The Box Office Buzz and Tracking Thread: Electric Boogaloo

[MovieMan89]

2 minutes ago, MCKillswitch123 said:

Too low? Not even close to low enough. It's gonna be Deathly Hallows: Part 2 all over again (except maybe it won't have as high a 2nd weekend drop, but it'll have constantly bad drops instead).

Such a silly comparison. DH2 was an event midnight number and nothing else. It performed just like the franchise had for years after that midnight. IW is going to be an event everything on OW. Its previews might very well be the least impressive aspect of its OW. Movies like that don't just fall off the cliff unless they get toxic WOM. And somehow I feel confident saying that won't be the case. 

[Barnack]

Those MCUs title have now a strong family audience base I think, with the moms and the very young kids (specially with Guardian/Spider man being there), it should sustain some legs.

 

DH2 was back when teen's group (and young girl big group) went to the theater a lot, they tend to stay home now.

[That One Girl]

31 minutes ago, MovieMan89 said:

Ikr, seems too low. 

 

Keep thinking that, despite Civil War, Ultron, and IM3 not even coming close to the 2.55x they're predicting

[RRA]

So is it a given now that IW will own the spandex OW record?

[MCKillswitch123]

26 minutes ago, MovieMan89 said:

Such a silly comparison. DH2 was an event midnight number and nothing else. It performed just like the franchise had for years after that midnight. IW is going to be an event everything on OW. Its previews might very well be the least impressive aspect of its OW. Movies like that don't just fall off the cliff unless they get toxic WOM. And somehow I feel confident saying that won't be the case. 

....dude, this isn't dropping less than 60% 2nd weekend. It's the umpthienth MCU movie, it relies on your knowledge of 18 other films, and it will have gigantic fan rush on OW, while casuals won't have as much investment, for the same reasons why they didn't flock to the last HP movie: because if you weren't invested 7 movies in, you surely weren't gonna be 8 movies in either, regardless of OW. Spider-Man: Homecoming dropped 62% with a much smaller OW than what Infinity War will end up with, for fuck's sake. And Homecoming had really good wom.... but it was frontloaded on the basis of being the 3rd Spider-Man reboot (+ War For The Planet Of The Apes' OW, but that skewed older and opened sub-60M anyway, so it couldn't have taken THAT much audience). This isn't just the 3rd Avengers movie, it's the billionth MCU movie and it will feel like that. Plus, it's gonna go over 2:30 hrs and it's probably gonna be intense (a lot of humor, but also a lot of intensity). And Deadpool will open in its 3rd weekend. How the fuck will it have a better multiplier than 2.4x?

[Barnack]

14 minutes ago, RRA said:

So is it a given now that IW will own the spandex OW record?

No the electricity grid can have problem's in a significant part of the US.

[MovieMan89]

If I need to explain why MCU isn't Harry Potter after the 18th film in the franchise opened 40m higher than any of them and had a 3.5x multi, then I don't know what to tell you. Same goes for if I need to explain why event films that capture the pop culture zeitgeist and are well liked don't get shit multis (DH2 was an event midnight, not an event on the whole).

Edited April 14, 2018 by MovieMan89

[Porthos]

3 minutes ago, MovieMan89 said:

If I need to explain why MCU isn't Harry Potter after the 18th film in the franchise had a 3.5x multi, then I don't know what to tell you. Same goes for if I need to explain why event films that capture the pop culture zeitgeist and are well liked don't get shit multis.

Out of curiosity, and as someone without a dog in this fight, what would be a 'shit' multiplier for Infinity War?

[MovieMan89]

Just now, Porthos said:

Out of curiosity, and as someone without a dog in this fight, what would be a 'shit' multiplier for Infinity War?

All these 2.1-2.4x predictions being thrown around. If it's well liked, I don't see how it goes below 2.5x. Considering it has 3 full weekends all to itself, I don't even think 3x would be completely out if the WOM is good enough. 

