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

[AniNate]

It's true that people don't show up to just anything Pixar puts out now but I blame Lightyear for the lack of enthusiasm more than anything. Whatever came out after that movie was going to have to pay for its sins. 

Edited May 17, 2023 by AniNate

[JWR]

The reviews that come out of Cannes will be critical. Best case scenario, it has good word of mouth and walkups compensate.

[TheFlatLannister]

38 minutes ago, M37 said:

Fwiw, I don’t think Mermaid will be a good comp for Elemental; see no reason for it to have as much early sales/fan rush for a true animated original. Expecting it to pace much more in line with the Sonic 2/Ghostbusters range, with some brand awareness but mostly a traditional family film  

What do you think could work as a comp (from 2023 films) 

[YM!]

34 minutes ago, keysersoze123 said:

Pixar had strong Adult fanbase that helps with presales. That is how it used to be pre pandemic. now we are in different era. Even last year Lightyear T-3 was ahead of Minions. Obviously Lightyear was stalling out while Minions was a juggernaut. 

I remember Coco having shit presales and everyone freaking out about it.

Edited May 17, 2023 by YM!

[keysersoze123]

3 minutes ago, YM! said:

I remember Coco having shit presales and everyone freaking out about it.

What presales data we had back then? We did not track presales until fandango pulse and movietickets top 5 were inaccessible. 

[el sid]

Fast X counted today for Friday:
 

NY (AMC Fresh Meadows 7): 506 (14 showtimes)
Miami (AMC Sunset Place 24): 206 (18 showtimes)
Grand Rapids (AMC Grand Rapids 18): 106 (16 showtimes)
Austin (AMC Lakeline 9): 22 (2 showtimes)
Tempe/Phoenix (AMC Centerpoint 11): 64 (12 showtimes)
San Francisco (AMC Metreon 16): 371 (16 showtimes) 
LA (AMC Universal): 724 (18 showtimes)

Total tickets sold in 7 theaters: 1.999. 

Up mediocre 39.5% since Monday.
Comps (all counted on Wednesday of the release week for Friday): Angel Has Fallen (6.4M true Friday/21.4M OW) had 293 sold tickets,
BT (8M/30M) had 1.000 sold tickets,
Uncharted (11.7M/44M) had 982 sold tickets,
Hobbs & Shaw (17.9M/60M) had 1.994 sold tickets = x1.03 (on Monday it was x1.29) = 18.4M.
F9 (22.9M/70M) had 1.656 sold tickets = 71% (on Monday it were 87%) = 16.3M.
 

Idk. I saw that @keysersoze123 has way better Friday numbers and normally they are very trustworthy.
But judging from my theaters I would say that Fast X needs a big jump till tomorrow to reach F9's OW.

Edited May 17, 2023 by el sid

[YM!]

4 minutes ago, keysersoze123 said:

What presales data we had back then? We did not track presales until fandango pulse and movietickets top 5 were inaccessible. 

Not to the same uniform degree and theater data was rare apart from a few select users but I do recall Coco didn't sell so hot.

 

Tbh the best comparison for Elemental are Super Pets and Bad Guys.

 

Edit: Deep Wang who had theater data regularly gave presale updates and was unsure about Coco until the week of opening.

Edited May 17, 2023 by YM!

[TwoMisfits]

53 minutes ago, keysersoze123 said:

Pixar had strong Adult fanbase that helps with presales. That is how it used to be pre pandemic. now we are in different era. Even last year Lightyear T-3 was ahead of Minions. Obviously Lightyear was stalling out while Minions was a juggernaut. 

 

Lightyear probably would be the best comp, though...normal Pixar family fans on the same OW, even if the male/female split might be a touch different...

 

Although Mermaid is probably 2nd best, b/c I don't see Elemental, with its love story, as 4 quad...little boys and romance don't tend to sell...

Edited May 17, 2023 by TwoMisfits

[keysersoze123]

29 minutes ago, YM! said:

Not to the same uniform degree and theater data was rare apart from a few select users but I do recall Coco didn't sell so hot.

 

Tbh the best comparison for Elemental are Super Pets and Bad Guys.

 

Edit: Deep Wang who had theater data regularly gave presale updates and was unsure about Coco until the week of opening.

