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

[charlie Jatinder]

22 hours ago, charlie Jatinder said:

Thor: Love and Thunder Harkins T-20 Days

Shows	Capacity	Sold	% Sold	Gross	ATP
416	104,985	8,248	7.86%	$110,322	$13.38

 

Another good day. Added 398 new sales. 9K need 752 in 3 days now. 

Thor: Love and Thunder Harkins T-19 Days

 

Shows	Capacity	Sold	% Sold	Gross	ATP
416	104,985	8,587	8.18%	$114,365	$13.32

 

+339 today. Good day. 9K now needs only 413 in 2 days which looks very doable.

[charlie Jatinder]

On 6/18/2022 at 11:51 AM, charlie Jatinder said:

Elvis Harkins T-6 Days

 

Day	Shows	Capacity	Sold	% Sold	Gross	ATP
Early Access	7	2,283	1,019	44.63%	$15,478	$15.19
Thursday	99	23,679	509	2.15%	$5,664	$11.13
Total	106	25,962	1,528	5.89%	$21,142	$13.84

 

Comps

0.66x Shang Chi T-6 Days - $5.60M (THU only $1.88M)

1.51x The Suicide Squad T-6 Days (California only) - $6.21M (THU only $1.34M)

 

Big early access screenings which have deflated THU in the chain. The pace is quite strong as well, added 400 in last 2 days.

Elvis Harkins T-5 Days

 

Day	Shows	Capacity	Sold	% Sold	Gross	ATP
Early Access	7	2,283	1,096	48.01%	$16,651	$15.19
Thursday	99	23,679	618	2.61%	$6,974	$11.28
Total	106	25,962	1,714	6.60%	$23,625	$13.78

 

Comps

0.69x Shang Chi T-5 days - $5.86M (THU only $2.12M)

 

This looking good here. 

@Porthos may be worth Quick and Dirty check.

[charlie Jatinder]

On 6/18/2022 at 11:32 AM, charlie Jatinder said:

Minions: The Rise of Gru Harkins T-13 Days

Shows	Capacity	Sold	% Sold	Gross	ATP
292	75,707	497	0.66%	$5,898	$11.87

 

Comps

0.444x Shang Chi T-13 days - $3.78M

 

Hmm. That's bit more relieving because $4.2M against a CBM this far out looked too big. Added 44 since yday. Can def catch with Lightyear T-8 days. 

Minions: The Rise of Gru Harkins T-12 Days

Shows	Capacity	Sold	% Sold	Gross	ATP
292	75,707	558	0.74%	$6,640	$11.90

 

Comps

0.234x Eternals T-12 days - $2.23M

0.511x Shang Chi T-12 days - $4.34M

 

Added Eternals comp just to see how useless Shang Chi comp is, but may work out afterall due to various factors in play. Also these comps should be shaved 20% due to kids tickets difference. Actual gross will be around 80-85% of these.

 

Ofc these CBM comps means nothing but was bit scary that Shang Chi was comping to $4M+ this far out. Minions will be a huge walkins monster. 

Edited June 19, 2022 by charlie Jatinder

[titanic2187]

2 hours ago, BadOlCatSylvester said:

That potential was crushed into oblivion the moment the perpetrator at Uvalde pulled the trigger for the first time.

 

That being said, come on, it won't flop with a tiny $18M budget. Even a mid-teens opening will be more than enough to get it in the black. And that's the power of Blumhouse.

I think it is about time allow Universal to gear up its marketing. The things is, the awareness is high and reviews are good, should be an relatively easy task for universal to market it to its target demo without going too far.

[M37]

On 6/17/2022 at 11:04 AM, Shawn said:

Interesting. There could be something there. To be honest, though, I'd personally expect Afterlife to be more pre-sale heavy as an older male (58% male, 58% over 25)/fan-driven/less diverse audience property with minimal appeal to today's generation of kids, and a wider IMAX footprint to boot (where seating is at a genuine premium, and most savvy moviegoers have caught on to it).

 

Parents often tend to seek out traditional/non-premium shows for affordability, and/or purchase tickets much closer to showtime if not becoming literal walk-up transactions. Pixar also tends to skew to a more balanced demographic that hovers between 48-52% on either side of the male/female equation due to the parental factor. Age skews younger as well (58% under 25 for Cars 3, 56% under for I2, and 55% under for TS4).

