The Box Office Buzz and Tracking Thread (December 2021 - July 2023)

[Grebacio]

Semi unrelated question - Once The Batman presales starts, which would be the best comps for tracking?

I would suggest No Way Home, Venom LTBC, BvS and Captain Marvel

[XXR vs XXR]

1 minute ago, Grebacio said:

Semi unrelated question - Once The Batman presales starts, which would be the best comps for tracking?

I would suggest No Way Home, Venom LTBC, BvS and Captain Marvel

I would stick to SH films that came out in 2021.

[JonahVex]

Venom LTBC and NWH are the comps for me, i think Batman will be about 1.5x Venom OW

[Menor the Destroyer]

Venom would be a terrible comp. NWH and Black Widow would be the best bet for previews I think.

 

[JonahVex]

Venom had the 2nd best OW of 2021, how would it be a bad comp?

[Menor the Destroyer]

17 minutes ago, JonahVex said:

Venom had the 2nd best OW of 2021, how would it be a bad comp?

Because it's presale pattern was so unusual for a comic book movie, I really don't think Batman will behave that way.

 

[katnisscinnaplex]

I feel partially responsible for the separate title confusion for previews.  I had to pull both for the showtimes report last week and failed to comment on it.  Noted for next time!

[el sid]

Moonfall, counted today at 11pm EST for Thursday, Feb 3:
 

NY (AMC Fresh Meadows 7): 157 (4 showtimes)
Miami (AMC Sunset Place 24): 94 (3 showtimes)
Grand Rapids (AMC Grand Rapids 18): winter storms!
Austin (AMC Lakeline 9): 4 (1 showtime)
Tempe/Phoenix (AMC Centerpoint 11): 24 (2 showtimes)
San Francisco (AMC Metreon 16): 189 (5 showtimes)
LA (AMC Universal): 309 (6 showtimes)

Total tickets sold in 6 theaters: 777.
A pretty modest jump of 11.5% since yesterday (counted today and yesterday without the AMC Grand Rapids).

Moonfall, counted today at the same time for Friday, Feb 4:
 

NY (AMC Fresh Meadows 7): 88 (8 showtimes)
Miami (AMC Sunset Place 24): 29 (8 showtimes)
Grand Rapids (AMC Grand Rapids 18): 10 (7 showtimes)
Austin (AMC Lakeline 9): 2 (3 showtimes)
Tempe/Phoenix (AMC Centerpoint 11): 23 (6 showtimes)
San Francisco (AMC Metreon 16): 106 (8 showtimes)
LA (AMC Universal): 110 (8 showtimes)

Total tickets sold in 7 theaters: 368.
Up 28% since yesterday.

 

Comps (both counted on Thursday for Friday): Old (16.9M OW) had 500 sold tickets

and Dune had 3.520 sold tickets.
That's the problem, now its Friday presales are even under those of Old. Therefore 10M+ would be my guess too.

 

jackass forever plus bonus content (I mentioned it too but it was ignored ), counted today at 11am EST for Thursday, Feb 3:
 

NY (AMC Fresh Meadows 7): 58 (3 showtimes)
Miami (AMC Sunset Place 24): 60 (2 showtimes)
Grand Rapids (AMC Grand Rapids 18): winter storms!
Austin (AMC Lakeline 9): 14 (2 showtimes)
Tempe/Phoenix (AMC Centerpoint 11): 48 (2 showtimes)
San Francisco (AMC Metreon 16): 77 (2 showtimes)
LA (AMC Universal): 242 (5 showtimes)

Total tickets sold in 6 theaters: 499.
Up quite good 35% since yesterday (counted again with 6 theaters on both days).