I did browse the tracking thread. The best data we had was pulse and I would say it was not bad for Coco. There were comps with Wonder and it was doing much better. Wang's data was a big help for blockbusters. Smaller movies did not have great comps. We just cannot compare with fine grained data we have. Other way to look at back then is Boxoffice.com initial tracking. That was uber strong for Coco. That had Unkrich who was coming after Toy Story 3 as well. Let us see what @Shawn comes up for Elemental next week. 

 

https://www.boxofficepro.com/long-range-forecast-coco-death-wish-mollys-game/

 

[AniNate]

Most opti-realistic outcome I have in mind is it's boosted to a $40m ish opening by enthusiastic reviews and then Ratatouille legs after that get it to around Puss 2 numbers, and it's enough of a hit OS to get it to the breakeven point. assuming a budget around $200m. 

Ratatouille had some tough 4-quad competition itself in Transformers and Harry Potter, so not an impossibility.

 

 

Edited May 17, 2023 by AniNate

[M37]

43 minutes ago, TheFlatLannister said:

What do you think could work as a comp (from 2023 films) 

Of that group, the only one might be Mario? But even then you have a size discrepancy and Wed OD in April with some markets on Spring Break while others were not, vs Thursday preview in mid-June, so will be decent error bars there.  Granted, I was MIA during most of March and have only partially gone back and pulled data, but I can't see any of those other releases having a final week growth rate even close to the the family zone of +300% (>4x) from T-7 to T-0.

 

Even looking back at 2022, Super Pets had only 62 and 102 sales at T-7 in the Philly and Katniss's Jax/Pho/Ral samples respectively, and finished at 853 and 753. For comparison, Sonic 2 had around 800 in each of the 3 samples (Including Sacto), and finished at 3400-4000 in each. Lightyear only had a 9 days sales window, so not at all usable until the very end to help refine the estimate. [I didn't log numbers for Strange World, PiB, or Bad Guys, but I would suspect they're more in the Super Pets range]

 

IMO, the most important factor in selecting comps - even more important than genre - is trying to estimate what kind of pace to expect in the final week when most of the action happens. If you can roughly match pace, adjustments can be made for ATP and market variance and such to get to a reasonable $ value estimate, which is ultimately the goal. Most of the time when tracking "misses", its because the actual pace either well exceeded or fell short of what was initially penciled in, and we see comp values rising or falling down the home stretch

[AniNate]

Too bad Inside Out came out right before long-range tracking became a thing, would've been interesting to see how tracking evolved overtime for that before and after its Cannes screening, was also in a similar position at the time where upfront enthusiasm for Pixar movies had started to wane. At the very least I have to believe its glowing reception was a major factor in its huge opening weekend. 

Edited May 17, 2023 by AniNate

[JWR]

5 minutes ago, AniNate said:

Too bad Inside Out came out right before long-range tracking became a thing, would've been interesting to see how tracking evolved overtime for that before and after its Cannes screening, was also in a similar position at the time where upfront enthusiasm for Pixar movies had started to wane. At the very least I have to believe its glowing reception was a major factor in its huge opening weekend. 

 

Definitely. Elemental needs similar reactions to stand a chance. 

[Porthos]

IMO there isn't a good comp for Elemental.  Closest ones would either be Sonic 2 or Minions 2.   Minions 2 had a very slow start while Sonic 2 had a reasonably slow start.

 

Problem with Minions 2 is... well, you know.

 

I know it sucks, but sometimes it really is best to just Ignore Bad Data, as there really isn't much to glean from a film that isn't going to have strong initial pre-sales on a 30 day window.

 

...

 

*thinks*

 

Along those lines, the only one that might fit is, believe it or not, Nope.  Horror is a semi-similar genre when it comes to sales patterns and Nope had an even longer pre-sale window than Elemental.  Will be ATP differences, but as I think about it, probably the least-bad comp we have when we want to discuss films that were tracked that didn't have an ounce of frontloading.

Edited May 17, 2023 by Porthos

[keysersoze123]

@Eric Toretto Do you have link to initial tracking thread. I know that was hidden for a while and then opened up again later. 

[Krissykins]

Elemental looks a bit reductive, so I can’t imagine it being a big hit. 

