Weekend Thread: Actuals - Mal2 $19.4M | Joker $19.2M | Adam's Family 12M | Zombieland $11.8M | Countdown $8.9M | Black & Blue $8.4M

[Brainbug]

Joker for me is the BO story of the year already.

[Webslinger]

Well, I’ll admit: the photo-finish for the #1 spot adds a little excitement to an otherwise bleh weekend. No matter how the actual numbers shake out, we’ll see a relative rarity: if Maleficent comes out ahead, it will be one of the few times where the #1 film changes with actuals; if Joker prevails, it will be one of the rare films to return to #1.

 

Joker is still kicking ass. Terminator will definitely provide it with some tough competition next weekend, but it’s holding up nicely and should make a good run at the range Batman v. Superman and Suicide Squad finished in three years ago. That worldwide gross is also damned impressive.

 

Maleficent took a big tumble, as expected. It held a little better than the first film, but that one opened much larger and faced significant competition. It will still surpass $100 million domestically, but I don’t imagine its under-performance was what Disney had in mind.

 

The Addams Family has put up a solid run mostly below the radar and should be able to nudge past $100 million. It’s obviously not a Hotel Transylvania-level hit, but it has capitalized on the same concept of giving families a Halloween movie.

 

Zombieland fell hard - no shock given how fan-driven the film is. A domestic total around $70 million still isn’t great against its production budget, but it’s a relative win for a belated sequel whose main hook was viewers’ nostalgia for the original.

 

Countdown didn’t make much of a dent. Even with no traditional horror options available, its concept still seemed too silly to connect outside of the teens that typically power PG-13 horror.

 

Black & Blue did okay, I guess. I hadn’t seen much promotion for it prior to this week, so the outcome is relatively solid.

 

Gemini Man is still displaying little staying power and could conceivably miss out on hitting $50 million if Terminator takes enough out of it next weekend. I didn’t enjoy the film much, but I’m still a little sad that a director as talented as Ang Lee has had two big box office bombs in a row.

 

The Lighthouse did pretty well in its expansion. I don’t think it’s going to have much reach beyond the venues it has played thus far (I’m really looking forward to seeing it, but it looks way too weird for most of the mainstream crowd), but I’m looking forward to seeing how much further A24 can take it.

 

The Current War had a predictably quiet performance. Honestly, though, it feels like a miracle that the director’s version ever saw the light of day after looking like it was destined to sit on the shelf indefinitely following the weak TIFF reactions and the Weinstein scandal a couple years ago.

 

Jojo Rabbit put up another strong weekend in limited release. I’m still not entirely sure how to read its chances as it expands further, but we’ll see.

[Legion Again]

26 minutes ago, Brainbug said:

Joker for me is the BO story of the year already.

Of the year when we have the first non-Cameron WW #1 in 22 years???

Edited October 27, 2019 by Thanos Legion

[narniadis]

47 minutes ago, xiazhi said:

 

if it loses money, it's definitely a flop

Again read the rest of the thread. Losing money theatrically alone is way more frequent than most understand. Even huge hits on paper can appear as money losers with studio accounting (lol) case in point I think it was Harry Potter 5 or 6 that WB tried to sell as a theatrical money loser do to backend stuff. 

 

A flop is not a film that will ultimately be in the black as Mal 2 will given the normal post theatrical life. Underperformer - absolutely, even with lowered expectations taken into account given release time and age since last film. Not a flop and no where close to the cousin called a bomb. 

[Firepower]

21 minutes ago, Thanos Legion said:

Of the year when we have the first non-Cameron WW #1 in 22 years???

To me the biggest R-rated movie of all time worldwide adjusted (!) is more impressive than barely crossing Avatar unadjusted by a movie with 10 year build up.

Edited October 27, 2019 by Firepower

[Legion Again]

19 minutes ago, Firepower said:

To me the biggest R-rated movie of all time worldwide adjusted (!) is more impressive than barely crossing Avatar unadjusted by a movie with 10 year build up.

You can't really adjust WW, but as far as R rated worldwide goes, Joker's performance isn't as strong as Matrix Reloaded from just 15 or so years ago.

[Orestes]

My top box office stories of the year (so far) would probably go:

 

Endgame

Joker

Aladdin

Dark Phoenix

The Goldfinch

 

with honorable mentions for Captain Marvel, The Peanut Butter Falcon, and John Wick 3.

Edited October 28, 2019 by Orestes

[keysersoze123]

Reloaded is among the most hyped movies of Last 2 decades. It was 1st movie to release everywhere.  So it's final gross was a disappoint.  That led to revolution disappointing big time. 

