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

[M37]

8 minutes ago, Mickiland16 said:

 

So how likely is $100M OW at this point? Could it do it on the three days weekend only?

Absolutely possible, but a more difficult film than usual to comp for Thursday - and even to project weekend from that value - so there's just going to be a higher margin of error in any values shown probably through the first Saturday.

 

For now, would ballpark at high single digit preview ($7-$10M) for Thursday, and could go higher

 

 

[cookie]

How's Fast X doing compared to 9? Better? Worse? I put a similar total on my summer wager.

[jedijake]

25 minutes ago, M37 said:

Absolutely possible, but a more difficult film than usual to comp for Thursday - and even to project weekend from that value - so there's just going to be a higher margin of error in any values shown probably through the first Saturday.

 

For now, would ballpark at high single digit preview ($7-$10M) for Thursday, and could go higher

 

 

I'd say it looks more like a $12 or $13 million Thursday preview for TLM.

[Shawn Robbins]

II haven't had a chance to look in the thread, but it might be interesting to see if there's any gap between certain markets when it comes to TLM.

 

I almost raised the BOP long range this week to factor in $100M 3-day as an upper bound, but was seeing enough reason to hold back on that at least another week.

 

As mentioned yesterday, it's a bit of a wild card to me in terms of not having any true one-to-one comps during pandemic or post-pandemic. Aladdin would be a good fit, but of course, things have changed in four years. It also had a huge star headlining the movie and an original film that was a bigger box office performer in its time.

 

Without getting *too** political here, another element to maybe factor into expectations from a non-data standpoint is the general mood of some American culture -- especially outside metro and coastal cities -- toward Disney right now. Those parts of the country are very important to many of Disney's family movie hits.

 

And, whether one disagrees with that "mood" or not, it's observably taking some toll on the brand appeal to millennials and Gen Xers in some geo populations who are crucial to Mermaid's success because they grew up with it. Especially women, who tend to drive presales for this kind of movie.

 

That said... there is also an argument to be made for a counterbalance in the Black community supporting this movie and overindexing versus early expectations. That would make the more bullish numbers very achievable.

 

It is just very nebulous at this point. Let's see how things shape up in the next few weeks.

[M37]

1 hour ago, jedijake said:

I'd say it looks more like a $12 or $13 million Thursday preview for TLM.

It’s certainly possible, but this goes back to not having a great comp - there is only a vague idea of what pace to expect in the final 1-2 week ramp up, and that greatly changes the multiplier math. Have 10% of all tickets been sold (so 10x) or 20% (5x)? 

 

There are few good reasons to suspect the early sales for TLM might be a little heavier than other titles, and crossing genres may also impact the market share & comp math, and so be cautious in taking those comps at face value. Just trying to avoid the potential scenario where it “drops” from like $13M to $9M, when in reality we don’t really know if that’s actually where it is - or ever was - heading. Need another week to see which comps that have been recently adding are holding most steady, matching pace, and lean on those 

Also don’t know whether an OW - which is ultimately what people care about - of $90M would get there via $9M/10x or $13M/7x

 

[rehpyc]

If I wanted to start helping with tracking, any pointers or guides to review? I know Python and data modeling, already scrape some chain's theatre listings and showtimes, etc.

[jedijake]

8 minutes ago, Shawn said:

Out of curiosity, which markets is everyone looking at for TLM?

 

I almost raised the BOP long range this week to factor in $100M 3-day as an upper bound, but was seeing enough reason to hold back on that at least another week.

 

As mentioned yesterday, it's a bit of a wild card in terms of not having any true one-to-one comps during pandemic or post-pandemic. Aladdin would be a good fit, but of course, things have changed in four years. It also had a huge star headlining the movie and an original film that was a bigger box office performer in its time.

 

Without getting *too** political here, another element to maybe factor into expectations from a non-data standpoint is the general mood of some American culture -- especially outside metro and coastal cities -- toward Disney right now. And, whether one disagrees with that mood or not, it's observably taking its toll on the brand appeal to millennials and Gen Xers who are crucial to Mermaid's success because they grew up with it. Especially women, who tend to drive presales for this kind of movie.

 

That said... there is also an argument to be made for a counterbalance in the Black community supporting this movie and overindexing versus early expectations. That would make the more bullish numbers very achievable.

 

It is just very nebulous at this point. Let's see how things shape up in the next few weeks.

Wow-very well said. That covers all the points that I have been thinking about between the attitude toward Disney and the opportunity for an elevated African-American audience. I will add this to the mix. Aladdin had a lot of specific negativity going into the movie due to a horrible reaction to the visuals of the movie trailers themselves. TLM hasn't quite had that. So I wonder if/how that difference will play out. The reactions to Hallie herself have been extremely positive.

[Mickiland16]

As for Transformers, I was looking at the previous movies demos and surprisingly (or at least to me) Bumblebee (35%) skewed more families than Into The Spider-Verse (33%) and Fallen Kingdom (30%) on the same year. The percentage of people under 25 was also higher than ITS and more female too (43% for BB and 33% for ITV) so pre-saled are probably going to be more walk-up heavy than most of live-action blockbusters but since Dominion started earlier what movie could be a good comp here? 

