The Box Office Buzz and Tracking Thread: Electric Boogaloo

[Bobbybuilderton]

Ive been saying sub 200m opening for the better part of two years now, in case anyone wants to join my club. I tried to look at numbers objectively and in none of my scenarios did EP 9 open above 200m. I'm hoping i was right more so my club succeeds than any particular hate for EP 8.  Things are about to get veeeery interesting this week

[Porthos]

41 minutes ago, Arendelle Legion said:

Pssh, it’s easy. All they want is a fun but thoughtful movie that spends time developing characters but also doesn’t change them too much, that builds upon but also completely rejects TLJ, that respects the original trilogy characters without having them draw too much focus, that respects the PT without trying to pretend it was good, that makes Reylo shippers happy, that makes Reylo haters happy, that’s a conclusive ending but also leaves the door open for more, that finally gives a satisfying answer to mystery boxes without removing them of their mystery or contradicting TLJ, that has real stakes but also doesn’t kill any characters that they like, that gives Rose an actual reason to exist but doesn’t focus on her too much, that makes Finn and Poe a couple but doesn’t do anything gay, that makes Palpatine feel like  real threat while also definitively disposing of him at the end. Oh, and that does but doesn’t have Ewoks.
 

 I mean really, is that so hard?

 

 

[JB33]

So we're at that depressing point where under $200M for the OW is almost an inevitability.

 

[charlie Jatinder]

1 minute ago, JB33 said:

So we're at that depressing point where under $200M for the OW is almost an inevitability.

 

If film is great, and a huge Saturday bump & Sunday hold change everything.

Edited December 14, 2019 by Jedi Jat

[JB33]

1 minute ago, Jedi Jat said:

If film is great, and a huge Saturday bump & Sunday hold change everything.

That's the usual thinking, but I feel like it never applies to Star Wars, no matter how liked the movie is.

 

Then again, we're always seeing completely new things happen in box office so who the hell knows?

[Ryan Reynolds]

21 minutes ago, Jedi Jat said:

If film is great, and a huge Saturday bump & Sunday hold change everything.

202m is happening , 190m with meh wom

[Zozer]

How about we wait before jumping to conclusions

[JB33]

5 minutes ago, Zozer said:

How about we wait before jumping to conclusions

I can see you're new. 

 

In fairness, we have some really skilled trackers as well as people who are privy to inside information. We still shouldn't jump to absolute conclusions but if the wind is blowing a certain direction in this thread nobody can be blamed for going with that.

[jedijake]

If I read this correctly, EG, TFA, and TLJ averaged 33-36% of their totals by now and, with the same ratio, TROS is looking at around $180 million OW? I know we have a week left, but, hmmmm.....maybe I am understanding it incorrectly (like always).

 

Anyone have Infinity War numbers to go along with these?

[Lordmandeep]

As i said, what i am seeing is traditional SW fanboys are not really hyping the film up with the casual or non fans.

 

 

[XXR vs XXR]

7 hours ago, Jedi Jat said:

Nationwide estimates

Previews: $21mn

Friday: $19mn

Saturday: $15mn

Sunday: $8.5mn // $63.5mn

 

Rest: $12mn // $75.5mn

 

At same time

Endgame: $120mn

TFA: $87mn

TLJ: $80mn

 

2 hours ago, jedijake said:

If I read this correctly, EG, TFA, and TLJ averaged 33-36% of their totals by now and, with the same ratio, TROS is looking at around $180 million OW? I know we have a week left, but, hmmmm.....maybe I am understanding it incorrectly (like always).

 

Anyone have Infinity War numbers to go along with these?

 

Going off these numbers, assuming they're in the correct neighborhood, I'd say $195-$205m. Word of mouth can, and will, change this. 

 

[Knights of Ren]

*IF* TROS doesn’t reach $200M OW, I think the biggest reason ultimately will be because of over saturation.   I’ve been around several people that when a commercial for TROS comes out, the response is “how many SW movies are they gonna keep making, they are just trying to make money”.  I think having Rogue One and Solo come out was a mistake.  Should have just been the ST during the 2015-2019 timeframe.  They made an “event” feel normalized.  Star Wars probably shouldn’t be on the big screen except once every two or so years.   I’m afraid TROS might be there last *huge* box office hit for a while.  They are going to have a pretty hard task of coming up with new stories not about the Skywalkers that people care about/understand.  I know they are taking a three year break, but I personally would take five.  Make the market hungry again.  
 

I say all this, but I still see TROS OW in the $205M-$210M range.   

[RockyMountain]

3 hours ago, jedijake said:

If I read this correctly, EG, TFA, and TLJ averaged 33-36% of their totals by now and, with the same ratio, TROS is looking at around $180 million OW? I know we have a week left, but, hmmmm.....maybe I am understanding it incorrectly (like always).