[KeepItU25071906]

7 minutes ago, MovieMan89 said:

All these 2.1-2.4x predictions being thrown around. If it's well liked, I don't see how it goes below 2.5x. Considering it has 3 full weekends all to itself, I don't even think 3x would be completely out if the WOM is good enough. 

Civil War -2,3x with much lesser hype and great, as always, reviews. So, everything is possible.

Edited April 14, 2018 by KeepItU25071906

[MCKillswitch123]

20 minutes ago, MovieMan89 said:

If I need to explain why MCU isn't Harry Potter after the 18th film in the franchise opened 40m higher than any of them and had a 3.5x multi, then I don't know what to tell you. Same goes for if I need to explain why event films that capture the pop culture zeitgeist and are well liked don't get shit multis (DH2 was an event midnight, not an event on the whole).

If I need to explain why Black Panther is by no means even remotely comparable to Infinity War as its pretty much its own thing, then I don't know what to tell you. Black Panther has barely any references to the pre-existing MCU, so it's almost an original; and it's exactly the kind of movie that captured the pop culture zeitgeist. Because of both of those elements, it had a 3x multiplier off of a 200M 3-day opening. How could Infinity War possibly do that, when the majority of its target audience is already flocking to it on OW and casuals won't really care afterwards? This isn't Star Wars, it's not a franchise that appeals to literally every single demographic; it's a fan driven event that fans will rush to OW. And when the fans will drive the event to anywhere from the 3rd to possibly, possibly the #1 biggest opening weekend of all time, you can only go so far from there. Casuals will not give a shit about it because if they missed as much as one movie from Guardians Of The Galaxy forward, they will have no idea of what's going on; and unlike Black Panther, Infinity War plays to your knowledge of every previous movie, like Civil War did, and like the last Harry Potter movie did regarding that franchise. What kind of multipliers did those have? Yeah, 2.2x's. Star Wars is the only exception to this rule where it's almost as much a pop culture staple in America as brands like Nike or McDonald's, and the movies are all easy and accessible to anyone, even to people who hadn't seen any SW movie before the one they did. This will not be that. And only someone so blinded by their fandom cannot see that.

Edited April 14, 2018 by MCKillswitch123

[MovieMan89]

TA and BP have both proven that MCU is very much a franchise with the capability of appealing to everyone. Most of the time it stays within its target audience, but it's broken out of that at least twice (maybe three times if you wanna argue AoU's reach extended a bit beyond that as well). TA and BP have been just as huge in first run admissions as most Star Wars movies, even bigger than about half of them. This isn't Potter or The Hunger Games where the ceiling has a very definitive cap and it's incapable of true casual reach.  

[harrycaul]

22 minutes ago, MCKillswitch123 said:

 Black Panther has barely any references to the pre-existing MCU, so it's almost an original; and it's exactly the kind of movie that captured the pop culture zeitgeist.

If BP wasn't MCU it would have been lucky to do half what it did, "zeitgeist" or no.

[MCKillswitch123]

18 minutes ago, harrycaul said:

If BP wasn't MCU it would have been lucky to do half what it did, "zeitgeist" or no.

Yes, the MCU brand definitely helped it reach the zeitgest, but you cannot deny that BP appealed to a radically different audience than usual for all kinds of blockbusters, superhero or not. Of course it didn't JUST appeal to that demographic, but it is one of the driving forces behind its monumental success.

18 minutes ago, MovieMan89 said:

TA and BP have both proven that MCU is very much a franchise with the capability of appealing to everyone. Most of the time it stays within its target audience, but it's broken out of that at least twice (maybe three times if you wanna argue AoU's reach extended a bit beyond that as well). TA and BP have been just as huge in first run admissions as most Star Wars movies, even bigger than about half of them. This isn't Potter or The Hunger Games where the ceiling has a very definitive cap and it's incapable of true casual reach.  

