Weekend Thread: Endgame 40.6M Friday, 61-62.5m Sat (per Asgard p.49)

[KJsooner]

So Endgame has passed Age of Ultron as highest grossing ‘disappointment?’ 

 

Gotcha. Better cancel the MCU!

 

21 billion dollars, but who cares because Endgame only gross 148 million second weekend compared to 160. 10 million dollars is all the difference! 

[cdsacken]

Also people are crazy. Are we really even fathoming the concept of a 900 DOM, 2.8-2.9B WW as a disappointment? Don't be like Avatar trolls.

 

SFA had an incredible DOM run, less so on WW. Both were awesome runs and EG isn't finished yet.

[a2k]

Even with TFA's huge numbers, Dec is Dec in the end. It legged it to 3.8x and it's 2nd weekend drop should not be any barometer for the final saga of a CBM universe where best legs are with non-sequels : BP, GOTG1 with 3.5x followed by IM1, TA1, Ant-Man1 with 3x.

[darthdevidem01]

6 minutes ago, cdsacken said:

Also people are crazy. Are we really even fathoming the concept of a 900 DOM, 2.8-2.9B WW as a disappointment? Don't be like Avatar trolls.

 

SFA had an incredible DOM run, less so on WW. Both were awesome runs and EG isn't finished yet.

Who on earth is calling it a disappointment lol

 

Stop trying to push a 'people are calling it a disappointment' narrative when actually no one at all is..maybe one poster but so what

[cdsacken]

Just now, darthdevidem01 said:

Who on earth is calling it a disappointment lol

 

Stop trying to push a 'people are calling it a disappointment' narrative when actually no one at all is..maybe one poster but so what

I'm not but judging by the posts I would say several are feeling this way.

[Jim Shorts]

15 minutes ago, reddevil19 said:

The characters were the least interesting aspect of that movie and its connection to the Death Star, Vader and immediate release after TFA is what sold it, not "the unique characters".

Don't get me wrong, I think they SHOULD move away from the same ol' same ol', but Rogue One was not it.

 Rogue One will probably be my favorite from this new batch of SW movies because of the characters. Go figure. 

[Jim Shorts]

6 minutes ago, darthdevidem01 said:

Who on earth is calling it a disappointment lol

 

Stop trying to push a 'people are calling it a disappointment' narrative when actually no one at all is..maybe one poster but so what

You probably only skimmed through the last 30 pages, but there are definitely people.

[RichWS]

I often feel strange spending precious minutes of my short life on a box office forum, but some of you make me feel even worse about it.

[Thrylos 7]

1 hour ago, Jim Shorts said:

Only movie that really failed was Solo. Wouldn’t say Disney “failed spectacularly”. It just happened one movie grossed 900m and every other SW movie will now be judged against it. 

I am not judging SW movies by Solo, i am judging disney’s attempt to make SW an MCU-light . The downward trend was evident even by rogue one , solo just solidified it hence many SW plans were put on ice or completely abandoned. The MCU , on the other hand , will have three 1 billion dollars plus worldwide films just this year. When SW films make over 20 billion in 10 years and that is without counting the non-MCU marvel films then we can talk.

[reddevil19]

5 minutes ago, Jim Shorts said:

 Rogue One will probably be my favorite from this new batch of SW movies because of the characters. Go figure. 

Yeah, but you're obviously wrong.

[Agafin]

1 hour ago, Thrylos 7 said:

The only true event of the 2010’s is the infinity saga movies with about 5 billion in 12 months . The rest is just to make some folks sleep better at nights.

The person you quoted specifically said TFA is the event movie domestically (US & Can), and it is. Similar to how WW2 is the event movie of China, Frozen in Japan, Intouchables in France, Roaring Currents in South Korea etc. Endgame is then the cumulative event of the decade accross the whole world. Not sure what's hard to understand.

[The Panda]

5 hours ago, Broshnat said:

Even more poor than what?

 

If anybody would like to compare films from different time periods (and as you say there are flaws in doing so) - I don't see a better way than adding up how many people went to see that movie.

