The Box Office Buzz and Tracking Thread: Electric Boogaloo

[DAJK]

Hitman's selling pretty well where I live for Tuesday-Thursday (don't have weekend times up yet). I feel like it was always going to do better in BC because of Reynolds, but I really doubt it will go under 10 for the 5-day based on what I'm seeing.

[Porthos]

28 minutes ago, charlie Jatinder said:

@Menor are you missing something or @keysersoze123 double counting something because he had 22k sold in 2550 shows 2 days ago in MTC 2.

 

25 minutes ago, Menor said:

Most likely, either Keyser is double counting DBOX showings or my subtraction of the DBOX "sold" seats is subtracting too much. I tested it with my local theater but they are tricky to handle. 

 

Noticed something annoying at one of my local theaters in that there's a couple of sold out DBOX showings (one for F9 and one for BW) where I am 95% convinced they "only" sold half of the seats that could have been sold.  There is at least one other normal showing that is currently above 50% seats sold at a different Cinemark for F9, so I don't think Cinemark is applying a soft 50% cap locally in Sacramento for movies (though I could be wrong).

 

I mention it coz there could be something weird going on with the DBOX seating.  Locally I can keep an eye on it and adjust on the fly.  Also helps that DBOX seating is a pittance here, so it only matters around the edges for me.  But if DBOX showings are acting up nationally could be something that different tracker programs handle differently.

 

This is likely a coincidence and not the source of the discrepancy.  But might as well mention it all the same.

[Menor the Destroyer]

1 minute ago, Porthos said:

 

 

Noticed something annoying at one of my local theaters in that there's a couple of sold out DBOX showings (one for F9 and one for BW) where I am 95% convinced they "only" sold half of the seats that could have been sold.  There is at least one other normal showing that is currently above 50% seats sold at a different Cinemark for F9, so I don't think Cinemark is applying a soft 50% cap locally in Sacramento for movies (though I could be wrong).

 

I mention it coz there could be something weird going on with the DBOX seating.  Locally I can keep an eye on it and adjust on the fly.  Also helps that DBOX seating is a pittance here, so it only matters around the edges for me.  But if DBOX showings are acting up nationally could be something that different tracker programs handle differently.

 

This is likely a coincidence and not the source of the discrepancy.  But might as well mention it all the same.

That could contribute to it, but I think the bigger issue is just that DBOX seats show up as "unavailable" in regular showings even if not actually unavailable. I had to subtract them out, then add back in any DBOX seats that were actually sold, but I may have been overzealous somehow. 

[Porthos]

6 minutes ago, Menor said:

That could contribute to it, but I think the bigger issue is just that DBOX seats show up as "unavailable" in regular showings even if not actually unavailable. I had to subtract them out, then add back in any DBOX seats that were actually sold, but I may have been overzealous somehow. 

 

Yes, that is an annoying quirk of Cinemark seatmaps, isn't it? I get that it's simpler for them code wise (probably), but would it kill them to just mark a seat as "DBOX" on their normal seat maps so us trackers have an easier life?

 

It's like they aren't thinking about our needs at all here. 

[Inceptionzq]

23 hours ago, Inceptionzq said:

Fast 9 Thursday Showings Denver

AMC Westminster 24

Total

99

848

11.67%

AMC Highlands Ranch 24

Total

84

1665

5.05%

 

SEATS SOLD	SOLD PAST DAY	TOTAL SEATS	PERCENT SOLD	THEATERS	SHOWINGS
578	28	13037	4.43%	15	64

 

A Quiet Place 2 comp: 9.18M

Fast 9 Thursday Showings Denver

AMC Westminster 24

Total

100

848

11.79%

AMC Highlands Ranch 24

Total

91

1665

5.47%

 

SEATS SOLD	SOLD PAST DAY	TOTAL SEATS	PERCENT SOLD	THEATERS	SHOWINGS
605	27	13037	4.64%	15	64

 

A Quiet Place 2 comp: 9M

[Menor the Destroyer]

MTC2 Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard (300 theaters)

 

Tuesday:

Showtimes: 1044

Sold: 1734/159529

 

Wednesday:

Showtimes: 1956

Sold: 1961/322161

 

There is an issue with my calculation of total $ gross. So I will leave that out for now while I try to ferret it out. 

Edited June 14, 2021 by Menor

[Inceptionzq]

23 hours ago, Inceptionzq said:

Black Widow Thursday Showings Denver

AMC Westminster 24

Total

192

1980

9.70%

AMC Highlands Ranch 24

Total

221

1939

11.40%

 

SEATS SOLD	SOLD PAST DAY	TOTAL SEATS	PERCENT SOLD	THEATERS	SHOWINGS
933	144	21278	4.38%	15	112

 

TLK final count comp: 2.37M, adjusted: 1.92M

TRoS final count comp: 2.19M, adjusted: 1.89M

 

Decided to try some adjusting to the final count comps. I'm guessing that Black Widow will be in at least 4000 theaters, so I used that as an estimate. Also adjusted a bit for Canada.  But again, take this with a grain of salt. Like @Lokis Legion was saying yesterday, Fast 9 will probably be the best comp for this. Obviously we won't have that for a while.

