Weekend Thread: Weekend Actuals - Godzilla KOTM $47.77M | Aladdin $42.84M | Rocketman $25.72M | MA $18.09M

[LonePirate]

I don't think general audiences are considering KOTM to be a sequel of the previous Godzilla movie so much as they see it as another Godzilla movie. It's like the Friday the 13th movies from the 80s or even the recent Terminator movies. The movie's concept is already baked in and audiences are judging it based on how it looks in the trailers and commercials. For some, it looks like a fun movie. For others, it looks like garbage.

 

Rocketman missing expectations is not that surprising as the few certainly skews very old and Elton's music simply is not enmeshed into contemporary culture like Queen's music is. If you attend a major sporting event, you will likely hear a Queen song. Elton's songs just do not have the same contemporary immersion. The film's legs are an unknown to me since unlike with Bohemian Rhapsody, Rocketman does not shy away from the lead's personal and sexual life. 

 

Ma had a good Friday but I wouldn't call it a great Friday since its PTA was barely above Rocketman's and that film underperformed. The B- Cinemascore seems a little low, even for a horror film and the 67% Audience Score on RT doesn't bode well, either. I'm guessing the film drops from its true Friday, but by how much?

[CJohn]

Time for other studios to throw the Disney logo in front of their movies as well. It is the only way to pull a big opening.

[lorddemaxus]

 

 

 

5 minutes ago, LonePirate said:

I don't think general audiences are considering KOTM to be a sequel of the previous Godzilla movie so much as they see it as another Godzilla movie. It's like the Friday the 13th movies from the 80s or even the recent Terminator movies. The movie's concept is already baked in and audiences are judging it based on how it looks in the trailers and commercials. For some, it looks like a fun movie. For others, it looks like garbage.

Hopefully, that means that Godzilla vs Kong is the Freddy vs Jason of this franchise.

[Menor the Destroyer]

9 minutes ago, CJohn said:

Time for other studios to throw the Disney logo in front of their movies as well. It is the only way to pull a big opening.

Because that worked so well for Dumbo...

[AndyChrono]

14 minutes ago, jedijake said:

Aladdin's Friday increase from Thursday is almost exactly on par with Solo's and pretty much all of the last several Memorial day releases.

 

Do people still think that Aladdin will make $300 million domestic? I'm thinking $280-$290 million (still a great number all things considered leading up to it).

Well, you have to take the Friday bump in context with all the previous days. Because Aladdin held much better throughout the previous week than the last few Memorial Day openers, a similar bump gets more mileage in terms of raw gross. The week-over-week decline from True Fridays:

 

Aladdin: -51%

Solo: -62%

Pirates 5: -65%

X-Man Apocalypse: -64%

 

As for 300m, if Aladdin does end up with around 43m this weekend, then it would need roughly a 3.65x off of this 2nd weekend to get to 300m. For a family friendly film in summer with excellent WOM that should be achievable. For comparison, Solo got 3.20x off of its 2nd weekend, Pirates 5 got 3.60x, and Apocalypse had 2.68x. So Aladdin just needs to hold slightly better than Pirates 5 from here on out and it should hit 300m.

[Sindreee]

19 minutes ago, ScoobyDoo21 said:

That initial Rotten Tomatoes audience score now just seem much more like fans of Godzilla running to the theater who were going to love the movie no matter what as long as had alot of action.

Yup. It’s starting to drop now aswell, was mid 90 now 87. Looking at IMDB it’s going down fast, soon under 7.0, Letterboxd also going down, soon under 3.0. 

[TalismanRing]

Did RT officially get rid of the Top Critic score?  Neither Godzilla nor Ma have it.  Only Rocketman has it and reviews for it started coming in 2 plus weeks ago.

[LawrenceBrolivier]

29 minutes ago, LonePirate said:

I don't think general audiences are considering KOTM to be a sequel of the previous Godzilla movie so much as they see it as another Godzilla movie. It's like the Friday the 13th movies from the 80s or even the recent Terminator movies. The movie's concept is already baked in and audiences are judging it based on how it looks in the trailers and commercials. For some, it looks like a fun movie. For others, it looks like garbage.

100% agree. This film's underperforming on opening weekend is a combination of mediocre interest in the series in total and a marketing campaign that blew its load almost 5 months too early.  Laying this mild disappointment at 2014's feet isn't really accurate - it's more like audiences need to be told/shown/promised there is something emotionally resonant/relevant to them somewhere in all that noise and vfx. They want the noise and vfx, they also just want to be reassured it's going to mean something.

The biggest problem is that Godzilla movies aren't functionally any different from any other huge "It's the End of the World And We Know It" spectacle anymore, so simply saying "We got the dragon and the moth for this one" wasn't ever going to be enough. Part of the reason that first trailer worked so well was because the Clair de Lune added some serious emotion to the imagery and made it seem like there was going to be a serious experience underneath the spectacle. And then the rest of the campaign kept going and it was all dumb one-liners and frankly confusing (and often ugly) imagery. The underwhelming critical response further weakened it, and now audiences are leaving more or less bored. 

None of this is a referendum on the 2014 movie. If anything, using the 2014 movie as a factor seems like a pretty big stretch to essentially re-litigate the theory that The Last Jedi's performance hurt Solo, which Bob Iger himself already proved incorrect when he publicly apologized for refusing to shift Solo's release date back to December because he was certain Mary Poppins (which was a bigger disappointment in a better release slot) deserved it more. 

