The Box Office Buzz and Tracking Thread: Electric Boogaloo

[DAJK]

28 minutes ago, Shawn said:

Yup, we'll probably have one this week.

Thanks for the update! I miss seeing them whenever they go up (and my boss uses them often at our theater) so thank you  

[Krissykins]

Review embargo’s for this weeks openers:

 

Snake Eyes 3am EST on Thursday

Old Noon EST on Thursday

 

Not expecting either to have good reviews anyway. Dont think the reviews will make much difference either tbh. 

[Shawn Robbins]

4 minutes ago, DAJK said:

Thanks for the update! I miss seeing them whenever they go up (and my boss uses them often at our theater) so thank you  

You're welcome! (And thanks to you and your boss!)

 

Yeah, the LRF shifted to a roughly once-per-month online report after COVID last year since there wasn't much to cover outside of speculation and calendar changes. Clients still receive the full report regularly, but I'm hopeful we'll be in a position to get the online version back more often now that movies are coming out again and things are slowly improving here in NA. I think the models will be constantly changing for most of the rest of the year, though. Probably into 2022.

[el sid]

2 hours ago, Nikostar said:

Could Space Jam win the weekend? Are both new openers doing that bad in Pre sales?

No, I don't think so . Snake Eyes should be #1. Old could have good walk ups. Space Jam would need a very very solid hold to have a chance.

[RRA]

50 minutes ago, Krissykins said:

Review embargo’s for this weeks openers:

 

Snake Eyes 3am EST on Thursday

Old Noon EST on Thursday

 

Not expecting either to have good reviews anyway. Dont think the reviews will make much difference either tbh. 

Ooof

[Tinalera]

OLD Thursday Previews

Toronto Ontario 

Taken July 21 for Thurs July 22

      

Scotiabank Theatre

 

Seats Sold        107 (+15)

Total seats       467

 

Varsity 

Seats Sold        32(+5)

Total Seats       157 

 

Yonge Eglinton

Seats Sold        30(+8)

Total Seats       333

 

Yorkdale

Seats Sold        24 (+2)

Total Seats       384

 

Elglinton Town

Seats Sold        28 

Total Seats       307 

 

Queensway

Seats Sold       46(+4)

Total Seats      419

 

Empress Walk

Seats Sold     16

Total Seats      384 

 

overall 297 seats total sold

 total seats 2451 (-119) 

Edited July 21, 2021 by Tinalera

[Tinalera]

Snake Eyes Thursday Preview

Toronto Ontario 

Taken July 21 for Thurs July 22

      

Yonge Dundas

 

Seats Sold           28 (+10)

Total Seats          393

 

Scotiabank Theatre

 

 

Seats Sold        16(+3)

Total seats       292

 

Varsity 

Seats Sold        2

Total Seats       294

 

Yonge Eglinton

Seats Sold        7 (-12)loss

Total Seats       467

 

Yorkdale

Seats Sold        9(+4)

Total Seats       459

 

Elglinton Town

Seats Sold        8

Total Seats       280

 

Queensway

Seats Sold      7 (+2)

Total Seats      164

 

Empress Walk

Seats Sold    21 (+2)

Total Seats      643

 

Total Seats sold 98 (+8)

 

Total Number of Seats 2982 (-92)

 

Pretty quiet

[el sid]

Old, counted today at 10am EST for Friday:

NY (AMC Fresh Meadows 7): 78 (5 showtimes)
Miami (AMC Sunset Place 24): 28 (6 showtimes)
Grand Rapids (AMC Grand Rapids 18): 10 (7 showtimes)
Austin (AMC Lakeline 9): 7 (4 showtimes)
Tempe/Phoenix (AMC Centerpoint 11): 12 (4 showtimes)
San Francisco (AMC Metreon 16): 54 (8 showtimes)
LA (AMC Universal): 73 (10 showtimes)
 

Total tickets sold in 7 theaters: 262.
Up 75% since Monday. Good jump, from a pretty low level on Monday, but still, went in the right direction.
Comps (always from the same day = Wednesday of the release week): The Conjuring 3 (24.1M OW) had in the same 7 theaters 1.074 sold tickets for Friday.
AQP II (47.5M OW) had in the same 7 theaters 1.209 sold tickets for Thursday.
Crawl (12.0M OW) had in the same 7 theaters 170 sold tickets for Friday.
The Invisible Man (28.2M OW) had in the same 7 theaters 629 sold tickets for Friday.
And The Forever Purge (12.6M OW) had in the same 7 theaters 168 sold tickets for Thursday.