 

Most arguments tend to cancel out - people like to ignore GWTW as it was re-released over 50 years in the days before video and that seems somehow "unfair" but to counter that - the population in the USA in 1939 was less than half of what it is now and some of the re-releases (such as the big one in 1967) consisted of a major re-master of the film to 70mm. Recent movies such as Lion King, Titanic and Jurassic Park have had fairly successful re-releases due to 3D or anniversaries, despite the availability on DVD, BluRay, Netflix etc - in some ways I'd say that drawing people back into a cinema 20-30 years later to spend another $5-10 to watch an old film is a hell of an achievement.

As is clear in the table - modern films benefit enormously from admissions in Asia and Latin America compared to 20+ years ago but again there is no method to really account for this - if you take the gross or adjusted gross you have the same issue but also add into the mix exchange rate fluctuations and local inflation differences which add further complexity. Admissions, to some extent, normalises these things.

Any comparison will be flawed - even between two movies released this year as they appeal to different markets, different age groups, different ticket prices, release windows and so on! I guess we just have the make the best of what we have and try to make the fairest comparisons we can.

 

Such is the nature of box office analysis.

Ehh, I really don’t buy this argument.

 

Saying something is in higher demand than something else because it sold a higher quantity is a fundamental misunderstanding of how demand works.  I guess if you want to count the record of tickets sold, fine, but it’s not going to really let you know much about a film’s popularity.

 

You also absolutely can make a comparison between two movies within the same general timeframe, as major factors such as inflation, exchange rates, theater cost structures, market expansions etc. are remaining relatively similar (although obviously constantly changing).  You could also make comparisons across decades such as with the original Batman movie to Endgame, Endgame has obviously made a bigger splash in the market than that one, just look at the margin at which Endgame broke the OW and the fact it’ll make a push for #1 all time while Batman didn’t.

 

And saying “most arguments cancel out because TLK/JP/Titanic go re-releases!” completely misses the point as why using admissions as a measure to compare movies from different decades is about as flawed as the whole “adjustment” comparisons.

 

You aren’t going to arrive at a believable answer when trying to figure out if GOTW or Titanic or whatever was the more popular phenomenon.  The only thing for certain was that they were phenomena that dominates the BO at their respective times.

[NCsoft]

1 hour ago, reddevil19 said:

So, China-adjacent topic...

I've been trying to watch The Wandering Earth on Netflix for...the last 3 days now. Fell asleep twice. I'm like halfway through. Does it get better in its second half?

I mean, I get it that it's the first big budget, big scale sci-fi China has made, but...Jeez. So far it's cliche after cliche and downright rip-offs, with paper-thin characters and questionable acting (maybe the subtleties would be better picked up if I actually spoke Chinese). 

I thought overall TWE is pretty terrible, I thought the effects were passable in some areas and questionable in others. But the characters were horrible, and acting was subpar, and there's also weird problems with sound editing etc... I actually enjoyed 2012 a lot more. For what it's worth though, it is kind of special as the first true sci-fi film from China that isn't an outright joke, there is quite a way to go, but we might eventually see some really nice Sci-fi from China.

[baumer]

33 minutes ago, KJsooner said:

So Endgame has passed Age of Ultron as highest grossing ‘disappointment?’ 

 

Gotcha. Better cancel the MCU!

 

21 billion dollars, but who cares because Endgame only gross 148 million second weekend compared to 160. 10 million dollars is all the difference! 

 

there's not one person in this thread or on these forms who is insane enough to call and game a disappointment. Stop trying to stir the pot.

[NCsoft]

33 minutes ago, cdsacken said:

Also people are crazy. Are we really even fathoming the concept of a 900 DOM, 2.8-2.9B WW as a disappointment? Don't be like Avatar trolls.

  

 SFA had an incredible DOM run, less so on WW. Both were awesome runs and EG isn't finished yet.

You're creating a narrative here that simply does not exist, everyone here is saying that Endgame is having a very impressive to epic run.

[Sue Denim]

19 minutes ago, RichWS said:

I often feel strange spending precious minutes of my short life on a box office forum, but some of you make me feel even worse about it.