Jackass Forever, counted today at the same time for Friday, Feb 4:
 

NY (AMC Fresh Meadows 7): 96 (9 showtimes)
Miami (AMC Sunset Place 24): 98 (8 showtimes)
Grand Rapids (AMC Grand Rapids 18): 120 (7 showtimes)
Austin (AMC Lakeline 9): 5 (6 showtimes)
Tempe/Phoenix (AMC Centerpoint 11): 107 (7 showtimes)
San Francisco (AMC Metreon 16): 93 (9 showtimes)
LA (AMC Universal): 398 (10 showtimes)

Total tickets sold in 7 theaters: 917 (slightly above my guess two days ago).
Up so-so 26.5% since yesterday.

Comps: Ghostbusters: Afterlife had on Thursday for Friday 1.124 sold tickets

and Free Guy had also on Thursday for Friday 624 sold tickets (but a better jump than Jackass).
I just hope that it will have halfway decent walk-ups because from presales it definitely looks like 20M+ can happen.

Edited February 3, 2022 by el sid

[Legion Again]

1 hour ago, Menor Reborn said:

Venom would be a terrible comp. NWH and Black Widow would be the best bet for previews I think.

 

NWH seems terrible in the opposite direction, whereas BW/sc/Eternals are a bit too small. I will probably want to look at some 2019s as annoying as that is.

[Menor the Destroyer]

21 minutes ago, Product Driven Legion said:

NWH seems terrible in the opposite direction, whereas BW/sc/Eternals are a bit too small. I will probably want to look at some 2019s as annoying as that is.

Yeah, I agree NWH will likely be an awful comp. Just there might be an edge case if Batman really goes crazy. But there is no possibility that it will play like Venom. 

[Porthos]

25 minutes ago, Product Driven Legion said:

NWH seems terrible in the opposite direction, whereas BW/sc/Eternals are a bit too small. I will probably want to look at some 2019s as annoying as that is.

 

WARNING: 

 

I am planning on not bringing up any 2019 comps locally*.  And not just because I am yet to be convinced of the market returning to "normal", but also because of that new theater replacing an older one skewing things even more.  2019 comps still didn't work locally for NWH (though they were closer than they had been) and if it didn't there it won't for The Batman.

* Unless we somehow get an absolute monster behemoth on our hands, and even there, I have NWH to fall back on.

 

More to the point, all comps have shelf lives, IMO, even under the best of circumstances.  And pulling out two to three year old comps?  Think it's negative value, personally.

 

Do agree that there might be Not Great Comps from 2021 at the start.  But the dirty little secret of the Tracking Thread is... Comps without any sort of ad-hoc adjustment are generally terrible unreliable not as great as they could be the first couple of days anyway thanks to the looooong list of factors that go into pre-sales (differing pre-sale patterns, length of pre-sale window, different genres, different start times, different demos, and so on and so on and so on).

 

I do see the temptation/desire to get info from 2019 and before.  Just think extracting productive info from it ain't worth the the effort, if it's even possible.

 

(FWIW, I also agree with MenorReborn that LTBC is a horrible comp until about a day or so before release thanks to how backloaded that pre-sale run was)

[Legion Again]

Well, to get a little more nuanced, generally when people say “$ABC comping from xyz” they mean “if its relative sales from here until day 0 match xyz, here’s what the comparison to xyz final sales gives.” So like, using the same reference movie for remaining growth pace and for final sale:gross calculation. Which is convenient, but not really logically required in any way.   
 

I think the latter becomes outdated more quickly, whereas the former is more sensitive to raw size/hype/intensity of day1 rush and such. So I would probably reject any 2021s for pace, and reject any 2019 or older for final sale calculations, and want to stick some 2019 trending patterns into 2021 final sales ratios.

Edited February 3, 2022 by Product Driven Legion

[Porthos]

I don't even know what would be a good comp from 2019, anyway.  

 

Captain Marvel?  Maybe.  But 59 day pre-sale window + (different) new theater that opened locally just before EG = No Sale.

Endgame? L-O-L.

The Lion King?  Family film vs CBM makes me dubious, to say the least.

Joker?  Ehhhhhhhhh.... That underperformed horribly here and had a 11 day pre-sale window which makes a comp a non-starter until the end.

