The Box Office Buzz and Tracking Thread: Electric Boogaloo

[The Mad Titan]

2 minutes ago, feasby007 said:

The hype is really getting to me now. Am genuinely feeling that $50m previews and $250m OW is probable. I also genuinely feel this could do $1.8b WW

 

its probably just the hype, but I only started box office when TFA came around, so I missed the gargantuan numbers of JW and TFA when they were released

If it does $50 million in previews then opening weekend is done. I have it at $255m on $41 million previews. At $50m we would be looking at $270m I believe. 

[Deep Wang]

35 minutes ago, Alli said:

A)Aren't december sales more spread around?

 

B)I'd imagine summer movies have a higher pre-sale? kids out of school. december -people  are busy with Christmas shopping

A)They are, which skews the numbers.  Let's call my old chain MTC(throwback), MTC was required to post times for Thursday through the end of the year.  So anyone wanting to buy tickets for Christmas could do so.  Now, they will also have two weeks of IW tickets on sale right now as well, but Christmas being a huge holiday, it will get more tickets sold for that two week span than IW will for early May.

 

Here is a chart demonstrating the distribution of presales during the Christmas break:

 

Spoiler

 

So, while the overwhelming majority of presales were for Thursday-Sunday, there was far greater amount of sales for the following 9-10 days than IW will get.  Which means, maybe 6m of that 36m total was for the 10 days after?  I don't know the number, but either way, it narrows the gap between SW and IW opening weekend presales.

 

B)Presales are more dependent on demand and movie than season.  As we can see by the fact that the last three Star Wars movies, all releasing in December, has trounced EVERYTHING else.

 

[fabiopazzo2]

7 minutes ago, feasby007 said:

The hype is really getting to me now. Am genuinely feeling that $50m previews and $250m OW is probable. I also genuinely feel this could do $1.8b WW

 

its probably just the hype, but I only started box office when TFA came around, so I missed the gargantuan numbers of JW and TFA when they were released

50M is huge, only TFA pass this barrier right? 

 

35-42M is extraordinary for a superhero movie 

[MikeQ]

Since on the topic of pre-sales and preview grosses, if we take a look at the top preview grosses of all time, there is a general (and perhaps obvious) trend that as the preview gross gets larger, the share of that gross of opening weekend is higher. It isn't a perfect one, of course. All of the films in the top 15 are sequels and/or part of franchise universes. I've highlighted the Marvel films in blue.

 

Looking at Age of Ultron and Civil War, my guess would be that Infinity War would need at least $37-38 million in previews in order to pass The Force Awakens' opening weekend record (i.e. to hit $248M opening weekend). $37-38M in previews represents a share of 15% of an opening weekend gross of $248M. This seems like a logical minimum requirement to me, as I can't imagine that Infinity War's preview gross share will be less than Age of Ultron (14.4%) or Civil War (14.0%), given this is the third Avengers film (quasi-fourth film, if you include Civil War, which many seem to do...) and it is a highly anticipated film.

 

But, as we can see, once we hit such high preview grosses, the share of opening weekend of those grosses seems to go up. It's not a very large sample to look at (and an argument can be made that Marvel films do tend to be less preview heavy and more general audience friendly), but films with $30+M in preview grosses tend to be in the 20+% range in terms of share of opening weekend. The lowest is The Dark Knight Rises' 19%.

 

This is all to say is, it wouldn't be unusual to expect that Infinity War needs $40M previews (16.1% of record $248M opening weekend), or $45M previews (18.1% of $248M), etc. Right now I'm looking for that $37-38M minimum come Thursday/Friday when we starting hearing about its previews. And maybe I'm even wrong there - who knows! Marvel is Marvel. Will be a lot of fun to take a look at!  

 

Estimated Top Midnight/Preview Grosses of All-Time
 
Rank / Title / Gross / Share of Opening Weekend

1. Star Wars: The Force Awakens — 57.0 million (23.0%)
2. Star Wars: The Last Jedi — 45.0 million (20.5%)
3. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 — 43.5 million (25.7%) 
4. The Dark Knight Rises — 30.6 million (19.0%)
5. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 — 30.4 million (21.5%)
6. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 — 30.25 million (21.9%)
7. The Twilight Saga: Eclipse — 30.1 million (OPENED ON WED)
8. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story — 29.0 million (18.7%) 
9. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice — 27.7 million (16.7%) 
10. Avengers: Age of Ultron — 27.6 million (14.4%) 
11. The Twilight Saga: New Moon — 26.27 million (18.4%) 
12. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire — 25.26 million (16.0%) 
13. Black Panther — 25.2 million (12.5%) 
14. Captain America: Civil War — 25 million (14.0%) 
15. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 — 24 million (19.2%) 

 

Peace,

Mike
 

[filmlover]

Even the 3D shows are selling very well around me damn. People gotta see this no matter if it costs extra and comes with stupid glasses.