Black Widow Thursday Showings Denver

AMC Westminster 24

Total

219

1980

11.06%

AMC Highlands Ranch 24

Total

242

1939

12.48%

 

SEATS SOLD	SOLD PAST DAY	TOTAL SEATS	PERCENT SOLD	THEATERS	SHOWINGS
1016	83	21278	4.77%	15	112

 

TLK final count comp: 2.59M; adjusted: 2.09M

TRoS final count comp: 2.4M; adjusted: 2.07M

[el sid]

The Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard, counted today at 8am EST for the previews tomorrow:

NY (AMC Fresh Meadows 7): 51 (4 showtimes)
Miami (AMC Sunset Place 24): no showtimes so far
Grand Rapids (AMC Grand Rapids 18): 6 (3 showtimes)
Austin (AMC Lakeline 9): 0 (1 showtime)
Tempe/Phoenix (AMC Centerpoint 11): 4 (2 showtime)
San Francisco (AMC Metreon 16): 10 (4 showtimes)
LA (AMC Universal): 54 (5 showtimes)
 

Total tickets sold in 6 theaters: 125.
Comps: Ready or Not (8.0M OW, not exactly the same target audience but also not too different and this movie also started on a Wednesday) had in the same 5 theaters 145 tickets sold on the Monday of its release week vs 74 (I had to subtract NY from the number of THWB because Ready Or Not didn't have showtimes in NY already on Monday). So RON had twice as many tickets sold on the same day for the same day.
Angel has Fallen (21.4M OW) had also on Monday in the same 6 theaters 234 sold tickets for Thursday (and was a walk-up beast).

I agree that if THBW doesn't improve AQP II could be #1 again.
But OTOH it's early. I didn't even see the trailer so far (but will do it in a few minutes. Like many here I'm busy at the moment plus the soccer EM started ^^). Maybe the film connects better with the audience than the critics? I will look at it again later in the week (and I have also comps for Friday).

Black Widow, also counted today at 8am EST:
NY (AMC Fresh Meadows 7): 224 (6 showtimes)
Grand Rapids (AMC Grand Rapids 18): 70 (5 showtimes)
Austin (AMC Lakeline 9): 29 (2 showtimes)

Tempe/Phoenix (AMC Centerpoint 11): 33 (6 showtimes)
 

Total tickets sold in 4 theaters: 356. Up 19% since Saturday so in line with other reports.
The Michigan number is very good.

Edited June 14, 2021 by el sid

[charlie Jatinder]

If this has to do $100M, $18M previews are must, so around 11K seats in Sacramento @Porthos should be target.

 

Around 8K in Denver @Inceptionzq

[Porthos]

16 minutes ago, charlie Jatinder said:

If this has to do $100M, $18M previews are must, so around 11K seats in Sacramento @Porthos should be target.

 

Around 8K in Denver @Inceptionzq

 

I'd make it 11,500 to 12,000 tickets in Sacto to be on the safe side. 

 

Let's say we're currently at ≈ 2.3m according to Sacramento.

 

18/2.3 ≈ 7.8

7.8 x 1,498 = 11,723.

 

So anywhere from 11,500 to 12,000 should be the range, with F9 providing clarity.  There is 3D and (presumably) higher share of PLF, so if one wants to be courageous, 11,500 tickets would be the target.  But 12,000 if one thinks BW is over-performing here (Marvel/SW films historically do really well here, even relative to other regions of the country).

Edited June 15, 2021 by Porthos

[charlie Jatinder]

@Porthos I was looking back for CM. CM final number was 10.5K something for $20.7M. What are the adjusted comp for CM, considering you added many theaters post CM in tracking.

[Porthos]

Just now, charlie Jatinder said:

@Porthos I was looking back for CM. CM final number was 10.5K something for $20.7M. What are the adjusted comp for CM, considering you added many theaters post CM in tracking.

 

Captain Marvel over-performed pretty heavily in Sacto, so perhaps not the best comp (though if one thinks BW will be similar, I can see why you're using it).

 

Anyway, the issue isn't so much adding theaters (I've added two and a three-quarters sources of info since CM debuted) but subtracting theaters since I can't track a chunk of the Sacramento region right now.  Got movement in both directions which makes comping especially irksome.  Also irksome because Disney was still playing coy with competing theater chains here and wouldn't always play a movie at both a Regal and a Cinemark if they were within a couple of miles of each other (Endgame seems to have cured them of this little quirk, ftr).

 

Still...