Solo's disappointment is almost entirely the result of Bob Iger making the wrong call, nothing else. 

Edited June 1, 2019 by LawrenceBrolivier

[The Horror of Lucas Films]

53 minutes ago, NCsoft said:

They've even got Solo's tragic overseas performance to provide a hint for what is to come. Still, for some reason TROS is being grossly over-predicted, yet again, 1.5-1.6B are thrown around as the norm, and you do see 2B talks here and there as well, citing "historic patterns", I think people are starting to collectively forget TLJ's existence.

Anyway, that'll make this Dec interesting.

 

 

It is going to be HILARIOUS. The same persons saying that it's going to easily recover, are the ones who spent the whole 2018 claiming that Solow was locked to do $400m DOM based on the brand alone.  This franchise is beyond death OS, even in traditional markets, TLJ dropped over 50% in LC pretty much everywhere, but it was lucky to get a better ER to make up the decreases, TROS won't have the same lucky. It will be lucky if it makes JL numbers OS.

[MovieMan89]

I agree TROS is probably doomed OS. I still have faith in JJ though to come through for DOM audiences, who will forgive TLJ if they hear this one is great. Could have a great multi. 

[a2k]

13 minutes ago, AndyChrono said:

As for 300m, if Aladdin does end up with around 43m this weekend, then it would need roughly a 3.65x off of this 2nd weekend to get to 300m. For a family friendly film in summer with excellent WOM that should be achievable. For comparison, Solo got 3.20x off of its 2nd weekend, Pirates 5 got 3.60x, and Apocalypse had 2.68x. So Aladdin just needs to hold slightly better than Pirates 5 from here on out and it should hit 300m.

Yeah I think 300 is likely for Aladdin. 

If KOTM doesn't leg it well and falters at say 105, there's a shot Aladdin does 3x KOTM dom.

[a2k]

The latest PURGE legged it the best with the smallest opening

https://www.boxofficemojo.com/franchises/chart/?id=purge.htm

 

Hope KOTM can make it to 2.5-2.6x but seems too big a mountain.

 

[Barnack]

4 hours ago, syntaxerror said:

 Distribution is not such a low risk, high reward business.

It really depend on type of deal, there goes with absolutely risk free with low reward when the producer pay you a fix fee to distribute, to more risker model (there is a lot of different model used)

 

 

4 hours ago, syntaxerror said:

WB on the line for 100% of P&A as distributor for both films, and is co-producer for Godzilla with 25% stake in budget. On top of all that they probably paid big licensing fees to Legendary for distribution rights. Don’t think anyone envies WB right now.

 

Source ? It is not common that we can have full detail on distribution deal.

[MovieMan89]

TS4 going 600+ is starting to seem more and more believable with so many big releases not doing that great this summer. SLOP's early OS performance and tracking isn't promising. 

[THUNDER BIRD]

3 minutes ago, MovieMan89 said:

TS4 going 600+ is starting to seem more and more believable with so many big releases not doing that great this summer. SLOP's early OS performance and tracking isn't promising. 

Toy Story 4 is tracking for 200 million weekend.

 

But it is still not the biggest event to come.

 

The Lion King is the biggest event outside EndGame this year, can it beat Titanic? It might seem too much but it really isn't, it's The Lion King, a massive opening and strong legs are in cards both in domestic & overseas. 

 

It'll be the real movie event to follow.

[ScoobyDoo21]

3 minutes ago, THUNDER BIRD said:

Toy Story 4 is tracking for 200 million weekend.

 

But it is still not the biggest event to come.

 

The Lion King is the biggest event outside EndGame this year, can it beat Titanic? It might seem too much but it really isn't, it's The Lion King, a massive opening and strong legs are in cards both in domestic & overseas. 

 

It'll be the real movie event to follow.

I am looking at the release schedule for Lion King. the only thing Lion King has to worry about until the end of the summer is Hobbs and Shaw. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood isn't going after its family audience. 

 

There are a few family films in august, but really The Lion King is going to be the last big summer movie for the families.

Edited June 1, 2019 by ScoobyDoo21

[NCsoft]

4 minutes ago, THUNDER BIRD said:

The Lion King is the biggest event outside EndGame this year, can it beat Titanic? It might seem too much but it really isn't, it's The Lion King, a massive opening and strong legs are in cards both in domestic & overseas. 

No.

Edited June 1, 2019 by NCsoft

[THUNDER BIRD]

3 minutes ago, ScoobyDoo21 said:

I am looking at the release schedule for Lion King. the only thing Lion King has to worry about until the end of the summer is Hobbs and Shaw. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood isn't going after its family audience. 

I think 1.8-2 billion range is it's starting point, i feel if everything goes right, Titanic will be unseated second time within 3 months.

Edited June 1, 2019 by THUNDER BIRD

[Sunny Max]

5 minutes ago, THUNDER BIRD said:

Toy Story 4 is tracking for 200 million weekend.

 

But it is still not the biggest event to come.

 

The Lion King is the biggest event outside EndGame this year, can it beat Titanic? It might seem too much but it really isn't, it's The Lion King, a massive opening and strong legs are in cards both in domestic & overseas. 

 

It'll be the real movie event to follow.

Lion King has The Potential To Beat Titanic .. It Is Like A Event Film ..

[THUNDER BIRD]

2 minutes ago, NCsoft said:

No.

Any reason?