Snake Eyes, counted today at 10am EST, also for Friday:

NY (AMC Fresh Meadows 7): 224 (10 showtimes)
Miami (AMC Sunset Place 24): 42 (9 showtimes)
Grand Rapids (AMC Grand Rapids 18): 10 (10 showtimes)
Austin (AMC Lakeline 9): 9 (4 showtimes)
Tempe/Phoenix (AMC Centerpoint 11): 18 (9 showtimes)
San Francisco (AMC Metreon 16): 144 (11 showtimes)
LA (AMC Universal): 143 (9 showtimes)

Total tickets sold in 7 theaters: 590.
Up 117% since Monday. A very good jump!
Comps (always from the same day = Wednesday of the release week): F9 had in the same 7 theaters 2.812 sold tickets for Friday.
Angel has Fallen had in the same 7 theaters 293 sold tickets for Friday (but was a walk up beast).
THWB had in the same 7 theaters 132 sold tickets for Friday.
This looks better now, 25M OW maybe?
 

Only a tiny update for TSS, counted today at noon EST for Thurday, August 5:
LA (AMC Universal): 354 sold tickets (10 showtimes).

Comp: F9 had on Monday of its release week 554 sold tickets (and 16 showtimes) in this theater, so TSS is at 64% of F9 and has 12 days left to come closer. This AMC theater was (along with NY) the location where F9 did best.
So this doesn't look as bad as the other reports but the sales for TSS were (at least last Saturday) way more muted in other regions.
PS: Do we have some new reviews from GB or a word when the embargo drops there (I read here that the US embargo ends July 28)?

Edited July 21, 2021 by el sid

[Menor the Destroyer]

3 hours ago, Menor said:

At long last, Cinemark has updated its DBOX display to actually show the DBOX seats in normal shows!

 

...which does explain why I was getting negative numbers for TSS sales today, lol. 

 

...and now the default price on a normal showing with DBOX seats available is shown as the default price. Which makes scraping the actual price require a browser simulator rather than a normal scraper. 

Ok in investigating this I found a huge problem. Cinemark has a huge amount of default blocked seats. Examples being

https://www.cinemark.com/TicketSeatMap/?TheaterId=355&ShowtimeId=151081&CinemarkMovieId=84699&Showtime=2021-08-06T19:00:00

https://www.cinemark.com/TicketSeatMap/?TheaterId=355&ShowtimeId=151082&CinemarkMovieId=84699&Showtime=2021-08-06T22:15:00.

I found many others in various theaters. Here, the seats sold are identical between the two showings, which means that either 1) the seats are blocked by default or 2) the seats sold have somehow been combined between the showings (perhaps due to some error in their website update yesterday). It is a big problem though for my numbers. I can't be sure of the reliability after finding this, and I'm not sure how long it's been around. Hopefully it was an error stemming from yesterday's update, but I can't be sure. Have any trackers who track Cinemark theaters noticed this? 

 

Also, even the DBOX update was inconsistent, with some theaters still using the old DBOX system.   

Edit: The DBOX update now seems to have been completely reverted. After I rewrote my script for it too! This is annoying. Not gonna track until they stabilize. 

 

 

So, in short, it's a huge mess right now. 

Edited July 21, 2021 by Menor

[katnisscinnaplex]

23 minutes ago, Menor said:

Ok in investigating this I found a huge problem. Cinemark has a huge amount of default blocked seats. Examples being

https://www.cinemark.com/TicketSeatMap/?TheaterId=355&ShowtimeId=151081&CinemarkMovieId=84699&Showtime=2021-08-06T19:00:00

https://www.cinemark.com/TicketSeatMap/?TheaterId=355&ShowtimeId=151082&CinemarkMovieId=84699&Showtime=2021-08-06T22:15:00.