The Rise of Skywalker?  C'mon now. (also length of pre-sale window)

It: Chapter 2?  Toy Story 4?  Not only radically different genres but now we're getting to (and in some cases passing) preview numbers from 2021.

 

Like, even if the situations were ideal for comping, what would be good that doesn't have a better comp in 2021?

 

[Porthos]

4 minutes ago, Product Driven Legion said:

Well, to get a little more nuanced, generally when people say “$ABC comping from xyz” they mean “if its relative sales from here until day 0 match xyz, here’s what the comparison to xyz final sales gives.” So like, using the same reference movie for remaining growth pace and for final sale:gross calculation. Which is convenient, but not really logically required in any way.   
 

I think the latter becomes outdated more quickly, whereas the former is more sensitive to raw size/hype/intensity of day1 rush and such. So I would probably reject any 2021s for pace, and reject any 2019 or older for final sale calculations, and want to stick some 2019 trending patterns into 2021 final sales ratios.

 

We cross-posted a bit here, but even on pattern I don't know which 2019 films would be better. EG, CM and Joker are out for different reasons. FFH had midnight previews. So what's actually good from 2019 when it comes to pattern anyway?

[Legion Again]

Man I forgot CM’s run was crazy long. Stupid FFH with its stupid Tuesday release 😒   
 

Those+joker are the 3 2019 CBMs with reasonably close overall expectations, but yeah, I guess neither really work. BW isn’t the worst thing in the world… I guess.

[charlie Jatinder]

A hybrid of Black Widow & NWH 

[Porthos]

15 minutes ago, Product Driven Legion said:

Man I forgot CM’s run was crazy long. Stupid FFH with its stupid Tuesday release 😒   
 

Those+joker are the 3 2019 CBMs with reasonably close overall expectations, but yeah, I guess neither really work. BW isn’t the worst thing in the world… I guess.

 

Been thinking that out of all of them, Black Widow is actually fairly decent. Well, decent-ish.

 

First "big" movie out of a pandemic (with all due apologies to GvK, AQP II, and F9).  CBM.  First Marvel film in over a year fan-rush should be at least somewhat similar to the pent-up DC fan-rush that seems to be building when it comes to pattern of the first few days.

 

Biggest problem is pre-sale length of 22 days (Bats) versus 28 days (BW), but should be fine for the first three or four days.  And after five or six days, some of the other CBMs/action-adventure films can be roped in (both on pace and on pattern).

 

Is BW ideal?  Well, no.  But all things considered, there are much worse comps out there.

[charlie Jatinder]

Basically we have Black Widow selling 150k tixs in 24 hours for $14M preveiws.

 

Eternals sold 145k tixs for $9M previews, may be $10-11M with no reviews shit.

 

NWH 3M+ tixs with very heavily marketed presales launch for ~$51M preveiws.

 

Batman launch is marketed, not as much as Spidey but still we have a presales date weeks in advance unlike usually tickets just drop. I guess this is gonna open around $25M previews for $150M OW. 

i.e. roughly 2.5x Eternals, so need 500k tixs from that angle.

 

While 25M js half way NWH, means will need 1.25M tixs for same. I guess call it even at 750k ish. Gonna be something to project.

[DAJK]

Jackass is outselling Scream in a bunch of theaters I'm looking at. With Ontario open as well, it's EASILY going to double Scream's Canadian opening (I suspect it would be ahead of it even without Ontario).

 

I wouldn't rule out 30M if all goes well. 

[Pinacolada]

37 minutes ago, DAJK said:

Jackass is outselling Scream in a bunch of theaters I'm looking at. With Ontario open as well, it's EASILY going to double Scream's Canadian opening (I suspect it would be ahead of it even without Ontario).

 

I wouldn't rule out 30M if all goes well. 

I think Texas is a wash for tonight however. Probably Friday too.

 

Pretty sure showtimes are getting cancelled bc of the winter storm

Edited February 3, 2022 by Pinacolada