[keysersoze123]

29 minutes ago, M37 said:

It’s certainly possible, but this goes back to not having a great comp - there is only a vague idea of what pace to expect in the final 1-2 week ramp up, and that greatly changes the multiplier math. Have 10% of all tickets been sold (so 10x) or 20% (5x)? 

 

There are few good reasons to suspect the early sales for TLM might be a little heavier than other titles, and crossing genres may also impact the market share & comp math, and so be cautious in taking those comps at face value. Just trying to avoid the potential scenario where it “drops” from like $13M to $9M, when in reality we don’t really know if that’s actually where it is - or ever was - heading. Need another week to see which comps that have been recently adding are holding most steady, matching pace, and lean on those 

Also don’t know whether an OW - which is ultimately what people care about - of $90M would get there via $9M/10x or $13M/7x

 

I am with you. Its too early to extrapolate. Its presales are no where near Mario but higher than smaller movies. I looked at Frozen 2 and that had way more presales as well and backloaded as that had later previews start if I am not wrong. Still it looks positive for Mermaid and its going to out open FX for sure :-)

 

Anyway this was 2 days of data. 

Mermaid MTC1

Wednesday - 8634/35113 189060.70 154 shows

Previews - 26569/907323 470856.75 5526 shows

Friday - 22130/1032420 373271.26 5694 shows  

 

 

  

On 5/3/2023 at 9:59 PM, keysersoze123 said:

Mermaid MTC1

Wed - 7913/34986 173283.51 153 shows

Previews - 24206/904581 429233.46 5507 shows

Friday - 19653/1027026 332296.41 5662 shows

 

its doing around 1.2K per day at MTC1.  

 

[Issac Newton]

Imax and PLF are driving 32% of GOTG3‘s ticket sales.  

[ZackM]

1 hour ago, rehpyc said:

If I wanted to start helping with tracking, any pointers or guides to review? I know Python and data modeling, already scrape some chain's theatre listings and showtimes, etc.

Sounds like you've got everything you need.

 

I think in terms of what data to collect:

 

# of theaters

# of shows

tickets sold

total tickets

and if you can, average ticket price.

[grey ghost]

1 hour ago, M37 said:

It’s certainly possible, but this goes back to not having a great comp - there is only a vague idea of what pace to expect in the final 1-2 week ramp up, and that greatly changes the multiplier math. Have 10% of all tickets been sold (so 10x) or 20% (5x)? 

 

There are few good reasons to suspect the early sales for TLM might be a little heavier than other titles, and crossing genres may also impact the market share & comp math, and so be cautious in taking those comps at face value. Just trying to avoid the potential scenario where it “drops” from like $13M to $9M, when in reality we don’t really know if that’s actually where it is - or ever was - heading. Need another week to see which comps that have been recently adding are holding most steady, matching pace, and lean on those 

Also don’t know whether an OW - which is ultimately what people care about - of $90M would get there via $9M/10x or $13M/7x

 

 

 

Do you know if black audiences prefer to buy their tickets via pre-sales or with walk ups?

 

And what can we learn from Wakanda Forever regarding pre-sales from black audiences.

 

(Even though TLM is not a MCU sequel which are probably more pre-sale heavy)

[filmlover]

It's really wild how packed June is. Not just with big brands, but also attempts at counterprogramming (The Boogeyman, Strays, No Hard Feelings, Asteroid City, etc.).

[charlie Jatinder]

Previews actuals $18M for GoTG3

[M37]

10 minutes ago, grey ghost said:

 

 

Do you know if black audiences prefer to buy their tickets via pre-sales or with walk ups?

 

And what can we learn from Wakanda Forever regarding pre-sales from black audiences.

 

(Even though TLM is not a MCU sequel which are probably more pre-sale heavy)

 

There's both a short and long answer to that question, and the short one is generally later in the sales cycle. But since it's especially relevant to LM, we'll dive into the long answer

 

First, its not an either/or question of pre-sale vs walk-up, but when during the sales cycle a ticket is purchased: 10 days before showtime vs 10 hours vs 10 minutes - all a continuous sliding scale. Now it has been my experience that various demographic buckets generally buy tickets in similar patterns, but a film's opening (particularly a big one) is usually pulling in a mixed audience, so the nuances can be difficult to suss out, or even cancel out on balance.

 

And keep in mind "demographics" doesn't refer to one thing: you have age, race, gender, even metro vs not (and probably a few more sub-categories that can be a factor), as well as whether its fan driven (early) or casual audience (late).  Generally, the older the target audience the earlier tickets are purchased, women before men, White & Asian earlier than Black & Hispanic, cities before country, fans before casuals - that's a whole lot of competing factors for what tracking outputs as a single daily sales number and/or pace measurement!