Again, Avengers and BP were novelties. Infinity War is not a novelty, it's the third Avengers movie. Yes, the Avengers team up with the Guardians, that's a big hook, but it's the kind of big hook that attaches fans for a massive OW gross. There aren't all that many people who saw Guardians that didn't see Avengers 1 and/or 2 at least once. If you ask someone who hasn't seen a TV series since the end of season 1 to comeback for the ending of season 3, obviously they'll be lost when they see that episode, even if there were a couple of episodes every now and then that stood on their own just fine, without requesting/demanding them to have major knowledge of any prior episodes. But the ending of season 3 will not be stand alone, it will draw from every previous episode that came out, and casuals are not that invested that they've seen every single MCU movie. And we're talking about a franchise that hasn't seen a sub-200M grosser since Ant-Man and a sub-300M grosser since Dr. Strange, so that's saying something.

 

Infinity War is made for hardcore fans. They're the ones that will be going in with knowledge of everything that's going on and will cherish the bigger moments as they lived through the build up to those moments. Plain and simple. I'm a big fan of theirs, and I sure as shit know that this isn't a GA-friendly movie just because it's MCU alone. Casuals who aren't that invested in the MCU or in superheroes just won't care that much.

Edited April 14, 2018 by MCKillswitch123

[Rumpot]

54 minutes ago, MovieMan89 said:

All these 2.1-2.4x predictions being thrown around. If it's well liked, I don't see how it goes below 2.5x. Considering it has 3 full weekends all to itself, I don't even think 3x would be completely out if the WOM is good enough. 

Yep.  The complexity of the movie will lead to more rewatchings first of all.  And the big second weekend will occur since there won't be enough seats (esp primetime seats) to fill in the first weekend.  Of course all this depends on it being a fun movie - I'll lock in my extremely optimistic predictions after watching it Thursday 

[MovieMan89]

2 minutes ago, MCKillswitch123 said:

 

Infinity War is made for hardcore fans. They're the ones that will be going in with knowledge of everything that's going on and will cherish the bigger moments as they lived through the build up to those moments. Plain and simple. I'm a big fan of theirs, and I sure as shit know that this isn't a GA-friendly movie just because it's MCU alone. Casuals who aren't that invested in the MCU or in superheroes just won't care that much.

And I disagree completely with everything you say here. The movie would not on track for a record OW if "casuals just don't care that much" and IW is for the "hardcore fans." That's just not how box office works. DH2 is the only time the OW record has gone down in such a scenario, and again it was due to an absurd midnight number. IW has been positioned as a true event film that is going to be in the collective consiousness. Everyone who has seen an MCU film at some point will at least be aware of it and it's not going to take a ton of convincing to get a lot of those people to go if it captures the zeitgeist.

 

They already have familiarity with it, just like DH2 was able to retain about 80% of Sorcerer's Stone audience in spite of the retention rate being way lower for the 6 films between. We're not talking about needing a huge audience of people who have never seen an MCU film in order to reach 700 or even 800 numbers here. I'd be willing to bet if we take TA's adjusted gross and add it to the BP gross that came solely from people who had never seen an MCU film, we'd have a number approaching the 900m ballpark.

 

Now I'm not predicting a TFA total or anything, but it is worth noting that IW might not have to capture any new audience at all to make what TFA did. It's slightly possible it could do it with just all of the audience who have seen MCU films returning. That's how huge the audience precedent is for this franchise at this point. Opposed to DH2, which would have had to inexplicably find a solid 200m worth of brand new audience over even Sorcerer's Stone in order to hit 600 at the time. 

[MCKillswitch123]

18 minutes ago, MovieMan89 said:

And I disagree completely with everything you say here. The movie would not on track for a record OW if "casuals just don't care that much" and IW is for the "hardcore fans." That's just not how box office works. DH2 is the only time the OW record has gone down in such a scenario, and again it was due to an absurd midnight number. IW has been positioned as a true event film that is going to be in the collective consiousness. Everyone who has seen an MCU film at some point will at least be aware of it and it's not going to take a ton of convincing to get a lot of those people to go if it captures the zeitgeist.

