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

[MovieMan89]

6 minutes ago, Telemachos said:

^^ I appreciate you writing up your appreciation for them, but please realize you're speaking for those in your age group, not beyond it.  

The point being though that it's my generation as we've entered adulthood that have made the medium "acceptable" to like past childhood so to speak. We influenced the younger age group, and even our parents by continuing to love the medium well after the grade school days. Essentially it's the teen and twenties demo that used to shun the genre before my gen. Older parents/grandparents always saw animation, if only because someone needed to take the kids. Now however, teens and twenty somethings love the medium too, meaning animation is truly four quad. And we all know how important the teen demo are to any blockbuster. 

Edited July 10, 2016 by MovieMan89

[UrosepsisFace]

Speaking of which generations go to watch these animated movies, watching SLOP in a sold out theater today, I was reminded that my grandfather loved watching cartoons. The front rows were filled w/ millennials and their kids. The back rows were filled with what looked to be a nursing-home field trip. Cartoons have always had a universal appeal. The Geek revolution has just allowed audiences to appreciate it  without too many crapping on their fun.

[cannastop]

@MovieMan89

 

I don't think the generational explanation is that compelling, unless you apply it to all animated features. Did Beauty and the Beast have any "cool" cred, even if it was a big hit? Did the Disney movies of the 90s need any cool big sibling to make them legitimate?

 

Now, with Disney being the undisputed heavyweight champion of home video, of course the young generation is going to be indoctrinated to love animated features.

 

And no, Monster's University wasn't a ubiquitous cultural touchstone. I am of the generation you're talking about, and I have to say, nah. It didn't inspire Pixar loyalty in me.

[La Binoche]

Studios are scared to make movies about people. Movies are now about concepts. Concepts that we're familiar with. 

 

The Silence of the Lambs would not be made today. It's about people. It's about two people fascinated with each other's minds. Studio thrillers with midrange budgets are no longer being made. Best case scenario, it would have been a True Detective type series. 

That's scary to think of. We would have missed out on Silence as a movie. Now imagine all the great new material we're actually missing out on in favor of movies based on boardgames with familiar names.  

 

But keep blinding supporting Marvel and keep calling us outdated and pretentious. 

 

[DeeCee]

I can't even be bothered watching any of these animated films at home. 

[MovieMan89]

6 minutes ago, cannastop said:

@MovieMan89

 

I don't think the generational explanation is that compelling, unless you apply it to all animated features. Did Beauty and the Beast have any "cool" cred, even if it was a big hit? Did the Disney movies of the 90s need any cool big sibling to make them legitimate?

 

Now, with Disney being the undisputed heavyweight champion of home video, of course the young generation is going to be indoctrinated to love animated features.

 

And no, Monster's University wasn't a ubiquitous cultural touchstone. I am of the generation you're talking about, and I have to say, nah. It didn't inspire Pixar loyalty in me.

Beauty and the Beast came out when we were kids. It didn't need "cool cred" or big siblings seeing it. Kids have always seen animation and always will. However, no other gen of kids grew up with the level of quality of animation prior to the 90's renaissance. They were no longer just "children's entertainment", they were movies literally being made with Best Picture intentions. Then as teens, the genre grew up with us as I said, and we kept loving it. Again, unprecedented for prior gens. 

 

I never said MU was a "cultural touchstone" either, I merely mentioned it as a minor wave in the sea of nostalgia this decade of animation has released on us 90's kids. 

Edited July 10, 2016 by MovieMan89

[MinaTakla]

FORBES on the Illumination brand:

I think we have to consider that Illumination may have become a brand unto itself. Whether or not audiences know the name or merely know the work, at the very least the idea that a given animated feature is “from the people who brought you Despicable Me and Minions” is a draw by itself. Pixar is a brand, Marvel Studios is a brand, Walt Disney DIS +1.23% Animation is a brand, and there was a period from around 2004 to 2012 when DreamWorks Animation DWA -0.01%was a brand. And now, The Secret Life of Pets just scored a $38.325 million opening day. That’s the fifth-biggest opening day ever for an animated feature and the ninth-biggest single day period for any animated film ever. It’s the biggest ever on both accounts for a non-sequel/prequel.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/scottmendelson/2016/07/09/box-office-secret-life-of-pets-snags-huge-38m-friday-aims-for-100m-weekend/#eb6ac445dba9

[cannastop]

4 minutes ago, La Binoche said:

Studios are scared to make movies about people. Movies are now about concepts. Concepts that we're familiar with. 

