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

[John Marston]

20 minutes ago, dallas said:

You could say the same for Tobey, Andrew, and Dafoe in NWH. But that didn't stop nostalgia from peeking his head through.

 

Tobey and even Andrew appealed heavily to the 18-34 crowd who are more frequent moviegoers. Keaton doesn’t do that. Tobey also was a draw in that his first two Spider-Man movies were still considered the definite Spider-Man films this he has a huge amount  of goodwill. 

Edited May 24, 2023 by John Marston

[ChipDerby]

3 minutes ago, 21C said:

WBD was obviously counting on the bunch of early social media reactions to lead to great presales which so far it just hasn't. 

 

Just a hilarious sentence after 24 hours of presales 24 days in advance of OD

[21C]

Just now, ChipDerby said:

 

Just a hilarious sentence after 24 hours of presales 24 days in advance of OD

Do you think this is what they were hoping for when they decided to screen it at Cinemacon two months in advance and host a bunch of other screenings a month in advance as well? They were very obviously looking to create hype for the pre-sales. 

[dallas]

5 minutes ago, 21C said:

I find this argument a bit confusing because it may be true but... come on now. For all intents and purposes, word of mouth on The Flash is already out and has been for almost a month now. They've done a ton of screenings and allowed a ton of social media reactions. Maybe the review embargo lifting and the GA seeing it will cause it to bump, but not that much, and certainly not as much as GoTG and The Batman did since those two films didn't have a bunch of advanced screenings a month in advance.

WBD was obviously counting on the bunch of early social media reactions to lead to great presales which so far it just hasn't. 

Because people are becoming more picky about which movies they buy tickets for. Especially when it comes to CBMs. I, for example, don't plan on ordering tickets until I see what critics think of the movie, because at the end of the day all of this social media hype could be hyperbole.

[Maggie]

7 minutes ago, 21C said:

WBD was obviously counting on the bunch of early social media reactions to lead to great presales which so far it just hasn't. 

I don't remember...how were the Maverick presales? That too screened at CinemaCon

[ChipDerby]

3 minutes ago, 21C said:

Do you think this is what they were hoping for when they decided to screen it at Cinemacon two months in advance and host a bunch of other screenings a month in advance as well? They were very obviously looking to create hype for the pre-sales. 

 

Which is why they're doing presales for 24 days

[21C]

1 minute ago, Maggie said:

I don't remember...how were the Maverick presales? That too screened at CinemaCon

I think this goes beyond Cinemacon because WBD has beeing doing several more screenings for Flash rather than just Cinemacon and incentivized people to post their social media reactions. 
 

 

2 minutes ago, ChipDerby said:

 

Which is why they're doing presales for 24 days

I'm only commenting on what's happened so far. I can't comment on what will happen in the future, but if the Cinemacon screening and the other screenings didn't put any effect in the first 24 hours of presales I very much doubt they're gonna start to materialize in a massive way in the next few weeks. 

[Porthos]

11 minutes ago, M37 said:

I thought about mentioning Shang-Chi, but along with opening during some rough COVID times (which likely created some additional hesitation in rushing out to buy tickets), it only had a 17-day sales window; a compressed time frame naturally increases rate of growth 

 

That and ATP differences makes comping.... annoying.

 

===

 

One reason comping AM3* and GOTG3 was so hard, IMO, was that there was a string of mid-tier MCU films in 2021 (non-NWH division) and upper tier MCU films in 2022.  Problem was, in 2023 we're back to mid-tier but with a honking huge ATP hike between those two sets.

* More GOTG3 than AM3 for what I hope are obvious reasons that don't need to be re-said.

 

So while BW/SC/ET would be better comps for a whole string of films currently than, say, MoM/L&T/BP2, the double whammy of ATP + the 'rona at the time makes it... Well not something I personally want to do, and only do so with reluctance.  Others may feel more daring and more power to them.

[Shawn Robbins]

On 5/18/2023 at 4:14 PM, Shawn said:

Very good points. It's a bit stronger than Shazam comps in my samples for today as well. Thinking of a bump to 35-45 for now to see how growth goes, but wouldn't rule out 50 by any means. I'd like to see some growth for Friday especially.

 

Having all these fan movies on sale at the same time next week is going to create a lot of comp headaches, too.

 

Also bumping Mermaid up tomorrow. @charlie Jatinder will be happy about that.

 

Amid the doom and gloom for Flash's first day, just a reminder in bold here.

 

It's very possible Flash misses high expectations and early tracking, but we have to remember -- at least in terms of presales -- that all of the appropriate comps being used for the movie so far were films that faced significantly less market-crowding. There are literally two other fan-driven movies opening before Flash and whose tickets have been on sale already, with another film (Indy) having a similar audience crossover and going on sale the day before.

 

Most people are not in an economical situation to buy and hold advance tickets for 3 or 4 movies at once, and people outside die hard fans are even less inclined to do so.

 

TL;DR -- I stand by the aforementioned headache scenario of comparing June's presales (and probably July's) too strictly to much of anything that's opened post-pandemic -- at least until closer to each film's respective release. If the data aligns, it aligns, but there isn't enough of a sample size to be as confident that it will yet, even though the comps are still the best waypoint there is and at least offer a baseline.