 

Joker it's easily way more impressive than reloaded. 

[filmlover]

14 minutes ago, Orestes said:

My top box office stories of the year (so far) would probably go:

 

Endgame

Joker

Aladdin

Dark Phoenix

The Goldfinch

 

with honorable mentions for Captain Marvel, The Peanut Butter Falcon, and John Wick 3.

[Orestes]

1 minute ago, filmlover said:

Flops like those don't come along every day ;).

[filmlover]

1 minute ago, Orestes said:

Flops like those don't come along every day ;).

Especially ones starring supposed superstars putting up numbers that miniscule.

[Barnack]

6 hours ago, VENOM said:

Advertising would be at least 150+ so it needs to make north of 750 to break even. Don’t use deadline as a barometer for what a movie needs to make. They still think the 90 million Once a upon a time needs to make 400 million to break even  

 

Why would they have made a sequel on the first one if it had barely made any money ? And needed to reach what around 1billion or more to be worth making ?

[VENOM]

1 minute ago, Barnack said:

 

Why would they have made a sequel on the first one if it had barely made any money ? And needed to reach what around 1billion or more to be worth making ?

Because there idiots 

[Firepower]

41 minutes ago, Thanos Legion said:

You can't really adjust WW, but as far as R rated worldwide goes, Joker's performance isn't as strong as Matrix Reloaded from just 15 or so years ago.

Even without exact calculations, for me the first 1 bln R rated movie is just more impressive than barely crossing Avatar after 10 years of build up and 20 movies, especially considering Joker's budget and content. But everyone has a different opinion about this topic of course.

Edited October 28, 2019 by Firepower

[xiazhi]

1 hour ago, narniadis said:

Again read the rest of the thread. Losing money theatrically alone is way more frequent than most understand. Even huge hits on paper can appear as money losers with studio accounting (lol) case in point I think it was Harry Potter 5 or 6 that WB tried to sell as a theatrical money loser do to backend stuff. 

 

A flop is not a film that will ultimately be in the black as Mal 2 will given the normal post theatrical life. Underperformer - absolutely, even with lowered expectations taken into account given release time and age since last film. Not a flop and no where close to the cousin called a bomb. 

OK I'll rephrase. Any movie what fails to cover its production budget with theatrical income is a flop. (There aren't many this year)

[narniadis]

3 minutes ago, xiazhi said:

OK I'll rephrase. Any movie what fails to cover its production budget with theatrical income is a flop. (There aren't many this year)

Obviously the point of my post went well over your head. Theatrical income is not the end all be all and hasnt been for 30+ years. 

The massive world wide grosses of super hero films has dramatically screwed the perception of success for films not in that category. 

[wildphantom]

20 minutes ago, Firepower said:

Even without exact calculations, for me the first 1 bln R rated movie is just more impressive than barely crossing Avatar after 10 years of build up and 20 movies, especially considering Joker's budget and content. But everyone has a different opinion about this topic of course.

More impressive than the biggest grossing movie of all time?! Many of us thought Avatar would never be beaten!! 
Joker has done great, as did Aladdin - but Endgame is by far the big story of the year. 
 

I mean the thing made $350 million in its opening weekend! Lol. That was just gobsmacking.  $850 million plus in a summer packed full of event movies is ludicrous, regardless of the years of build up. If anything you could argue fatigue should have set in by now. 

 

No doubt Joker’s impending billion dollars is a close second though. 

[Legion Again]

Joker is probably the 2nd strongest performance from an R rated movie this century. That's great. It's incredible. It's absurd, spectacular, bonkers, superb, etc etc etc. Please don't take this as an attempt to downplay the performance, but --

 

1B isn't a magical threshold, and it's not really the exclusive mark of uber-success that it used to be either. Joker would be about as amazing if it finished (or finishes) at 990M vs 1.03B -- around 30th place WW-C. 

[cdsacken]

2 hours ago, Brainbug said:

Joker for me is the BO story of the year already.

#2. Beating a box office record that nothing came close to for 11 years was insane. My guess it holds through 2030.

Edited October 28, 2019 by cdsacken

[cdsacken]

Beating the best best rated R movie is impressive no doubt. However this delusion that it was easy to get #1 for End Game is insane. Loads of HUGE movies came out after Avatar, nothing came close including TFA with nearly a billion from domestic alone. Exchange rates took away basically Chinas gross and it still did it. Truly horrific rates