The Box Office Buzz and Tracking Thread: Electric Boogaloo

[TwoMisfits]

5 hours ago, Porthos said:

Here's what I'm willing to believe/bet on Aladdin.  I think it is performing very well in some areas of the country and very poorly in others.  We've seen this before with other movies, so it's not unheard of.

 

Is Sacramento an over-performing area?  Maybe!  I really don't know. But it doesn't seem too dissimilar with Fandango, which I'm kinda using as a tie-breaker.  But, sure, I could see us over-performing by some percentage.  And before anyone brings up the Cali angle, from what I could tell @FlashMaster659's theater in Ontario, California was doing pretty lousy as well.

 

Looking at my own data and trends, I don't think 7.25m +/- .3m is that unlikely.  If Sacto is right.    But I am overdue for a FB2 sized miss, so if I have one, I have one.  Can't really ask for anything else than that.

I agree - for whatever reason, I think Aladdin is a "feast or famine" movie...no idea why (although I'd know why CA and FL would be good, but not my little area on the MidAtlantic - not quite NE:)) - maybe it's based on what areas are already "tapped out" on movie funds for the month, or what areas have lots of Cinemark/AMC subscribers in the base (so it's "free" or "cheap" for them) or maybe even the demographics of the area (I didn't think that would matter for this movie, but maybe it's drawing disproportionately from areas with large Middle East/western Asian immigrant and 2nd generation populations - which my area does have, since I'm in a highly diverse area - see the success my one local has in booking movies from India)...

Edited May 23, 2019 by TwoMisfits

[Krissykins]

Seeing Rocketman here in the UK tomorrow night on superscreen.

 

It’s a holiday weekend here, openers are Rocketman, Aladdin and Secret Life of Pets. 

 

Rocketman and Aladdin both opened yesterday. 

[EconomySize]

So everybody has been wondering what exactly is going on with Aladdin, especially in regards to the anecdotal theater evidence and the fandango sales wildly splitting.  I took a look at the Thursday Sales, Friday Sales, and OW Sales as of 12AM of Opening Day.  Once I got the ratios for the days, I looked at the variance(calculated spread) between the ratios to find consistent comps across all 3 metrics (I know I should have used Saturday and Sunday instead of OW, but I'm lazy).  This Thursday Friday Opening Weekend (TFOW) Variance should tell us which comps are most appropriate.  I threw out everything over 1 and left the table down below so you could see what my other options were.

 

Given these comps I got the projected Preview Gross and Opening Weekend.

 

	Aladdin	Wrinkle	Ant-Man	Grinch	Dumbo	HT3	HTTYD3	I2	Spiderverse
Sales As Of	15168	3632	18174	3538	4219	2380	6943	38044	9756
Thurs Ratio		4.176	0.835	4.287	3.595	6.373	2.185	0.399	1.555
FRI Ratio		2.502	1.921	2.573	2.614	4.232	1.922	0.497	2.987
OW Ratio		2.331	1.368	2.371	2.475	4.522	1.721	0.453	2.009
TFOW Variance		0.693	0.197	0.739	0.249	0.899	0.036	0.002	0.357
TF Difference		1.675	-1.086	1.714	0.981	2.141	0.263	-0.098	-1.432
Preview Gross		1.3	11.5	2.2	1.6	2.6	3	18.5	3.5
Proj PG		5.429	9.598	9.432	5.752	16.570	6.554	7.376	5.442
OW Gross		33.123	75.812	67.572	45.990	44.076	55.022	182.687	35.363
Proj OW		77.211	103.691	160.185	113.806	199.317	94.689	82.828	71.027

 

The average of all the PGs for the comps is $8.27m, but if you throw out the obvious Hotel Translyvania outlier, you get $7.1m.  The estimate spread there is decently tight, so 6-8 is probably reasonable.  That's... not great, as the models I have put that in the 69-74m range.  The OW projections are way better, looking like $112m with everything, and $90.5m if you throw out the Grinch and Translyvania outliers.

 

There are two known issues - One, I used the 7amCST pull from the fandango report, so that is fudging up the sales for Aladdin.  Also, everything else here opened on a 3 day weekend, not a 4.  So If you want to nudge things down a little for the extra preview sales, you should also nudge them up for a 4 day weekend.

 

Let's put our range then for the 4 day weekend around 75-95m, with (over the past 5 years) an average of 82% of that being FSS, we are looking at 61.5-77.9m three day.  The most consistent comp looks to be I2, which makes a lot of sense, and puts it in the middle of projections..  I'd say both the 3 and 4 day qualify it as neither a dumpster fire nor a tire fire, but also not up to Disney's preseason expectations.

 

As promised, the rejected comps:

Movie		TFOW Variance
Bumblebee		1.38
Christopher Robin		3.66
Little		5.28
Smallfoot		17.01
The House with a Clock in its Walls		3.74
The Nutcracker and the Four Realms		15.10

 

*Pickachu not included because of major Fandango issues. Shazam! not included due to giant early access sales.

[Nova]

Official prediction is $85M for the 4-day. 

[Menor the Destroyer]

I also looked through the Fandango historical data for the daily splits and put a few movies in a spreadsheet to compare with Aladdin. Much like @EconomySize found it seems that Incredibles 2 has the most similar ratios, but even that seems to be somewhat less preview-heavy than Aladdin. Unless things drastically improve for its ratio today, I can't see higher than a 10x preview multiplier, which from @Porthos prediction of 7.25 would give a 72.5 million 3-day, probably leading to a 4-day in the high 80s, and that's assuming that its ratio improves significantly from today. 