 

The upside is that this grouping of similar audience films will be useful for the future the next time a similar release calendar comes along.

[ChipDerby]

Here is the day TGM tracking started, if anyone is curious

 

[Maggie]

1 minute ago, Shawn said:

 

 

It's very possible Flash misses high expectations and early tracking, but we have to remember -- at least in terms of presales -- that all of the appropriate comps being used for the movie so far were films that faced significantly less market-crowding. There are literally two other fan-driven movies opening before Flash and whose tickets have been on sale already, with another film (Indy) having a similar audience crossover and going on sale the day before.

 

Most people are not in an economical situation to buy and hold advance tickets for 3 or 4 movies at once, and people outside die hard fans are even less inclined to do so.

 

 

Finally, Shawn the voice of reason. There's just too much competition. The final week will tell the tale

[Porthos]

1 minute ago, Shawn said:

Amid the doom and gloom for Flash's first day, just a reminder in bold here. calendar comes along.

 

Keep comparing this to May 2019 for a reason.  Mind, at least two films did break out of that hellscape month (John Wick 3 and Aladdin) so I'm also trying to temper my doom and gloom as well.

 

Tricky thing is: Figuring out which movies will break out, which will survive, and which will implode.

 

...

 

On a not-completely-unrelated subject I've been low-key impressed with Rise of the Beasts staying power.  I think it's getting overlooked a bit (okay a lot) in this thread but that is the one film I think was prematurely buried here.

 

Not predicting a breakout by any means.  But "better than relative expectations"???

 

[efialtes76]

3 hours ago, keysersoze123 said:

From a hype perspective Batman 89 >>> Dark Knight. WB marketing just blanketed it everywhere. I personally did not like batman 89 when I saw it as a kid. l liked it better when I watched it as an adult 🙂

 

 

I always loved It!

My favourite Batman movie ever!

 

[Johnny Tran]

33 minutes ago, TheFlatLannister said:

Not sure what you mean by this. GOTG3 opening WAS disapointing 

 

It went above that weekend's tracking and hasn't let up since.  It's okay to be wrong sometimes.  The trackers were wrong. 

[M37]

It’s always fun when people parachute into this thread and tell all the trackers how to do whey they do, not all grasping all the (often unstated) nuance that goes into reading these numbers 

 

Sure, there is always a margin of error, and not always a consensus, but even then we’re arguing over a +/-20% margin for Thursday previews that only narrows as time goes on 

 

It was obvious after Day 1 that NWH or MoM was going to explode, or that AMWQ was no longer an $80M opener like the previous 2, just like it was clear GOTG3 was not opening on level of Vol 2, or that Spider-Verse was going to double if not triple the original, Mario’s potential was much higher than trades forecast, and that Indy wasn’t going to pull a TGM

 

When there is a gap between expectations (soft tracking, aka intent) and results (actual sales, aka action), always lean on the latter. And after Day 1, we know Flash just isn’t the sleeping giant poised to out-open everything else this summer. Doesn’t mean it’s a flop, or fate is sealed and we can all go home, but expectations should be recalibrated accordingly 

Edited May 24, 2023 by M37

[Maggie]

Just now, Johnny Tran said:

 

It went above that weekend's tracking and hasn't let up since.  It's okay to be wrong sometimes.  The trackers were wrong. 

Not really. The preview numbers were low. It recovered during the weekend a lot because the movie was actually amazing. The Deadline tracking a few weeks before the movie opened was 130M.

[Johnny Tran]

2 minutes ago, M37 said:

It’s always fun when people parachute into this thread and tell all the trackers how to do whey they do, not all grasping all the (often unstated) nuance that goes into reading these numbers 

 

So they are above criticism or even questioning.  Ok. 

[Maggie]

The thing is, although there's much competition, i still expected The Flash to do better in presales than its competitors because at the end of the day it's still a cbm and it's fan driven

Edited May 24, 2023 by Maggie

[XXR vs XXR]

1 minute ago, Johnny Tran said:

 

So they are above criticism or even questioning.  Ok. 

You didn’t do either of those things. You just said they were wrong. 

[Porthos]

6 minutes ago, Johnny Tran said:

 

It went above that weekend's tracking and hasn't let up since.  It's okay to be wrong sometimes.  The trackers were wrong. 

 

On 5/4/2023 at 4:56 PM, Porthos said:

One other note. If this does come in at 17.5 to 18m, while it is very tempting to look at 17.5m-18m for GOTG3 as the same as an 17.5m for AM3, IMO there is something *****VERY DIFFERENT***** about the two.

 

AM3 started very strong, slowed down, and, then basically collapsed.  That was a harbinger for its DOM run, really.

GOTG3, on the other hand, started out relatively slow and has accelerated as we get to the OW.

 

In short, one was trending down and one is trending up.

 

So while it is tempting to say, "they're the same", imo the trajectories of the two films couldn't be more different.  And that matters when it comes to projecting box office.

 

NB:  Snapshot in time, if it comes in at 17m disregard, past performance is not guarantee of future, yadda yadda yadda