I found many others in various theaters. Here, the seats sold are identical between the two showings, which means that either 1) the seats are blocked by default or 2) the seats sold have somehow been combined between the showings (perhaps due to some error in their website update yesterday). It is a big problem though for my numbers. I can't be sure of the reliability after finding this, and I'm not sure how long it's been around. Hopefully it was an error stemming from yesterday's update, but I can't be sure. Have any trackers who track Cinemark theaters noticed this? 

 

Also, even the DBOX update was inconsistent, with some theaters still using the old DBOX system.

So, in short, it's a huge mess right now. 

 

Not as much with Cinemark, but a few of the Regals and AMCs that I track have specific seats/rows blocked in certain auditoriums.  In the source code on Fandango, it shows as unavailable whereas sold seats show as reserved.  I usually only check for that code when starting a new movie or when adding new shows.  I'm not sure of your method of scraping, but maybe there is something to differentiate them in the code?

[Menor the Destroyer]

17 minutes ago, katnisscinnaplex said:

 

Not as much with Cinemark, but a few of the Regals and AMCs that I track have specific seats/rows blocked in certain auditoriums.  In the source code on Fandango, it shows as unavailable whereas sold seats show as reserved.  I usually only check for that code when starting a new movie or when adding new shows.  I'm not sure of your method of scraping, but maybe there is something to differentiate them in the code?

They appear to be exactly identical in the homepage code. I wonder if Fandango would show the same. 

Edited July 21, 2021 by Menor

[Porthos]

49 minutes ago, Menor said:

Ok in investigating this I found a huge problem. Cinemark has a huge amount of default blocked seats. Examples being

https://www.cinemark.com/TicketSeatMap/?TheaterId=355&ShowtimeId=151081&CinemarkMovieId=84699&Showtime=2021-08-06T19:00:00

https://www.cinemark.com/TicketSeatMap/?TheaterId=355&ShowtimeId=151082&CinemarkMovieId=84699&Showtime=2021-08-06T22:15:00.

I found many others in various theaters. Here, the seats sold are identical between the two showings, which means that either 1) the seats are blocked by default or 2) the seats sold have somehow been combined between the showings (perhaps due to some error in their website update yesterday). It is a big problem though for my numbers. I can't be sure of the reliability after finding this, and I'm not sure how long it's been around. Hopefully it was an error stemming from yesterday's update, but I can't be sure. Have any trackers who track Cinemark theaters noticed this? 

 

Also, even the DBOX update was inconsistent, with some theaters still using the old DBOX system.   

Edit: The DBOX update now seems to have been completely reverted. After I rewrote my script for it too! This is annoying. Not gonna scrape Cinemark until they stabilize whatever is going on. 

 

 

So, in short, it's a huge mess right now. 

 

For what it's worth, I know that Cinemark will mark damaged/currently not-for-sale seats as "unavailable".  As a perk of keeping an eye on things at the local level I can keep track of which is a damaged/not-for-sale seat and what is actually a sold seat and mark it on my spreadsheets. 

 

They've been doing it this way for a while, as far as I know.  Not sure how a tracker program would be able to keep track of that unless it grabbed the theater auditorium number, looked for an empty showtime and noted which seats were always gone.

 

Can't really comment on the DBOX situation as I haven't looked into it yet.

[katnisscinnaplex]

3 minutes ago, Menor said:

They appear to be exactly identical in the homepage code. I wonder if Fandango would show the same. 

 

I'm seeing 14 unavailable, 0 reserved (or sold) on Fandango for each showing.  I checked a few other showtimes on Cinemark and can't see a difference in sold vs unavailable.  

[Porthos]

2 minutes ago, katnisscinnaplex said:

 

I'm seeing 14 unavailable, 0 reserved (or sold) on Fandango for each showing.  I checked a few other showtimes on Cinemark and can't see a difference in sold vs unavailable.  

 

Oh, does you keyword search mark a difference between "unavailable" and "reserved"?  I thought Fandango stopped supplying that information ages ago.

 

*rereads your reply to me from a couple of days ago*

 

Oh, sweet!  I completely glossed over that distinction.  Think I read your post when I wasn't fully awake and I just didn't catch that.  

 

Oh, wow, that's gonna be a godsend for me when it come to newly opened showings/setting up charts.