 

If anyone wants to see for themselves, here is the list I compiled: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1N42mKLQ5mpTvLeCc4D3VHI0QNcoI6--8dXSM9fssi3w/edit?usp=sharing

Edited May 23, 2019 by Menor

[Brainbug]

80M 4-Day would be kind of very mediocre. Memorial Day releases have supbar legs more often than not precisely because of the 4-Day Holiday. So Aladdin needs to open larger than that if it wants to be a win for Disney.

 

Note: Im not saying it will open with 80M 4-Day, just what that would mean with this data we have as the baseline for this prediction.

[FlashMaster659]

 

[lor15]

7 minutes ago, FlashMaster659 said:

 

Finally, this is a good improvement

[TalismanRing]

Memorial Day w/e

 

Pirates 5 (2017) had a 11.45x for the 3 day and 14.3x for the 5 Day  -  5.5/ 62.93/ 78.5

With the same ratio - 7.25 / 83.0125 / 103.675

 

[Tentatek]

11 minutes ago, FlashMaster659 said:

 

I hope they sort out all the troll ratings on old movies as well. Not just the current ones with the new system in place. 

Edited May 23, 2019 by Tentatek

[filmlover]

10 minutes ago, FlashMaster659 said:

 

Finally. No more of trolls downvoting every single minority-led movie there is.

[Tentatek]

Movies opening Friday, May 24, that are subject to Rotten Tomatoes’ new Audience Rating system include Disney’s live-action “Aladdin,” “Booksmart” and “Brightburn.” All new releases going forward will be subject to the same requirement that users confirm a ticket purchase before their ratings count toward the displayed Audience Score; Fandango said viewer scores for previous movies won’t change.

 

 

Oops how convenient. Anyways, Aladdin lucked out. Summer smash incoming. 

[Eric S'ennui]

https://deadline.com/2019/05/men-in-black-international-shaft-box-office-projections-1202621286/

 

Quote

Men in Black: International, Sony’s reboot of Men in Black with Thor: Ragnarok thespians Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson, arrived on tracking this morning with a $40M start. The pic opens on June 14.

 

While lower than the $50M-plus 3-days of the Will Smith-Tommy Lee Jones’ movies, Men in Black: International isn’t being launched over the holiday frames like those pics, and it’s the studios means of taking the franchise in a new direction. Whether this film pops further or not will, natch, boil down to reviews and word of mouth.

 

Also going wide that weekend is New Line’s Shaft from director Tim Story which we hear as the potential to do $20M-$22M. If those numbers hold four weeks from now, they will be on part to the opening of the Samuel L. Jackson 2000 Parramount Shaft movie ($21.7M opening, $70.3M domestic). 

 

[filmlover]

Sounds about right for Men in Black (and Shaft, for that matter).

[Menor the Destroyer]

I will add to this I don't see Aladdin even getting to 70 for the 3-day based on Fandango right now unless it is significantly more walkup based than Incredibles 2 (which seems pretty unlikely), or if previews come in significantly higher than Sacramento predicts (which also seems unlikely)

[TalismanRing]

5 minutes ago, Menor said:

I will add to this I don't see Aladdin even getting to 70 for the 3-day based on Fandango right now unless it is significantly more walkup based than Incredibles 2 (which seems pretty unlikely), or if previews come in significantly higher than Sacramento predicts (which also seems unlikely)

Why?  Incredible 2 previews were  18.6m.  That's enormous for an animated movie and so big it drove down it's o/w ratio to 9.875x

 

Aladdin's Sunday will also be about a 5-10% drop b/c of MD w/e. 

[Menor the Destroyer]

2 minutes ago, TalismanRing said:

Why?  Incredible 2 previews were  18.6m.  That's enormous for an animated movie and so big it drove down it's o/w ratio to 9.875x

 

Aladdin's Sunday will also be about a 5-10% drop b/c of MD w/e. 

Ah, forgot about the unusual Sunday. The reason I was saying that at first was because it looks like the presale split of previews vs ow will be worse than Incredibles 2, which would point to a worse internal multiplier. But with the low Sunday drop it could potentially make it.

[YM!]

15 minutes ago, TalismanRing said:

Why?  Incredible 2 previews were  18.6m.  That's enormous for an animated movie and so big it drove down it's o/w ratio to 9.875x

 

Aladdin's Sunday will also be about a 5-10% drop b/c of MD w/e. 

Still let’s not pretend that Aladdin doesn’t have a teen/young adult fanbase to inflate previews.

[TalismanRing]

1 minute ago, YourMother the Edgelord said:

Still let’s not pretend that Aladdin doesn’t have a teen/young adult fanbase to inflate previews.

Is that the major base it's skewing toward though?  This isn't a new YA adaptation.  It's supposedly a 4 quadrant film that should skew family.

 

For all that I had to hear Shazam and Pickachu were family films with big walk ups on the horizon over the last two months the underselling of Aladdin as a family film is puzzling.

 

[YM!]

1 minute ago, TalismanRing said:

Is that the major base it's skewing toward though?  This isn't a new YA adaptation.  It's supposedly a 4 quadrant film that should skew family.

 

For all that I had to hear Shazam and Pickachu were family films with big walk ups on the horizon over the last two months the underselling of Aladdin as a family film is puzzling.

 

Still should have more adults than a typical animated movie. My word were misplaced, I’m expecting some more of the BaTB/I2 variety than I am of a Lego 2/Grinch variety in terms of walkups.

 

Yes, we were wrong about Shazam and Pikachu and I do easily expect Aladdin to be way more walk up based than those two. Personally I’m thinking a 10x-12x multiple for the previews.