 

Final Captain Marvel (adj) seat total:  8,934

Current Black Widow (adj) seat total:  1,451

 

Hmmmm.... Maybe 10k will be good enough.  Could be that the capped environment was putting a massive thumb on the scale for GvK and AQP II, causing Sacramento to over-index on both films.  Still, and you're probably not gonna like this as an answer, probably just best to wait 'till F9 comes in and use that as a baseline as there are just a LOT of variables in play for anything pre-2020, including those effin' theaters not providing accurate seat maps. 

[charlie Jatinder]

6 hours ago, Menor said:

MTC2 Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard (300 theaters)

 

Tuesday:

Showtimes: 1044

Sold: 1734/159529

 

Wednesday:

Showtimes: 1956

Sold: 1961/322161

 

There is an issue with my calculation of total $ gross. So I will leave that out for now while I try to ferret it out. 

I won't attempt Tuesday not knowing discount thing going nowdays, but WED is around $20K probably 2 days out. Will probably final at $50-60K PS I guess and say 3-4x PSm, that gives $150-240K. $1-1.7M True WED OD I guess. Say $1.25M OD, may be $7M 5 days weekend. UGH. At high end $10M may be. The first one opened $21M, was rotten IIRC, IDK if anything higher was fair to expect either.

 

I know that's like a huge range, but that's exactly the point. PS, especially other than final days, don't really much for such small films.

[charlie Jatinder]

35 minutes ago, Porthos said:

Could be that the capped environment was putting a massive thumb on the scale for GvK and AQP II, causing Sacramento to over-index on both films.

Usually as big as a film goes, the ratio of urban centres start reducing due to the capacity issue coming in handy.

 

So a something like CM will be doing 10K in Sacramento and $20M but EG or TFA doing $50M plus will be doing from some 20K only in Sacramento.

 

In other words, say Big city has like 1000 screens and several smaller region combined around 1500. Usually same number of people watch a film, say 600 watched CM in big city and 600 watched in several smaller regions. For EG, Big City could only go as high as 1000 while smaller regions may be going 1200-1400, hence lower big city ratio for bigger film. Exactly same thing happens for big films in Harkins chain I was mentioning yesterday.

Edited June 15, 2021 by charlie Jatinder

[Menor the Destroyer]

9 hours ago, Porthos said:

 

Yes, that is an annoying quirk of Cinemark seatmaps, isn't it? I get that it's simpler for them code wise (probably), but would it kill them to just mark a seat as "DBOX" on their normal seat maps so us trackers have an easier life?

 

It's like they aren't thinking about our needs at all here. 

The even bigger issue for scrapers (I think Keyser ran into this earlier as well) is that "unavailable" seats in DBOX showings have to be dealt with separately, since all the regular seats are marked as unavailable regardless of whether they are sold. That usually adds several times the actual ticket count (I think I got 42k for BW before I fixed this error and it dropped to 19k, it's probably worse for smaller films). My guess here is that Keyser fixed that big error but not the "DBOX seats greyed out in normal showings error", since that affects the number by a much smaller percentage. That would explain the discrepancy in our numbers. 

[filmlover]

13 hours ago, CJohn said:

Under 10M for the 5 day opening?!

 

Jesus theaters are fucking DEAD. Lionsgate should have just sold Hitman's sequel and Spiral to a streamer. Same with Sony and Peter Rabbit 2.

Well, it's not like these movies wouldn't have been nonstarters to begin with even if they had made their original release dates from a year ago.

[charlie Jatinder]

@Menor also noticed just $8.3 ATP for Friday for BW. That seems really really low for pre-sales which are supposed to be premium shows heavier. MTC 2 ATP has been around $11 recently.

[Eric Duncan]

The Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard Greater Philadelphia Area Seat Report T-1 and Counting (Tue+Wed)

	Sellouts	Showings	Seats Sold	Total Seats	Perct Sold
TOTALS	0	100	200	13127	1.52%

 

Comp

1.143x of Nobody T-1 Before Release (2.87M)

0.781x of Wrath of Man T-1 Before Release (2.32M)

 

Blech. That is all.

[charlie Jatinder]

Just now, Eric is Full of Pride said:

The Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard Greater Philadelphia Area Seat Report T-1 and Counting (Tue+Wed)

	Sellouts	Showings	Seats Sold	Total Seats	Perct Sold
TOTALS	0	100	200	13127	1.52%

 

Comp

1.143x of Nobody T-1 Before Release (2.87M)

0.781x of Wrath of Man T-1 Before Release (2.32M)

 

Blech. That is all.

seeing MTC 2 numbers, seems a lot to me. Nobody #s will probably guarantee $10M.

[Menor the Destroyer]

8 minutes ago, charlie Jatinder said:

@Menor also noticed just $8.3 ATP for Friday for BW. That seems really really low for pre-sales which are supposed to be premium shows heavier. MTC 2 ATP has been around $11 recently.

That's the error in the total sales calculation. Ignore those numbers for now. Tickets sold should be correct.

Edited June 15, 2021 by Menor