Your post made me chuckle, because I was just thinking the same thing.  

 

For me, not only did I get the epic movie I wanted, and a spectacular opening weekend, but now I get to read about how the second weekend (which is going to be the biggest weekend of May) is a disappointment.

[jaybox]

1 hour ago, SteveJaros said:

 

 

The MCU hasn't made more money on a per-film basis. The MCU average (DOM) is $360m, the Star Wars average is $420m DOM. 

 

And, that's not adjusting for inflation, which would work greatly to the advantage of Star Wars. E.g., The Empire Strikes Back is listed at $209m, but adjusted for inflation that becomes $884m indicating its huge popularity at the time. Even more recent films, like 1999's Phantom Menace, which sits at $431m, adjusts to a whopping $813m.

 

Overall, adjusted for inflation, the SW franchise has the #2, #11, #13, #16, and #18 films of all time. The MCU doesn't check in on this list until #29 (Avengers), though within a week or so Endgame will surpass that.

 

So looked at that way, it's not surprising that SW has more year-end #1 DOM winners than the MCU.

This is what I meant about Star Wars having "peaked higher" in the US while at the same time being Surpassed handily by the MCU overseas/worldwide. It wrangled feathers at the time but I didn't mean it as an insult. It's just what the numbers portrayed. I was perhaps too hyped up by the opening weekend declaring TFA was snapped out of existence and saying MCU surpassed Star Wars in the US (my barometer was that once Endgame beats TFA's i'll give it to MCU), but for Christ's sake the movie opened to 357 million dollars. How could it NOT break the domestic record? lol. I still think it could do it or at the very least it's going to come very close.

[Thrylos 7]

13 minutes ago, Agafin said:

The person you quoted specifically said TFA is the event movie domestically (US & Can), and it is. Similar to how WW2 is the event movie of China, Frozen in Japan, Intouchables in France, Roaring Currents in South Korea etc. Endgame is then the cumulative event of the decade accross the whole world. Not sure what's hard to understand.

The only event in 2010’s is the infinity saga films and the MCU in general. Maybe if the Star Wars films hadn’t fizzled so fast they could be in the discussion. All the other theories and narratives (from TFA to WW2) are just to make people feel less sad that these two movies destroyed their favorite franchise. Now we give awards for 2nd weekend in the U.S, 3rd weekend in Lichtenstein, 4th weekend in Burma e.t.c.

[Bagatelle31]

15 minutes ago, Agafin said:

The person you quoted specifically said TFA is the event movie domestically (US & Can), and it is. Similar to how WW2 is the event movie of China, Frozen in Japan, Intouchables in France, Roaring Currents in South Korea etc. Endgame is then the cumulative event of the decade accross the whole world. Not sure what's hard to understand.

Intouchables is not the biggest movie in France, even though it is very big, an Other did more 3 years before and is actually remembered a lot more.

[TServo2049]

5 hours ago, DeeCee said:

The absolute best case scenario I came up with for GWTW was 185 million tickets. Most likely is 155-160 million. 

This is interesting, because it could mean that Star Wars (A New Hope) has been holding the actual all-time adjusted domestic record since 1997, but nobody knew it. Using more accurate gross data for each release than BOM has (i.e., actually splitting the $307 million up between 1977. 1978, 1979 and 1981 instead of lumping it all into 1977), I’ve calculated that SW:ANH sold roughly 168.5 million tickets. That adjusts to something like $1.53 billion, less than BOM says but still more than enough to place it above The Sound of Music.

 

Meanwhile, the high end of your “likely” scenario would adjust GWTW to only $1.46 billion.

 

That said, it would still appear that with your GWTW numbers and my SW numbers, it would have taken the Special Edition to push ANH over GWTW. That was 30 million tickets by itself. (Hence why I said “since 1997.”)

 

I acknowledge that GWTW was a cinematic milestone (and actually a unsung VFX achievement too), and that trying to elevate a single film to “the most successful movie ever” is folly, but the possibility that SW might have the adjusted record instead of GWTW...this does put a smile on my face.

Edited May 6, 2019 by TServo2049