 

The Silence of the Lambs would not be made today. It's about people. It's about two people fascinated with each other's minds. Studio thrillers with midrange budgets are no longer being made. Best case scenario, it would have been a True Detective type series. 

That's scary to think of. We would have missed out on Silence as a movie. Now imagine all the great new material we're actually missing out on in favor of movies based on boardgames with familiar names.  

 

But keep blinding supporting Marvel and keep calling us outdated and pretentious. 

 

Hey, they made Gone Girl, didn't they? That comes pretty close, in my opinion.

[MovieMan89]

8 minutes ago, MinaTakla said:

FORBES on the Illumination brand:

I think we have to consider that Illumination may have become a brand unto itself. Whether or not audiences know the name or merely know the work, at the very least the idea that a given animated feature is “from the people who brought you Despicable Me and Minions” is a draw by itself. Pixar is a brand, Marvel Studios is a brand, Walt Disney DIS +1.23% Animation is a brand, and there was a period from around 2004 to 2012 when DreamWorks Animation DWA -0.01%was a brand. And now, The Secret Life of Pets just scored a $38.325 million opening day. That’s the fifth-biggest opening day ever for an animated feature and the ninth-biggest single day period for any animated film ever. It’s the biggest ever on both accounts for a non-sequel/prequel.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/scottmendelson/2016/07/09/box-office-secret-life-of-pets-snags-huge-38m-friday-aims-for-100m-weekend/#eb6ac445dba9

Talk about behind the times. I've been considering Illumination a brand ever since The Lorax had one of the highest March and original animated opening ever at the time. 

[UrosepsisFace]

19 minutes ago, cannastop said:

Hey, they made Gone Girl, didn't they? That comes pretty close, in my opinion.

 

And this year we have Girl on a Train. Few years ago we had Girl w/ the Dragon Tattoo. 

[Porthos]

Looks like I missed a doozy of a day.   

 

Skimmed the last few pages and I guess I missed a @Telemachos rant (been busy gaming all day ).  But from I can gather, he's more right than wrong.  Oh, I'm not going to comment on quality or appeal, as those are both subjective as all hell.

 

But when it comes to variety of concepts and what Hollywood is pushing right now? Well, take a look at the Top 15 from 1991 to 2001 and compare it to the Top 15 for the last few years.  There's been a tremendous homogenization in that time span, at least compared to then.

 

Again, I'm not commenting on quality because of the subjectivity angle.  But diversity?  It's something I noticed when I was doing research on ID4's box office and its standing out even more as this year goes on.

 

One of these days, I'll do an in-depth comparison of the Top Ten/Fifteen from 1987 to 2002 (or so haven't nailed down exactly the time frames I want to look at) and then compare that to 2011 to 2016.  Perhaps also throw in budgets as well to show what studios were willing to risk money on. Just at a casual glance at those time frames I can see what Tele is going on about.

 

Do I agree completely?  Eh, not entierly.  Mostly because this is kinda similar to the sequel madness that dominated so much of the 80s and the action films that also dominated that time frame.  Different genres are on top, but homogenization and chasing the bottom is always a danger in Hollywood.  Sooner or later the bottom will fall out on CBM and Animation films and the studios will go looking for something else.  Might take a few studios with them, a few others might come out of nowhere to replace them.   

 

"All this has happened before, and all this will happen again" as a certain television show once put it.  

 

So, yes, lots of homogenization right now.  Not as convinced it's going to be a permanent thing, as these things rarely are.  The US is just too damn diverse and too large for any one cultural trend to stay on top for TOO long.

[MinaTakla]

15 minutes ago, MovieMan89 said:

Talk about behind the times. I've been considering Illumination a brand ever since The Lorax had one of the highest March and original animated opening ever at the time. 

Me too, but many people here beg to differ.

I think Pets strengthens the Illumination brand and I think SING may surprise too. Not Pets-level but it may surprise indeed.

[grim22]

5TH UPDATE, Sunday 12:21 AM: Heading into the weekend, there was a notion among some tracking experts that Finding Dory could impede The Secret Life of Pets‘ opening weekend. Well, that’s not happening. The Illumination Entertainment/Universal feature is on its way to a three-day of $103.3M, the second best debut for the label after Minions’ $115.7M high last July.  Some projected that Dory would push Pets’ three-day down into the mid $80M range

Pets’ Saturday turned in $36M, a 7% dip from Friday. Social media monitor RelishMix reports that #SecretLifeOfPets hashtags popped over the last 48-hours, but the unofficial hashtag #Pets have also exploded too with the movie, up from a combined 2.5K to 11.8K on Twitter and Instagram combined. YouTube video views too have spiked by 9.4M views in the last 2 days while Pet’s Facebook page is adding over 41.4K new fans per day, up from 9.8K a day as it just hit 2M total fans.