[TheFlatLannister]

On 5/16/2023 at 4:20 PM, TheFlatLannister said:

GREATER ORLANDO REGION

 

The Little Mermaid

 

THURSDAY

 

T-9

SHOWINGS	SEATS SOLD	TOTAL SEATS	PERCENT SOLD
170	2928	32751	8.9%

^{*numbers taken as of 4:00pm EST}

SEATS SOLD SINCE YESTERDAY

126

 

SHOWINGS ADDED SINCE YESTERDAY

0

 

SELLOUTS

0

ATP: $14.38

 

 

COMPS

T-9

 

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL 3 

(0.460x) ~$8.1M THUR

 

If it follows Aladdin IM (~$103M OW)

 

Mario

(0.612x) ~$19.5M THUR

 

If previews fall in between both of these comps: ~$13.8M THUR

GREATER ORLANDO REGION

 

The Little Mermaid

 

THURSDAY

 

T-8

SHOWINGS	SEATS SOLD	TOTAL SEATS	PERCENT SOLD
170	3090	32751	9.4%

^{*numbers taken as of 5:00pm EST}

SEATS SOLD SINCE YESTERDAY

162

 

SHOWINGS ADDED SINCE YESTERDAY

0

 

SELLOUTS

0

ATP: $14.38

 

 

COMPS

T-8

 

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL 3 

(0.471x) ~$8.2M THUR

 

If it follows Aladdin IM (~$104M OW)

 

Mario

(0.606x) ~$19.4M THUR

 

If previews fall in between both of these comps: ~$13.8M THUR

[TheFlatLannister]

On 5/16/2023 at 4:26 PM, TheFlatLannister said:

GREATER ORLANDO REGION

 

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

 

THURSDAY

 

T-16

 

SHOWINGS	SEATS SOLD	TOTAL SEATS	PERCENT SOLD
119	2926	25449	11.5%

*Numbers taken as of 4:00pm EST

SEATS SOLD SINCE YESTERDAY

92

 

SHOWINGS ADDED SINCE YESTERDAY

0

 

SELLOUTS

0

ATP - $13.45

 

 

COMPS

T-16

 

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL 3 

(0.576x) ~$10.1M THUR

 

If it follows ITSV IM (~$99M OW)

GREATER ORLANDO REGION

 

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

 

THURSDAY

 

T-15

SHOWINGS	SEATS SOLD	TOTAL SEATS	PERCENT SOLD
119	3003	25449	11.8%

*Numbers taken as of 5:00pm EST

SEATS SOLD SINCE YESTERDAY

77

 

SHOWINGS ADDED SINCE YESTERDAY

0

 

SELLOUTS

0

ATP - $13.45

 

 

COMPS

T-15

 

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL 3 

(0.583x) ~$10.2M THUR

 

If it follows ITSV IM (~$100M OW)

[TheFlatLannister]

On 5/16/2023 at 4:23 PM, TheFlatLannister said:

GREATER ORLANDO REGION

 

Transformer: Rise of the beast

 

THURSDAY includes EA 

 

T-23

SHOWINGS	SEATS SOLD	TOTAL SEATS	PERCENT SOLD
108	989	22296	4.4%

^{*Numbers taken as of 4:00PM EST}

SEATS SOLD SINCE YESTERDAY

28

 

SHOWINGS ADDED SINCE YESTERDAY

0

ATP: $14.87

 

 

COMPS

T-23

 

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL 3 

(0.215x) ~$3.9M THUR 

 

If it follows Bumblebee IM ~$29M OW

GREATER ORLANDO REGION

 

Transformer: Rise of the beast

 

THURSDAY includes EA 

 

T-22

SHOWINGS	SEATS SOLD	TOTAL SEATS	PERCENT SOLD
108	1004	22296	4.5%

^{*Numbers taken as of 5:00PM EST}

SEATS SOLD SINCE YESTERDAY

15

 

SHOWINGS ADDED SINCE YESTERDAY

0

ATP: $14.87

 

 

COMPS

T-22

 

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL 3 

(0.216x) ~$3.9M THUR 

 

If it follows Bumblebee IM ~$29M OW

[keysersoze123]

1 minute ago, TheFlatLannister said:

GREATER ORLANDO REGION

 

Transformer: Rise of the beast

 

THURSDAY includes EA 

 

T-22

SHOWINGS	SEATS SOLD	TOTAL SEATS	PERCENT SOLD
108	1004	22296	4.5%

^{*Numbers taken as of 5:00PM EST}

SEATS SOLD SINCE YESTERDAY

15

 

SHOWINGS ADDED SINCE YESTERDAY

0

ATP: $14.87

 

 

COMPS

T-22

 

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL 3 

(0.216x) ~$3.9M THUR 

 

If it follows Bumblebee IM ~$29M OW

Why dont you use Shazam instead. That opened to 30m and I thought you tracked that movie.