[Stewart]

32 minutes ago, MikeQ said:

Since on the topic of pre-sales and preview grosses, if we take a look at the top preview grosses of all time, there is a general (and perhaps obvious) trend that as the preview gross gets larger, the share of that gross of opening weekend is higher. It isn't a perfect one, of course. All of the films in the top 15 are sequels and/or part of franchise universes. I've highlighted the Marvel films in blue.

 

Looking at Age of Ultron and Civil War, my guess would be that Infinity War would need at least $37-38 million in previews in order to pass The Force Awakens' opening weekend record (i.e. to hit $248M opening weekend). $37-38M in previews represents a share of 15% of an opening weekend gross of $248M. This seems like a logical minimum requirement to me, as I can't imagine that Infinity War's preview gross share will be less than Age of Ultron (14.4%) or Civil War (14.0%), given this is the third Avengers film (quasi-fourth film, if you include Civil War, which many seem to do...) and it is a highly anticipated film.

 

But, as we can see, once we hit such high preview grosses, the share of opening weekend of those grosses seems to go up. It's not a very large sample to look at (and an argument can be made that Marvel films do tend to be less preview heavy and more general audience friendly), but films with $30+M in preview grosses tend to be in the 20+% range in terms of share of opening weekend. The lowest is The Dark Knight Rises' 19%.

 

This is all to say is, it wouldn't be unusual to expect that Infinity War needs $40M previews (16.1% of record $248M opening weekend), or $45M previews (18.1% of $248M), etc. Right now I'm looking for that $37-38M minimum come Thursday/Friday when we starting hearing about its previews. And maybe I'm even wrong there - who knows! Marvel is Marvel. Will be a lot of fun to take a look at!  

 

Estimated Top Midnight/Preview Grosses of All-Time
 
Rank / Title / Gross / Share of Opening Weekend

1. Star Wars: The Force Awakens — 57.0 million (23.0%)
2. Star Wars: The Last Jedi — 45.0 million (20.5%)
3. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 — 43.5 million (25.7%) 
4. The Dark Knight Rises — 30.6 million (19.0%)
5. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 — 30.4 million (21.5%)
6. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 — 30.25 million (21.9%)
7. The Twilight Saga: Eclipse — 30.1 million (OPENED ON WED)
8. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story — 29.0 million (18.7%) 
9. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice — 27.7 million (16.7%) 
10. Avengers: Age of Ultron — 27.6 million (14.4%) 
11. The Twilight Saga: New Moon — 26.27 million (18.4%) 
12. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire — 25.26 million (16.0%) 
13. Black Panther — 25.2 million (12.5%) 
14. Captain America: Civil War — 25 million (14.0%) 
15. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 — 24 million (19.2%) 

 

Peace,

Mike
 

Wonderful analysis, thanks Mike  

[JB33]

48 minutes ago, Deep Wang said:

A)They are, which skews the numbers.  Let's call my old chain MTC(throwback), MTC was required to post times for Thursday through the end of the year.  So anyone wanting to buy tickets for Christmas could do so.  Now, they will also have two weeks of IW tickets on sale right now as well, but Christmas being a huge holiday, it will get more tickets sold for that two week span than IW will for early May.

 

Here is a chart demonstrating the distribution of presales during the Christmas break:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

So, while the overwhelming majority of presales were for Thursday-Sunday, there was far greater amount of sales for the following 9-10 days than IW will get.  Which means, maybe 6m of that 36m total was for the 10 days after?  I don't know the number, but either way, it narrows the gap between SW and IW opening weekend presales.

 

B)Presales are more dependent on demand and movie than season.  As we can see by the fact that the last three Star Wars movies, all releasing in December, has trounced EVERYTHING else.

 

Really, really good point on this. Never thought of the very simple fact that presales are limited by how many sometimes there are available at the time.

 

I mean, my theatre is pretty big (Scotiabank Theatre Chinook - Calgary, AB) and even they don't have any shows posted after the first week (aka past Thursday May 3). It's nuts! I hate it bevause I have some friends visiting and we're all going to see it on the 4th but we can't get our tickets yet!

[FlashMaster659]

MT

 

IW - 50.3%

Rampage - 7.7%

AQP - 7.5%

IFP - 6.8%

ST2 - 5.9%

[Porthos]

4 minutes ago, FlashMaster659 said:

MT

 

IW - 50.3%

Rampage - 7.7%

AQP - 7.5%

IFP - 6.8%

ST2 - 5.9%

[Plain Old Tele]

1 hour ago, Porthos said:

Oh, you meant it in the other way. Whoops. See THAT'S why I changed it to probably. 

 

Well, it's running 2.3x ahead of BP locally and will probably finish 1.8x when all is said and done.  

 

Gun to my head, I think 40m+ is more likely than not, yes.  35 to 38 is probably the lower bound, but I'll leave that discussion to folks more learned than me when it comes to presales.

 

I would completely reject all the Fandango PR comps. I've found over the years they tend to be meaningless unless there's a tangible hard number announced.

 

My old LA spreadsheet comps don't really work with Fandango anymore, but I did a vague (and obviously incomplete) check and while it's selling very well (as you would expect from a film that's gonna do more than 30m in previews) it's not even remotely close to what I think it would need to challenge 40m. In its favor, the non-sellout shows are more filled than they were for ULTRON, but I dunno if that's enough to go way past 10m more than that movie. 