 

Anyone have Infinity War numbers to go along with these?

People have already said to stop paying so much attention to percentages.

[RockyMountain]

7 hours ago, JB33 said:

So we're at that depressing point where under $200M for the OW is almost an inevitability.

 

I don't think anybody really knows and are basically just taking guesses. We really won't have a great idea until reviews come out as a lot of people wait for the reviews before deciding to go or not. The tracking hasn't decreased at all and is staying right around the 200m mark.

Edited December 14, 2019 by RockyMountain

[RockyMountain]

1 hour ago, Knights of Ren said:

*IF* TROS doesn’t reach $200M OW, I think the biggest reason ultimately will be because of over saturation.   I’ve been around several people that when a commercial for TROS comes out, the response is “how many SW movies are they gonna keep making, they are just trying to make money”.  I think having Rogue One and Solo come out was a mistake.  Should have just been the ST during the 2015-2019 timeframe.  They made an “event” feel normalized.  Star Wars probably shouldn’t be on the big screen except once every two or so years.   I’m afraid TROS might be there last *huge* box office hit for a while.  They are going to have a pretty hard task of coming up with new stories not about the Skywalkers that people care about/understand.  I know they are taking a three year break, but I personally would take five.  Make the market hungry again.  
 

I say all this, but I still see TROS OW in the $205M-$210M range.   

I think if Disney plus was around four or five years ago Rogue One and Solo would have been Disney plus series. I think the only reason they are taking a break from movies is because of the streaming service. As far as the next trilogy it isn't going to have the same expectations that the current trilogy has. I'd say Rogue One type of numbers will be the expectation for those movies. Heck even though people say Marvel is on top of the world right now it only had consistent 200m+ openings for the Avengers movies and the one or two movies leading up to the Avengers movies.

[Justin4125]

1 hour ago, RockyMountain said:

 Heck even though people say Marvel is on top of the world right now it only had consistent 200m+ openings for the Avengers movies and the one or two movies leading up to the Avengers movies.

I feel bad about even responding to this, but what?? The MCU has had 4 of 7 200m+ openers (the other two of which are SW) and 8 movies that opened above 150m+, that is as big as it gets franchise-wise. Those are also, however, non-Dec openings (which are proportionally smaller, putting Ep7's 247m opening in Dec in a similar ballpark to EG's April 357m opening) and the MCU does not rely on domestic as much as SW does, so the comparison is mostly irrelevant.

 

Anyways no one is questioning whether TROS will or will not make world class money domestically. It will. The debate is about directionality.  Much of the hype about the MCU "ruling the world" has been its mindblowing ascent to box office superstardom. SW is different. Its box office royalty in the purest sense, dominating the box office for decades (a test the MCU hasnt yet faced, and it may not be able to replicate such sustained interest like SW has). A 180m+ opening is great, but for SW its a slight indication of declining interest given the mindblowing openings of the past two episode films

 

Anyways, openings are more about past films than anything else. TROS might have to pay for the Last Jedi's reception, the question is whether its quality will help it reap the full benefits of its uber leggy release date. The release date is better than Last Jedi's, mainly given where the main holidays fall in the calender and the fact that the holidays are closer to its first weekend than they were for Last Jedi (which lost a lot of steam following that second weekend drop). I think that audience reception is the most important component. If it can regain the trust of its audience, even if the BO is a slight disappointment, it will help set SW up to remain at the top of the Box office food chain for the decades to come

 

Lastly, this isnt the end of SW. If the movie does "fail" the ship can still be righted. People seem to constantly underestimate the size of SW's fanbase and impact on culture. Give the franchise a multi year break, take the franchise in a different direction or do something else to freshen it up, and I think the next SW film has a chance at the dom record again

Edited December 14, 2019 by Justin4125

[RockyMountain]

23 minutes ago, Justin4125 said:

I feel bad about even responding to this, but what?? The MCU has had 4 of 7 200m+ openers (the other two of which are SW) and 8 movies that opened above 150m+, that is as big as it gets franchise-wise. Those are also, however, non-Dec openings (which are proportionally smaller, putting Ep7's 247m opening in Dec in a similar ballpark to EG's April 357m opening) and the MCU does not rely on domestic as much as SW does, so the comparison is mostly irrelevant.

 

Anyways no one is questioning whether TROS will or will not make world class money domestically. It will. The debate is about directionality. 

Much of the hype about the MCU "ruling the world" has been its mindblowing ascent to box office superstardom. SW is different. Its box office royalty in the purest sense, dominating the box office for decades. A 180m+ opening is great, but for SW its a slight indication of declining interest given the mindblowing openings of the past two episode films. 