 

 Finding Dory is looking to make $20.9M at the same point in its run. 

 

In third place, Warner Bros./Village Roadshow’s $180M epic The Legend of Tarzan is vying to stay alive, on course for a $20.7M weekend, -46% after posting a $8.3M Saturday that’s +36% from Friday. By end of day tomorrow, Tarzan will count a 10-day take of $81.5M.

20th Century Fox’s Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates is remaining on target with an opening of $16.7M, which is slightly ahead of its $15M forecast. Pic earned $5.7M on Saturday to Friday’s $6.6M (which was further propped by a $1.6M Thursday preview, so technically Saturday was slightly up over Friday).

Fifth place belongs to Uni/Blumhouse/Platinum Dunes’ The Purge: Election Year which is looking at a $12M second weekend, -62% for a 10-day take of $58.4M, and if it keeps up its pace, it will easily be the highest Purge installment in the series.

 

[grim22]

Great hold for Tarzan. The movie looks like it will end with 125M+ domestic which literally no one gave it a shot at.

[parkerthegreat]

No daily breakdown for Dory, but I could live with a $21m weekend. Just under 50% drop, and stabilization next week could do Dory wonders for still hitting $500m.

[Jason]

44 minutes ago, La Binoche said:

That's scary to think of. We would have missed out on Silence as a movie. Now imagine all the great new material we're actually missing out on in favor of movies based on boardgames with familiar names.  

 

But keep blinding supporting Marvel and keep calling us outdated and pretentious. 

 

It's quite possible I've missed part of the discussion in the past several pages, but I had the impression most of the defence was of animated films rather than CBMs.
 

Original material is a big selling point for me, and I wish big budget live-action films were original a lot more often. I could be wrong but I've gotten the impression that amongst big budget films, animated films are significantly more likely to be original.

And I don't have anything against films with smaller budgets, I've just never heard about the good ones until long after they've left theatres, if they ever had a wide release in the first place. This forum should help with that though.

Edited July 10, 2016 by Jason

[James]

5 hours ago, CoolEric258 said:

MovieMan and I think James and Shay did, though I could be wrong on the latter two.

Yes, I did. And I'm predicting 150m+ for SS on OW so you can count that as well

 

2 hours ago, cannastop said:

Totally looking forward to the Japanification of the US box office.

 

By which I mean the top 3 movies of the year will be animated features.

Not really comparable though. Japan's film industry is very unique. For them animation is the defining genre, but most of their movies aren't actually made for kids. They have thrillers and horrors and dramas and R-rated stuff. Thele is right when he says the US studios don't treat animation as a genre. When was the last time an animation was directed towards adults or had an R rating? A Scanner Darkly (2006)? 

 

2 hours ago, Noctis said:

Oh, FFS, Tele.

 

Animation is a medium, not a genre. Considering you're in LA and work in the entertainment industry editing films/episodes, that should have been obvious.

 

Also, I didn't hear you complain ONCE about The Floppit Trilogy. They are the supreme epitome of blockbuster films at their laziest and most uninspired. So why were you quiet? Oh, right...it's because you had a boner for them. And that's fine. But if you are going to criticize the film industry for their lack of creativity, then your target should go to the Hobbit trilogy and not freaking Zootopia. 

 

You old fart.

Laziest my ass. If Jackson didn't prove love and dedication to that universe I don't know who did. He tried to convey everything that was within WB's rights to show. He was the one that proposed a third movie just to show everything. So please direct your bias elsewhere. 

 

1 minute ago, grim22 said:

5TH UPDATE, Sunday 12:21 AM: Heading into the weekend, there was a notion among some tracking experts that Finding Dory could impede The Secret Life of Pets‘ opening weekend. Well, that’s not happening. The Illumination Entertainment/Universal feature is on its way to a three-day of $103.3M, the second best debut for the label after Minions’ $115.7M high last July.  Some projected that Dory would push Pets’ three-day down into the mid $80M range

Pets’ Saturday turned in $36M, a 7% dip from Friday. Social media monitor RelishMix reports that #SecretLifeOfPets hashtags popped over the last 48-hours, but the unofficial hashtag #Pets have also exploded too with the movie, up from a combined 2.5K to 11.8K on Twitter and Instagram combined. YouTube video views too have spiked by 9.4M views in the last 2 days while Pet’s Facebook page is adding over 41.4K new fans per day, up from 9.8K a day as it just hit 2M total fans.