 

You're definitely right, and most of the time I would fully agree that 10x would be/is backloaded for many films, but today's market hasn't had a weekend or a specific movie quite like this one. We don't have a real precedent for a major Pixar release (that's somewhere between a franchise movie and an origin story with less demand) opening on a back-end holiday weekend, post-Disney+, with a very short pre-sale window, with theatrical exclusivity, and with two other films attracting significant ticket sales and reservation spots recently.

 

There's data and reasonable hypotheses to support all sides of the debate here. We should all be careful and just stay open minded and consider a wide range of outcomes as realistic. There comes a point where everyone is just guessing based on the best available information, especially with kids' movies because that's the most challenging demo to track for obvious reasons. The existence of comps does not inherently make all comps useful, and I've been guilty of that myself.

 

TL;DR -- We'll see what happens. If we're too high, we're too high. This movie has inspired an interesting debate, to be sure. Regardless of whichever assumptions for the post-Thursday holds prove accurate, the one thing I believe is that if Lightyear of all things can't hit $70-75M or more and retain at least half of TS4's audience, the Disney/Pixar debacle is going to enter a whole new phase of conversation.

 

I'm unplugging for the weekend to reset for next. Have fun, all. 

Posting this not to call out @Shawn, but as a data point to consider in the future. Back when the full Fandango scraping existing, I noticed this pattern, what I dubbed "The Arc", in that the ratio of daily sales was usually a very good - though not perfect - predictor of daily % increase/decreases and IMs

 

Here is the data @Inceptionzq has collected for Drafthouse for LY, Ghostbusters, and the last two big openings for contrast, with each day shown as the ratio of the final sales to Thursday at T-0

 

 

Here are there respective IMs & Fri/Sat increases

GA = 9.8x (+35%)

TGM = 6.5x (+17%)

JWD = 8.1x (+11%)

LY = 8.75x (flat) Using Deadline estimates

 

Now neither Megaplex nor Drafthouse are great samples for this exercise, and the former is very light on advance sales, while the latter is advance sale heavy and skews towards younger adult demos (which is likely why the LY arc is so flat, adults dropped off on Sat but families filled the void). However if we had similar FSS data from a larger sample like one of the MTCs, it would be very useful in projecting the whole weekend, not just Thursday. And if one wanted to get really fancy, could use growth rates to better estimate finals for FSS, in that the increase from T-1 to T-Final Thursday gets applied to Fri, T-2 to T-F to Sat, etc, and then compare ratios

[Tinalera]

Minions

Thurs June 30/Fri July 1

Southwest and Toronto Ontario

 

	# theatre	#show	Seats Sold	Seats Rem	Ttl seat	Percent
Thurs	14	61	145	16904	17049	0.0085
Fri	15	84	141	22826	22967	0.0061

 

so neither day getting to 1 percent yet, but Thurs is close. Will be interesting to see how the week progresses the difference between this and Lightyear

[Menor the Destroyer]

Thor: Love and Thunder Marcus Theaters (T-19):

 

Theaters: 85

Showings: 864

Seats Sold: 17497/126544

 

Data as of last night. As this is my first time tracking the chain, I don't have any comps. 

 

Edit: Mixed up Thor release date, lol. 

Edited June 19, 2022 by Menor Reborn

[BadOlCatSylvester]

5 hours ago, titanic2187 said:

I think it is about time allow Universal to gear up its marketing. The things is, the awareness is high and reviews are good, should be an relatively easy task for universal to market it to its target demo without going too far.

That would open a whole can of worms which would make Scott Derrickson the new Lindsay Ellis. I doubt Universal or Blumhouse will want to deal with that PR nightmare.

 

Do we have a screen count for it yet? I'm not expecting a super wide release for obvious reasons.

[keysersoze123]

41 minutes ago, Menor Reborn said:

Thor: Love and Thunder Marcus Theaters (T-12):

 

Theaters: 85

Showings: 864

Seats Sold: 17497/126544

 

Data as of last night. As this is my first time tracking the chain, I don't have any comps. 

You can time travel !!!

 

Thanks for the data. How about $ value?

 

 

[YM!]