 

When you have a film whose audience is surely is going to skew to early buy range of several demographic axes - Book Club 2 or Don't Worry Darling for example - or on the later side - say Mario or Fast X - you wind up with slow or fast final pace respectively. But when its cutting both ways, or - as is the case with LM - its not entirely clear what the audience make-up will be (especially for Thursday), then it gets complicated.

 

The only demographic skew that I'm confident will happen is that it will be female heavy (vs baseline) and that as a 90s nostalgia piece, there will be surely be some early fan buys as well. Both of those factors could inflate the early sales, which is why I'm leery of just straight projecting from comps which didn't have those same elements; but its perfectly reasonable to believe the family audience - and potential higher POC audience skew - more than cancel it out by the end. We're just not going to know how the overall trend looks for at least another week, and can start to narrow down the range of comps

[Porthos]

33 minutes ago, charlie Jatinder said:

Previews actuals $18M for GoTG3

 

Is that official or your extrapolation?  As good as it would be for my pride, I always use studio reported numbers for future comps.

[vafrow]

56 minutes ago, filmlover said:

It's really wild how packed June is. Not just with big brands, but also attempts at counterprogramming (The Boogeyman, Strays, No Hard Feelings, Asteroid City, etc.).

I find it fascinating how much attention the Barbie/Oppenheimer showdown is getting, when pretty much every weekend in June is a showdown between two or more films that have some reasonable ambitions.

 

Last summer, there was only one weekend where two films debuted to $20M or more, and only 3 where two had $10M or more.

 

The pairings in June are Spiderverse and Boogeyman, Rise of the Beasts and Strays, Flash and Elemental, No Hard Feelings and Asteroid City, and Indiana Jones and Ruby Gillman.

 

I think there's a good chance that each of those hit $10M in their debut/wide expansion, and only Asteroid City and Strays unlikely to hit $20M. But, we've not had anything like this post pandemic, and there's likely to be a lot of casualties. And it'll be a question of whether bigger films suffer a bit, or the counter programming crashes and burns.

 

[charlie Jatinder]

8 minutes ago, Porthos said:

 

Is that official or your extrapolation?  As good as it would be for my pride, I always use studio reported numbers for future comps.

I mean its not a big difference, just my regular actual extrapolation post which I does for big films.

 

Studio estimate would be good enough for our routine work.

 

Unless its case like TFA where it was $54M and not $57M

[filmlover]

11 minutes ago, vafrow said:

I find it fascinating how much attention the Barbie/Oppenheimer showdown is getting, when pretty much every weekend in June is a showdown between two or more films that have some reasonable ambitions.

 

Last summer, there was only one weekend where two films debuted to $20M or more, and only 3 where two had $10M or more.

 

The pairings in June are Spiderverse and Boogeyman, Rise of the Beasts and Strays, Flash and Elemental, No Hard Feelings and Asteroid City, and Indiana Jones and Ruby Gillman.

 

I think there's a good chance that each of those hit $10M in their debut/wide expansion, and only Asteroid City and Strays unlikely to hit $20M. But, we've not had anything like this post pandemic, and there's likely to be a lot of casualties. And it'll be a question of whether bigger films suffer a bit, or the counter programming crashes and burns.

 

 

Strays feels like an obvious casualty despite the talent involved tbh. Don't see what the hook is supposed to be beyond "aren't cursing talking animals just HILARIOUS?!" which isn't that strong of a hook to begin with. Ruby Gillman also looks like yet another DreamWorks nonstarter like a lot of their non-sequel output for the past decade or so, especially when it'll be following much more appealing animated fare.

 

Asteroid City is clearly hoping to emulate Moonrise Kingdom's run. No Hard Feelings is a bit of a wild card in that it's all gonna depend on reviews + final marketing push: raunchy comedies like this were already fading for years before COVID (to the point where many were eager to declare the genre as whole as officially dead when Bros bombed last fall), and the concept doesn't seem like the easiest of sells, but JLaw playing against type with a project like this does give it more star power than most and the director's last movie (Good Boys) ended up a surprise hit with an $80M+ total so similar results for this would make it a win.

[TheFlatLannister]

23 hours ago, TheFlatLannister said:

GREATER ORLANDO REGION

 

The Little Mermaid

 

THURSDAY 

 

T-20

SHOWINGS	SEATS SOLD	TOTAL SEATS	PERCENT SOLD
170	2034	32751	6.2%

 

SEATS SOLD SINCE YESTERDAY

33

 

SHOWINGS ADDED SINCE YESTERDAY

0

 

ATP: $14.38

GREATER ORLANDO REGION

 

The Little Mermaid

 

THURSDAY 

 

T-19

SHOWINGS	SEATS SOLD	TOTAL SEATS	PERCENT SOLD
170	2040	32751	6.2%

^{*Numbers taken as of 2:00pm EST}

SEATS SOLD SINCE YESTERDAY

6

 

SHOWINGS ADDED SINCE YESTERDAY

0

ATP: $14.38

 

The first slow day since ps started. GOTG3 is probably taking a lot of attention away from Mermaid right now

 

COMPS

T-19

 

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL 3 

(0.427x) ~$7.5M THUR