 

You have no idea how helpful that is gonna be. 👍

 

(or, rather, I suspect you do know how helpful it will be )

[Menor the Destroyer]

13 minutes ago, katnisscinnaplex said:

 

I'm seeing 14 unavailable, 0 reserved (or sold) on Fandango for each showing.  I checked a few other showtimes on Cinemark and can't see a difference in sold vs unavailable.  

That is really helpful, thanks for the tip. Maybe Fandango will be more reliable to track than the Cinemark homepage. Although I would have to make sure I don't get IP banned like last time lol. 

Edited July 21, 2021 by Menor

[katnisscinnaplex]

6 minutes ago, Porthos said:

 

Oh, does you keyword search mark a difference between "unavailable" and "reserved"?  I thought Fandango stopped supplying that information ages ago.

 

*rereads your reply to me from a couple of days ago*

 

Oh, sweet!  I completely glossed over that distinction.  Think I read your post when I wasn't fully awake and I just didn't catch that.  

 

Oh, wow, that's gonna be a godsend for me when it come to newly opened showings/setting up charts.

 

You have no idea how helpful that is gonna be. 👍

 

(or, rather, I suspect you do know how helpful it will be )

 

Haha yeah it's been extremely helpful.  Whenever I had tracked in the past I would do it all by manual counting, writing down capacities per auditorium per theater and counting reserved seats.  Now it's just a few clicks per showing and marking down totals.  

[Porthos]

5 minutes ago, Menor said:

Although I would have to make sure I don't get IP banned like last time lol. 

 

SCENE:  *Menor starts Googling "how to set up a tracker through a VPN"*

[Porthos]

Just now, katnisscinnaplex said:

 

Haha yeah it's been extremely helpful.  Whenever I had tracked in the past I would do it all by manual counting, writing down capacities per auditorium per theater and counting reserved seats.  Now it's just a few clicks per showing and marking down totals.  

 

Yeah, one thing I found to help speed that up was setting up an Chrome extension that automatically pulls up the search box for me so I don't have to spend time either CTRL-F'ing or going to the drop down menu.  In fact, by some amount of serendipity, my bookmark which pulls up the source page of any given page is literally right next to that Chrome extension.

 

I don't know if you have something similar, but I ended up using Auto Control and then set up a custom toolbar button that pulls up "Find" for me.

 

(though why on earth Google has decided to make the Find button buried inside the menu and having to click twice to get it [or rather click/move/click] is beyond me)

 

If you're not using Windows, well, never mind (I have both OS X and Windows and flip between the machines depending on what I want to do). Thot I'd mention it all the same.   

[Porthos]

Anyway, back to @Menor's situation.

 

Fandango has to be getting the information from Cinemark about what is a sold seat and what is an unavailable seat somehow. If it is via something that is unavailable to us peons (say whatever internal systems Cinemark is using), then Menor is probably out of luck.  But if it is something that can be gleaned from the HTML code that we can see, might be worth looking at.  Unfortunately, I just did some poking around and I can't find anything that differentiates a seat I know to be sold and one I know to be unavailable.

 

Might be worth it to tag @keysersoze123 and see if his tracker can tell the difference between sold seats and unavailable seats and if so, share with you how he does it (via PM if need be).  

 

There has been something of a discrepancy between your two trackers, IIRC, and this could be a source of it.

Edited July 21, 2021 by Porthos

[Menor the Destroyer]

5 minutes ago, Porthos said:

Anyway, back to @Menor's situation.

 

Fandango has to be getting the information from Cinemark about what is a sold seat and what is an unavailable seat somehow. If it is via something that is unavailable to us peons (say whatever internal systems Cinemark is using), then Menor is probably out of luck.  But if it is something that can be gleaned from the HTML code that we can see, might be worth looking at.  Unfortunately, I just did some poking around and I can't find anything that differentiates a seat I know to be sold and one I know to be unavailable.

 

Might be worth it to tag @keysersoze123 and see if his tracker can tell the difference between sold seats and unavailable seats and if so, share with you how he does it (via PM if need be).  

 

There has been something of a discrepancy between your two trackers, IIRC, and this could be a source of it.

Keyser's numbers have usually been slightly above mine (if this was the issue I would expect the opposite). But I think it's still worth looking at anyway so the numbers will be reliable for the future.