50 minutes ago, Menor Reborn said:

Thor: Love and Thunder Marcus Theaters (T-12):

 

Theaters: 85

Showings: 864

Seats Sold: 17497/126544

 

Data as of last night. As this is my first time tracking the chain, I don't have any comps. 

Is this all of Marcus or Marcus in a certain area?

[Menor the Destroyer]

5 minutes ago, keysersoze123 said:

You can time travel !!!

 

Thanks for the data. How about $ value?

 

 

I am trying to get ATP added in now. It's not trivial to find it on the page. 

4 minutes ago, YourMother said:

Is this all of Marcus or Marcus in a certain area?

All. 

Edited June 19, 2022 by Menor Reborn

[Porthos]

8 hours ago, charlie Jatinder said:

Elvis Harkins T-5 Days

 

This looking good here. 

@Porthos may be worth Quick and Dirty check.

 

[XXR & Friends]

2 minutes ago, Porthos said:

 

 

[ThatWaluigiDude]

Are you all planing on doing Minions 2 comps with Lightyear? Because right now I am extremely curious on how these two are doing against each other.

[Tinalera]

41 minutes ago, ThatWaluigiDude said:

Are you all planing on doing Minions 2 comps with Lightyear? Because right now I am extremely curious on how these two are doing against each other.

FWIW I only have about 7 days of Lightyear but Ill be doing comps even if they are just for Toronto area. Even now Minions is doing better at t-12 than Lightyear at 7 with my (albiet limited) data

[motionpic05]

I really don't get why people are considering The Black Phone to be going too deeply in subject matter. It just seems far fetched.

 

I definitely think Universal is trying to stay away from going crazy with marketing like I'm sure was originally planned, but still keeping it there. It's going in about 3,200 theatres so that's normal.

 

[charlie Jatinder]

5 hours ago, ThatWaluigiDude said:

Are you all planing on doing Minions 2 comps with Lightyear? Because right now I am extremely curious on how these two are doing against each other.

Will start doing that but Lightyear sales didn't start until 7 days before release.

[ZackM]

Added 14 theaters to Alpha tracking, so keep that in mind when I start posting comps, though it shouldn't make a huge difference given the total number of theaters.

 

 

Thor: Love and Thunder Alpha Chain Premiere Night Seat Report: T-18 days
	Last Day
Showings Added	6,298
Seats Added	1,094,306
Seats Sold	181,069
6/19/2022	Theaters	Showings	Seats Sold	Total Seats	Pct. Sold
Total	437	6,298	181,069	1,094,306	16.55%
% of Seats Sold	Sellouts	90%+	80%+	70%+	60%+
# of Showings	0	7	56	226	445
ATP
$17.30

 

[keysersoze123]

5 minutes ago, ZackM said:

Added 14 theaters to Alpha tracking, so keep that in mind when I start posting comps, though it shouldn't make a huge difference given the total number of theaters.

 

 

Thor: Love and Thunder Alpha Chain Premiere Night Seat Report: T-18 days
	Last Day
Showings Added	6,298
Seats Added	1,094,306
Seats Sold	181,069
6/19/2022	Theaters	Showings	Seats Sold	Total Seats	Pct. Sold
Total	437	6,298	181,069	1,094,306	16.55%
% of Seats Sold	Sellouts	90%+	80%+	70%+	60%+
# of Showings	0	7	56	226	445
ATP
$17.30

 

@ZackM how many tickets added from newer theaters that was missing for DS2?

 

 

Below is DS2 T-18. it was at 278,955 at slightly lower ATP. So tracking 2/3 of DS2 at this point. Pace wise its doing really well. Let us see how things go. 

 

 

[Eric the Minion]

23 hours ago, Eric Lightyear said:

Minions: The Rise of Gru Greater Philadelphia Area Seat Report T-12 and Counting

	Sellouts	Showings	Seats Sold	Total Seats	Perct Sold
TOTALS	0	120	184	26275	0.70%

 

Total Seats Sold Today: 40

 

Comp

0.319x of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 T-12 (1.99M)

Minions: The Rise of Gru Greater Philadelphia Area Seat Report T-11 and Counting

	Sellouts	Showings	Seats Sold	Total Seats	Perct Sold
TOTALS	0	120	188	26275	0.72%

 

Total Seats Sold Today: 4

 

Comp

0.307x of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 T-11 (1.92M)