Inside Out held better against Minions, but it also wasn't earning as much as Dory heading into that weekend).

 

Mike and Dave is off to an okay start. We'll see how legs shape up with very direct comedy competition next weekend.

 

Purge had the best hold to date for its franchise. It's impressive that these films have broken with the typical pattern and posted greater longevity with each new installment, especially after how quickly the first one crumbled.

 

Central Intelligence continues to hold up quite nicely. I didn't really enjoy it, but I'm glad to see that at least one mid-range film is performing well with audiences in such a heavily skewed summer season.

 

Independence Day didn't get hit as hard as I thought it would, but it's obviously still not performing very well. At least it will be spared the ignominy of missing $100 million.

 

Disheartening drop for BFG, but it was inevitable with the stranglehold Pets had over the family marketplace. It still sucks that it will be Spielberg's lowest-earning film in eons, though.

 

I'm bummed to see that Swiss Army Man didn't hold better, but it makes sense given how strange the film is.

Edited July 10, 2016 by Webslinger

[MovieMan89]

23 minutes ago, cannastop said:

Pets $300m dom was never that crazy.

For those of us that paid attention to Illumination's track record and the incredible marketing campaign. That said, plenty of people around here chose to ignore that and claimed the film's ceiling was like 250. Pretty sure the average prediction here was well below 300. Especially before the huge tracking for it prior to this past week. 

 

Glancing through the summer game predictions only 7 of us predicted 300+ and over a dozen predicted sub 200. Most were between 225-255 for it. 

Edited July 10, 2016 by MovieMan89

[GiantCALBears]

Will be interesting to see the collaborations between Dreamworks & Illumination now that they are going to be under the same parent company (Comcast).

[cannastop]

1 minute ago, GiantCALBears said:

Will be interesting to see the collaborations between Dreamworks & Illumination now that they are going to be under the same parent company (Comcast).

It might be one of those WDAS vs Pixar deals. No collaboration.