The Matrix Resurrections | December 22 2021 | Keanu, Lana Wachowski back

[excel1]

7 hours ago, charlie Jatinder said:

Hmm. Matrix 2 opening is impressive. Would have weekend record of around ~$120M. 

 

Spider-man 2 would have been $130M ish normal FSS.

 

Spider-man 2's opening day ($40m) was BELOW Matrix Reloaded ($42.5m)

[Menor the Destroyer]

I guess if we arbitrarily restrict to 16-30 age group, I can see where that claim about Reloaded comes from.

 

[excel1]

It isn't every day/decade a film would break the opening weekend record with ZERO appeal to children (or the romance crowd in RELOADED case). The requires a true stranglehold on adults.  

[XXR vs XXR]

55 minutes ago, excel1 said:

 

Spider-man 2's opening day ($40m) was BELOW Matrix Reloaded ($42.5m)

 

Edited for wrongness 

Edited February 6, 2022 by RiddlerXXR

[excel1]

29 minutes ago, RiddlerXXR said:

 

MR was $37.5M Thursday with $5M Wednesday previews. SM2 was a true Wednesday opening with no previews. 

 

Matrix Reloaded's $5m were from midnights/a handful of 10 PM screenings which Spider-man 2 absolutely 100% had. I am unable to give the box office 1/20th of the attention I used to, but remember I paid attention to it 100% of the time summer 2001-2010. I have been in out since then lol

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/17/business/matrix-sets-record-but-with-an-asterisk.html

 

https://movieweb.com/spider-man-2-rings-up-5-million-at-midnight/ 

 

 

Edited February 6, 2022 by excel1

[grim22]

Not the Reloaded thread so will move everything to Resurrections, but I think people who weren't around back then forget just how big an event Reloaded was, and the huge sense of disappointment it left in it's wake when fans finally watched it. The legs and the fact that Bruce Almighty beat it in the second weekend are testament to that.

[Menor the Destroyer]

I guess in terms of the super hyped films of that 2000-2005 period, if everything was normalized to 3-day weekends, Reloaded would probably only have lost to Revenge of the Sith and Spider-Man 2. That's a lot more impressive than I had originally thought. 

[Barnack]

1 hour ago, grim22 said:

Reloaded thread so will move everything to Resurrections, but I think people who weren't around back then forget just how big an event Reloaded was,

 

I remember an interview of an director (Peyton Reed?) remembering how he reacted when the studio announced is movie would go wide that weekend against the Matrix sequel release...

 

Is reaction, even me will go see The Matrix and not my own movie.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_with_Love#Box_office

[excel1]

1 hour ago, Menor Reborn said:

I guess in terms of the super hyped films of that 2000-2005 period, if everything was normalized to 3-day weekends, Reloaded would probably only have lost to Revenge of the Sith and Spider-Man 2. That's a lot more impressive than I had originally thought. 

 

Spider-man 2 would not have beaten Reloaded. Sith would have been closer, though that was the first film to have REAL previews - it's $16m midnights destroyed everything, and that skews things a bit. That said, that RELOADED - an R rated film - clearly being so high up is incredible. I know of no R rated property that could come close to this feat in the near future - MAYBE Joker 2 depending on how the film goes?

 

Early 2000s exist in an odd space because many of their numbers don't look impressive at all relative to other time periods when all are adjusted for inflation. 2002 w/ Spidey, 2003 with Matrix, 2005 w/ Sith, 2006 with Pirates, 2007 with Spidey 3, 2008 with TDK, and 2009 with Transformers 2 would all dramatically adjust expectations so it's easy to overlook how thrilling the break out of openings of X-MEN in 2000 (the true start of the superhero explosion) and MUMMY RETURNS felt. PEARL HARBOR was the most hyped "original" film in about 5 years since 1996s ID4 (Lost World and Episode 1 being the ones ahead of it overall). PEARL's Fri-Sun had about 60% of the showtimes that MUMMY RETURNS had just 4 weeks earlier - had the release strategy for PEARL been better (and the film too), that very well could have been the first $100m opener as pundits were predicting at the time. The whole time frame had such little staying power.

 

People paying attention knew that big break-outs were possible, but nobody imagined what was to come in years following. Now everyone just pays attention to those years and misses some of the big lessons from 2000-2003.

Edited February 6, 2022 by excel1

[Barnack]

3 minutes ago, excel1 said:

Spider-man 2 would not have beaten Reloaded. Sith would have been closer, though that was the first film to have REAL previews - it's $16m midnights destroyed everything. 

 

It is hard to estimate relative OW for those lords of the ring/spider man 2 release of that era but after day 7:

 

Spider Man 2: 192 millions

Reloaded: 159.24m

 

Which seem to indicate that SM2 on a regular weekend would have had good chance to beat Reloaded I would think no ?

[grim22]

28 minutes ago, Barnack said:

It is hard to estimate relative OW for those lords of the ring/spider man 2 release of that era but after day 7:

 

Spider Man 2: 192 millions

Reloaded: 159.24m

 

Which seem to indicate that SM2 on a regular weekend would have had good chance to beat Reloaded I would think no ?

They would have been close for OW numbers for sure. Day 7 calculation is hard because Spider-Man 2 was received really well but Reloaded was not, so obviously the business will fall accordingly. 