 

IMO, Thurs preview milestones get progressively harder to reach. It takes way more effort than you might think to get to 25m than 20m, 30m than 25m, etc.

 

Caveats: LA might be under-representing the nation, there might be a ton of walkups in the last few days, etc etc etc. But for example, it only has a few sellouts at the Arclight Hollywood and that's basically ground-zero for LA fanboys (for almost every franchise).

[Porthos]

1 minute ago, Trolltastic Tele said:

I would completely reject all the Fandango PR comps. I've found over the years they tend to be meaningless unless there's a tangible hard number announced.

Yeah, not even paying an ounce of attention to those, for the very reason you mention.

Quote

 

My old LA spreadsheet comps don't really work with Fandango anymore, but I did a vague (and obviously incomplete) check and while it's selling very well (as you would expect from a film that's gonna do more than 30m in previews) it's not even remotely close to what I think it would need to challenge 40m. In its favor, the non-sellout shows are more filled than they were for ULTRON, but I dunno if that's enough to go way past 10m more than that movie. 

 

IMO, Thurs preview milestones get progressively harder to reach. It takes way more effort than you might think to get to 25m than 20m, 30m than 25m, etc.

 

Caveats: LA might be under-representing the nation, there might be a ton of walkups in the last few days, etc etc etc. But for example, it only has a few sellouts at the Arclight Hollywood and that's basically ground-zero for LA fanboys (for almost every franchise).

Well, it's doing very well in NYC according to @TalismanRing, so there is that.

 

I do admit I haven't followed nearly enough of these to really say, so I'll defer to you on this point.  Just... Dunno.  Got a gut feeling it does get over that 40m line.

 

Maybe I'm just being overly reactionary after getting burned badly by underestimating Black Panther.

[Porthos]

7 minutes ago, Porthos said:

Yeah, not even paying an ounce of attention to those, for the very reason you mention.

Well, it's doing very well in NYC according to @TalismanRing, so there is that.

 

I do admit I haven't followed nearly enough of these to really say, so I'll defer to you on this point.  Just... Dunno.  Got a gut feeling it does get over that 40m line.

 

Maybe I'm just being overly reactionary after getting burned badly by underestimating Black Panther.

One thing I will say is that BP did gangbusters business those last three days in Sacramento:

 

	Showings	Seats Left	Total Seats	Prect Sold	Total Seats Sold	Sold Today
Mon	81	3766	8279	54.51%	4513	311
Tue	111	5080	10359	50.96%	5279	766
Wed	121	4597	10526	56.33%	5929	650
Thr (1pm)	136	4512	11481	60.70%	6969	1040
Thr (6:15pm)	136	3421	11481	70.20%	8060	1091

 

Be interesting to see if IW can match it/if it can sell more locally over those same three days.

Edited April 23, 2018 by Porthos

[Stewart]

3 minutes ago, Porthos said:

One thing I will say is that BP did gangbusters business those last three days in Sacramento:

 

	Showings	Seats Left	Total Seats	Prect Sold	Total Seats Sold	Sold Today
Mon	81	3766	8279	54.51%	4513	311
Tue	111	5080	10359	50.96%	5279	766
Wed	121	4597	10526	56.33%	5929	650
Thr (1pm)	136	4512	11481	60.70%	6969	1040
Thr (6:15pm)	136	3421	11481	70.20%	8060	1091

 

Be interesting to see if IW can match it/if it can sell more locally over those same three days.

Well, despite more showings will be added, you have 3,803 seats left. So if it sold the same as BP then there would be just -55 seats left! So to actually match BP, it needs extra showings!

[Plain Old Tele]

12 minutes ago, Porthos said:

Maybe I'm just being overly reactionary after getting burned badly by underestimating Black Panther.

 

But not every storm is a perfect storm. Most of the time they're just a storm. 

[That One Girl]

Just now, Trolltastic Tele said:

 

But not every storm is a perfect storm. Most of the time they're just a storm. 

 

A Geostorm!

[FlashMaster659]

1 hour ago, FlashMaster659 said:

MT

 

IW - 50.3%

Rampage - 7.7%

AQP - 7.5%

IFP - 6.8%

ST2 - 5.9%

54%

[HouseOfTheSun]

2 hours ago, Trolltastic Tele said:

 

But not every storm is a perfect storm. Most of the time they're just a storm. 

And sometimes they’re superstorms

[Plain Old Tele]

Just now, HouseOfTheSun said:

And sometimes they’re superstorms

 

...which the data would indicate. So far, it's not.

[TalismanRing]

5 minutes ago, Trolltastic Tele said:

 

...which the data would indicate. So far, it's not.

Which data and what would one define as a super storm?   Would  $35m in previews and a $240m o/w be enough?   Or does it need to be $40 and $260m?

[MovieMan89]

 

7 minutes ago, Trolltastic Tele said:

 

...which the data would indicate. So far, it's not.