 

Anyways, openings are more about past films than anything else. TROS might have to pay for the Last Jedi's reception, the question is whether its quality will help it reap the full benefits of its uber leggy release date. The release date is better than Last Jedi's, mainly given where the main holidays fall in the calender and the fact that the holidays are closer to its first weekend than they were for Last Jedi (which lost a lot of steam following that second weekend drop). I think that audience reception is the most important component. If it can regain the trust of its audience, even if the BO is a slight disappointment, it will help set SW up to remain at the top of the Box office food chain for the decades to come

 

Lastly, this isnt the end of SW. If the movie does "fail" the ship can still be righted. People seem to constantly underestimate the size of SW's fanbase and impact on culture. Give the franchise a multi year break, take the franchise in a different direction or do something else to freshen it up, and I think the next SW film has a chance at the dom record again

We are talking about a film that is tracking to open at right around 200m. If you want to call that franchise fatigue or that TLJ hurt the franchise in anyway then go right ahead. The TFA opening was more of an outlier. And to be honest I don't think there is anything that will touch the TFA domestic record for a long, long, long time (perhaps ever). Endgame opened to 100m more than TFA and it didn't crack 900m domestic. 

Edited December 14, 2019 by RockyMountain

[George Parr]

12 minutes ago, Justin4125 said:

I feel bad about even responding to this, but what?? The MCU has had 4 of 7 200m+ openers (the other two of which are SW) and 8 movies that opened above 150m+, that is as big as it gets franchise-wise. Those are also, however, non-Dec openings (which are proportionally smaller, putting Ep7's 247m opening in Dec in a similar ballpark to EG's April 357m opening) and the MCU does not rely on domestic as much as SW does, so the comparison is mostly irrelevant.

 

I don't see what's supposed to be wrong about the comment you quoted. It did in fact state that Marvel in on top right now.

Most Marvel movies didn't come close to reaching a 200m OW though. It were only the Avengers movies (not even all of them) plus Black Panther, due to its unique circumstances. That was the entire point. Marvel is at its peak right now, but even that doesn't mean that it handily tops 200m on opening weekend, it only does so for its most important movies, while the rest is very much in a league below that. Which can also be seen in the domestic totals, where beyond its main movies it's just starting to top the 400m mark. There is a clear difference in expectation between the world beaters that were the Avengers movies (+ Black Panther) and everything else.

 

Thus the idea that future Star Wars movies should not be expected to match the Skywalker-saga either, and that Rogue One like figures would very much be a good outcome, just like Marvel-movies are doing extremely well even if they aren't coming close to matching the Avengers movies. If you look at the domestic side, Rogue One still comes in 100m ahead of the best  "2nd tier" Marvel movies. Getting into that range with future movies would be a very good result, even if it meant a noticeable drop from the saga.

[XXR vs XXR]

Star Wars: TROS -- AMC Willowbrook 24 -- 11:00am CST -- 5 Days to Previews  

 

 

Dolby Cinema
07:00pm: 205/205 -- SOLD OUT 

10:40pm: 148/205

02:15am: 23/205 

 

IMAX / IMAX 3D

06:00pm: 123/151 

09:40pm: 112/151 

01:20am: 14/151

 

Real 3D

06:00pm: 33/125 

06:20pm: 5/76

06:25pm: 10/76

06:30pm: 5/76 

06:45pm: 14/60

07:00pm: 20/60

07:15pm: 21/60

09:45pm: 4/125

10:05pm: 0/76

10:10pm: 0/76

10:30pm: 2/76

10:40pm: 0/60

10:50pm: 0/60

11:10pm: 0/60

01:45am: 0/76

 

Digital 

06:00pm: 104/147

06:15pm: 51/76

07:30pm: 43/60

07:45pm: 21/44 

08:00pm: 19/44

08:15pm: 19/44

08:45pm: 80/125

09:50pm: 66/147

09:55pm: 28/76

10:00pm: 20/76

11:25pm: 2/44

11:40pm: 0/44

11:55pm: 0/44

12:25am: 3/125

1:30am: 5/147

1:40am: 1/76

 

Fan Event

05:00pm: 100/125

 

 

TOTAL

1301 tickets sold out of 3638 seats available (35.76%)

 

 

 

Comps to Final Tracked Numbers

Captain Marvel = 1440 sold @ 5:30pm - Thursday

Avengers: Endgame = 3623 sold @ 5:30pm - Thursday 

Toy Story 4 = 822 sold @ 3:00pm - Thursday 

The Lion King = 1570 sold @ 4:00pm - Thursday

Joker = 659 sold @ 3:00pm - Thursday

[Menor the Destroyer]

3 hours ago, VenomXXR said:

 

 

Going off these numbers, assuming they're in the correct neighborhood, I'd say $195-$205m. Word of mouth can, and will, change this. 

 

Have to account for 2 years growth in presales though.