 

They already have familiarity with it, just like DH2 was able to retain about 80% of Sorcerer's Stone audience in spite of the retention rate being way lower for the 6 films between. We're not talking about needing a huge audience of people who have never seen an MCU film in order to reach 700 or even 800 numbers here. I'd be willing to bet if we take TA's adjusted gross and add it to the BP gross that came solely from people who had never seen an MCU film, we'd have a number approaching the 900m ballpark.

 

Now I'm not predicting a TFA total or anything, but it is worth noting that IW might not have to capture any new audience at all to make what TFA did. It's slightly possible it could do it with just all of the audience who have seen MCU films returning. That's how huge the audience precedent is for this franchise at this point. Opposed to DH2, which would have had to inexplicably find a solid 200m worth of brand new audience over even Sorcerer's Stone in order to hit 600 at the time. 

But that's the thing right there: besides Black Panther, which attracted a completely unique demographic, no MCU movie has ever brought back an Avengers-sized audience. Age Of Ultron came the closest pre-Black Panther and it made less than 470 DOM. Now, I think Infinity War will hit higher than that, but you're completely wrong if you don't think that a record breaking OW would be mostly fan driven. It's just that, DOM, the MCU has a bigger fanbase than any franchise except Star Wars, and this is the MCU's Deathly Hallows: the be all, end all event that you HAVE to watch. 10 years in the making and 18 movies later, that's a big deal, but it's mostly for fans. Casuals will watch........ on opening weekend, like everyone else. And if the movie plays out the way I think it will, either they'll enjoy it but also be confused about what they saw (acknowledging that they don't have as much investment as more diehard fans, thus all the characters and plotlines in a single movie, some of them characters they barely recognize if at all, tied a big ass knot in their brain), or they straight up won't care and not rewatch in theaters. Exactly like what happened with Deathly Hallows. There really isn't hard to grasp logic in this. If no post-Avengers movie except Black Panther -- and BP is the anomaly of anomalies -- came anywhere near retaining Avengers' audience, why would Infinity War all of a sudden challenge for 700-800M? It will have a record challenging, if not beating OW due to the mass fan rush (fans will watch it 700 times on OW alone, and casuals will go along), and then it'll spike down weekend after weekend. Even if its 3rd w/e drop is fine enough, Deadpool 2 opens on its 4th and will cause it to irreparably plummet. I think it will beat Ultron, for sure, but anything close to 600 is overachieving for the type of movie that it is imo.

 

But oh well, I dunno what else to argue anymore, so yeah. I do hope that I'm severely underestimating IW's legs and that it will come in w/a 4x multiplier. I want it to be a juggernaut, and I know it will be. I'll be shocked if it makes less than 1.5B WW. It's just that I don't believe it will have any kind of legpower atm

Edited April 14, 2018 by MCKillswitch123

[MovieMan89]

I guess we just have fundamental disagreements in terms of how casuals will respond to the film then. Granted, my whole argument could all be a wash if it turns out the film gets underwhelming or divisive reception. Then I absolutely agree it would drop like a rock after the huge OW. But I'm arguing on the basis of assuming the film will deliver given MCU's amazing track record in that department lately and how long they've been building to this one. 

[YLF]

I can't wait for this movie to be in its 2nd week. So we can just go by the numbers. This movies second weekend will probably drop more than or close to 60%.

[MovieMan89]

17 minutes ago, YLF said:

I can't wait for this movie to be in its 2nd week. So we can just go by the numbers. This movies second weekend will probably drop more than or close to 60%.

And if it pulls a TDK/TA/JW and drops closer to 50%, what then? 

Edited April 14, 2018 by MovieMan89