 

Even at the time, the reception of Spider-Man 2 was like "best superhero movie ever, on par with the best movies ever" which helped it go from strength to strength but Reloaded was considered a big misfire which made it keep collapsing. This is of course pre-Twitter, so OW of highly anticipated movies were not hit as badly, it was the legs which were always the issue.

[Barnack]

11 minutes ago, grim22 said:

They would have been close for OW numbers for sure

 

Also Matrix 2 being r-rated was playing in 500 or something less theater than family event Spider-Man 2, I can see Matrix winning the friday but loosing by sunday afternoon.

[excel1]

Spider-man 2, despite 1 years worth of inflation, losing the opening day battle by $2.5m tells me it would NOT have beaten RELOADED opening weekend if they both opened on traditional Friday format. The buzz for RELOADED just felt bigger than Spider-man 2 did as well, though I blame this partially due to my age group.

 

RELOADED's reception was VERY similar to THE LAST JEDI - it definitely had its fans, but many found it less than expected and the true haters were SO loud. The box office gross REVOLUTIONS saw was stunning.

 

Fun fact: 2003's HULK was actually the first film where pundits publicly blamed the use of CELL PHONE COMMUNICATION and AIM for rapid spread of bad word of mouth. It's $24m opening day leading to just $63m opening weekend was a comically bad collapse for the time. 😆

Edited February 6, 2022 by excel1

[Barnack]

Just now, excel1 said:

Spider-man 2, despite 1 years worth of inflation, losing the opening day battle $2.5m tells me it would NOT have beaten RELOADED opening weekend.

Matrix sequel OD had much longer previews (it opened the Wednesday and gathered $5 millions) I think and the fact an R rated movie won the OD by so little over a family event should tell us that it could have.

[grim22]

6 minutes ago, excel1 said:

 

Fun fact: 2003's HULK was actually the first film where pundits publicly blamed the use of CELL PHONE COMMUNICATION and AIM for rapid spread of bad word of mouth. It's $24m opening day leading to just $63m opening weekend was a comically bad collapse for the time. 😆

 

I remember I was in college at the time and the only feedback we heard from people who watched Hulk on OD or OW tell the rest of us that "Hulk is barely in the movie" and "Hulk doesn't show up until we are well into the movie" and the most damning one - "It's boring".

[excel1]

3 minutes ago, grim22 said:

 

I remember I was in college at the time and the only feedback we heard from people who watched Hulk on OD or OW tell the rest of us that "Hulk is barely in the movie" and "Hulk doesn't show up until we are well into the movie" and the most damning one - "It's boring".

 

 

The 25 minute sequence where he becomes Hulk, escapes the base, is chased through the desert, and then calms down in an Francisco is pretty sweet, but everything else frankly sucked. 

 

2003 was a very, very strange years full of peaks and valleys. There were some real letdowns - both Matrix sequels, Hulk, Terminator 3, Mike Meyers Cat In the Hat, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Charles Angels 2, Mater and Commander. On the other end, films like X-Men 2, Return of The King, and Finding Nemo were even better than their huge expectations envisioned. In the middle, concepts like Bruce Almighty, Elf and of course Pirates 1 broke out huge. 

[excel1]

9 minutes ago, Barnack said:

Matrix sequel OD had much longer previews (it opened the Wednesday and gathered $5 millions) I think and the fact an R rated movie won the OD by so little over a family event should tell us that it could have.

 

Spider-man 2 had the same previews and also got $5m from them. 

 

https://movieweb.com/spider-man-2-rings-up-5-million-at-midnight/

 

Reloaded beat it because it was more hyped

[AdrianL]

Such an epic fail... this should've opened on Scream's date. Would've probably at least done 100m with no streaming. 

[Barnack]

1 hour ago, excel1 said:

 

Spider-man 2 had the same previews and also got $5m from them. 

? From that article it had 0 previews from the day before :

At 12:01 a.m. Wednesday, the curtain went up on Sony Pictures' Spider-Man 2

 

Matrix Reloaded had modern previews from the days before it's official day of release:

https://ew.com/article/2002/07/10/matrix-sequel-sets-thursday-release-date-2003/

Variety reports that, next May 15, Warner Bros. will release ”The Matrix Reloaded” on 3,200 screens on a Thursday

 

Warner Bros. has never released a film on a Thursday before, according to Variety, but the move will allow the film to get a one-day jump on the competition

 

Reloaded was one of the first movies with Thursday previews, it was yet to be the norm.

[Menor the Destroyer]

33 minutes ago, Barnack said:

? From that article it had 0 previews from the day before :

At 12:01 a.m. Wednesday, the curtain went up on Sony Pictures' Spider-Man 2

 

Matrix Reloaded had modern previews from the days before it's official day of release:

https://ew.com/article/2002/07/10/matrix-sequel-sets-thursday-release-date-2003/

Variety reports that, next May 15, Warner Bros. will release ”The Matrix Reloaded” on 3,200 screens on a Thursday

 

Warner Bros. has never released a film on a Thursday before, according to Variety, but the move will allow the film to get a one-day jump on the competition

 

Reloaded was one of the first movies with Thursday previews, it was yet to be the norm.

Matrix had a Thursday release day with midnights. Spider-Man 2 had a Wed release with midnights. The OD comparison is apples to apples.