 

 Finding Dory is looking to make $20.9M at the same point in its run. 

 

In third place, Warner Bros./Village Roadshow’s $180M epic The Legend of Tarzan is vying to stay alive, on course for a $20.7M weekend, -46% after posting a $8.3M Saturday that’s +36% from Friday. By end of day tomorrow, Tarzan will count a 10-day take of $81.5M.

20th Century Fox’s Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates is remaining on target with an opening of $16.7M, which is slightly ahead of its $15M forecast. Pic earned $5.7M on Saturday to Friday’s $6.6M (which was further propped by a $1.6M Thursday preview, so technically Saturday was slightly up over Friday).

Fifth place belongs to Uni/Blumhouse/Platinum Dunes’ The Purge: Election Year which is looking at a $12M second weekend, -62% for a 10-day take of $58.4M, and if it keeps up its pace, it will easily be the highest Purge installment in the series.

 

That is incredible for Tarzan! -46% after a holiday inflated weekend? Without the holiday the drop would have been around 40%. That is great WOM.

[MinaTakla]

I just want to take a moment to really congratulate @James When he first called an OW a big 90m opening for Pets I think a few weeks back, some people said he was delusional.

Well, turns out James was right. I hope that, as much as we make fun of people when they make wrong predictions (and we always do whether upwards or downwards), that we also acknowledge those who had ballsy on-point ones like James. That would be just fair and square.

Congrats man.  

http://deadline.com/2016/07/weekend-box-office-secret-life-of-pets-mike-and-dave-need-wedding-dates-zac-efron-finding-dory-1201784127/

[James]

Just now, MinaTakla said:

I just want to take a moment to really congratulate @James When he first called an OW a big 90m opening for Pets I think a few weeks back, some people said he was delusional.

 

 

Well, turns out James was right. I hope that, as much as we make fun of people when they make wrong predictions (and we always do whether upwards or downwards), that we also acknowledge those who had ballsy on-point ones like James. That would be just fair and square.

 

 

Congrats man.  

http://deadline.com/2016/07/weekend-box-office-secret-life-of-pets-mike-and-dave-need-wedding-dates-zac-efron-finding-dory-1201784127/

Haha, thanks

[Porthos]

BTW, even if one wants to say that folks like Tele are being old coots yelling at clouds, I think the bigger problem might be the feast or famine nature of the box office right now.

 

It seems like it's either sub 125 or over 300 with little in-between.  Used to be there would be under-performing/under-appreciated gems in that range that would be reapprised at a later date and/or films that appealed to a large enough segment of the populace to get a decent amount of cash even though it wasn't a mega blockbuster.

 

But this year, so far at least, it's been boom or bust.  Now maybe the string of films coming out in the next couple of months will get some more "mid-range" hits. And then there are the October-December films that might end up in that range.

 

Then again, maybe it won't.  And I'm not sure it's entierly healthy for the box office  to see something like this:

 

1	Finding Dory	BV	$408,512,243	4,305	$135,060,273	4,305	6/17	-
2	Captain America: Civil War	BV	$406,022,164	4,226	$179,139,142	4,226	5/6	-
3	Deadpool	Fox	$363,070,709	3,856	$132,434,639	3,558	2/12	6/16
4	The Jungle Book (2016)	BV	$359,991,883	4,144	$103,261,464	4,028	4/15	-
5	Zootopia	BV	$340,895,247	3,959	$75,063,401	3,827	3/4	-
6	Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice	WB	$330,360,194	4,256	$166,007,347	4,242	3/25	6/16
7	X-Men: Apocalypse	Fox	$154,204,477	4,153	$65,769,562	4,150	5/27	-
8	Kung Fu Panda 3	Fox	$143,497,630	3,987	$41,282,042	3,955	1/29	-
9	The Angry Birds Movie	Sony	$105,936,416	3,932	$38,155,177	3,932	5/20	-
10	Central Intelligence	WB (NL)	$102,625,338	3,508	$35,535,250	3,508	6/17	-
11	The Conjuring 2	WB (NL)	$98,153,332	3,356	$40,406,314	3,343	6/10	-

 

when all is said and done (with more movies in the 275+ range and more movies in the sub 130 range with about three or four films in between).