Christmas Weekend Thread (24-26 Dec). No Way Home (84.5m) | Matrix (22.5m 5 day) | Sing 2 (39.4m 5 day)

[M37]

2 hours ago, Mango said:

 

It's possible they don't these days, since their baby is Disney+ I guess.

 

In the past, though, Disney is historically responsible for TONS of extra pushes to get films to certain milestones. Black Panther to $700m, Wrinkle in Time to $100m, Frozen to $400m, Tangled to $200m, (check out it's weekend gross in May 2011 when Pirates 4 opened), and plenty more in the past. 

 

 

It’s usually not “the studio” as a matter of pride, but someone in the executive food chain who has bonus incentives tied to total domestic gross, and works to nudge it up over the mark if it’s close (there’s been some, uh, shady accounting practices now and again)

 

But with the pandemic, those are probably out the window, so no reason to be concerned about it 

[EmpireCity]

It's early, but looking like flat or even a slight increase to $31m

[YM!]

2 minutes ago, EmpireCity said:

It's early, but looking like flat or even a slight increase to $31m

Any hopes for increases for the new openers?

[EmpireCity]

Here is the other factor that I see absolutely nobody talking about (at least in the last few pages), but as I pointed out heading into this week that Spider-Man was not going to have anywhere close to the number of screens or shows that it had for the opening weekend.  

 

If you have a 10 screen theater, they were showing it on at least 5 screens the 16th - 21st.  Then on the 22nd they might be down to 3 screens and on the 25th down to 2 screens.  That absolutely contributed to the drop along with the calendar and other factors.  

 

There will be a reset starting this coming Thursday, Dec. 30th.  Theaters are going to be doing their film schedule negotiations tomorrow (Monday) morning for 12/30 - 1/6.  Many are going to drop Nightmare Alley completely or go to 1 show per day.  Same thing with West Side Story.  If they were holding Encanto over, it will be gone.  They will be dropping anything else they had on a split screen like Ghostbusters.  

 

Spider-Man is going to get a lot more shows for the coming weekend.  The hold should be very good.  I see very little fall of in actual demand.  If anything, there wasn't enough supply to satisfy it.  

Edited December 27, 2021 by EmpireCity

[EmpireCity]

8 minutes ago, YourMother said:

Any hopes for increases for the new openers?

 

Maybe.  

[EmpireCity]

Hindsight is 20/20 and all that, but without question some of us here were ringing the alarm bell that the calendar was way too fucking overloaded given all the labor challenges and having an all-time Marvel release coming out on the 16th.  The studios showed their ass releasing 9 or 10 movies wide in a basically 2 1/2 week window.  

 

How it should have gone down.....

 

- American Underdog stays in early December or better yet should have moved to late January

- Nightmare Alley goes NY/LA on Christmas Day and then a steady ramp up wide through January

- West Side Story releases on NY/LA on Dec. 10th and wide on Dec. 22nd

- The King's Man should have moved up to Nov. 10th or back to February

- Journal for Jordan was a natural MLK Weekend release

- The Matrix was doomed by HBOMax and the fact it was pretty clearly going to be divisive.  I would have left that still on Dec. 22nd or moved it back to May.  

- Licorice Pizza goes limited NY/LA on Dec. 3rd, ramps to 500 theaters on the 17th and 1,500 on Dec. 22nd.  

 

This would have made everyone more money and room to breathe.  It was pure stupidity to have shoved all of these releases in such a short window.  

Edited December 27, 2021 by EmpireCity

[narniadis]

1 hour ago, EmpireCity said:

It's early, but looking like flat or even a slight increase to $31m

I will gladly take the more rare Boxing Day increase - would rather be wrong that way then over estimating

**edit**

Misunderstood EC, increase being from estimate, not Christmas Day. 

Edited December 27, 2021 by narniadis

[Joyous Legion]

24 minutes ago, EmpireCity said:

It's early, but looking like flat or even a slight increase to $31m

Isn’t 31 a decrease?

[Landon1195]

3 minutes ago, Product Driven Legion said:

Isn’t 31 a decrease?

The estimate for Sunday was $30M

[Joyous Legion]

8 minutes ago, Landon1195 said:

The estimate for Sunday was $30M

Right, but the sat was 31.75. So -2.5%

[XXR & Friends]

 

Well, I just did a presales count for my theater and unless tomorrow is the day for where a precipitous amount of walkups comes that we haven't seen yet, we're probably looking at a 30% drop (or more). 

[Joyous Legion]

2 minutes ago, GoblinXXR said:

 

Well, I just did a presales count for my theater and unless tomorrow is the day for where a precipitous amount of walkups comes that we haven't seen yet, we're probably looking at a 30% drop (or more). 

Could you post in the buzz thread?

[BestPicturePlutoNash]

January is a wasteland except Scream and Morbius. 355 is dead meat. I assume mostly everything that isn't dead or frontloaded (American Underdog) will hold solidly well pending omicron

[CJohn]

355 is a 5M opener at best. Scream should do 15M 4 day OW and I think Morbius can do 40M OW if Omicron calms down a bit by then. We will need all the December holdhovers we can get to help January.

[TwoMisfits]

4 minutes ago, BestPicturePlutoNash said:

January is a wasteland except Scream and Morbius. 355 is dead meat. I assume mostly everything that isn't dead or frontloaded (American Underdog) will hold solidly well pending omicron

 

RRR is going to be an interesting foreign film DOM release to track for 1/7 - it might do better than almost all of 2021's adult releases...

Edited December 27, 2021 by TwoMisfits

[XXR & Friends]

51 minutes ago, RiddlerXXR said:

 

Well, I just did a presales count for my theater and unless tomorrow is the day for where a precipitous amount of walkups comes that we haven't seen yet, we're probably looking at a 30% drop (or more). 

 

In lieu of this, I'm updating my expectations to the following....

 

467.5
19

16

16.5

15

13

21

18

9

595 through January 3rd

75 after that

670 final 

 

[Joyous Legion]

18 minutes ago, BestPicturePlutoNash said:

January is a wasteland except Scream and Morbius. 355 is dead meat. I assume mostly everything that isn't dead or frontloaded (American Underdog) will hold solidly well pending omicron

Will Underdog be frontloaded? Why?

[EmpireCity]

Sorry, I was looking at the wrong number.  I think it will be flat or increase over the actual Christmas Day number.  

 

$32m - $32.5m

[EmpireCity]

22 minutes ago, CJohn said:

355 is a 5M opener at best. Scream should do 15M 4 day OW and I think Morbius can do 40M OW if Omicron calms down a bit by then. We will need all the December holdhovers we can get to help January.

 

I'm going with at least double your Scream number and Morbious can do $55m+ if reviews are decent.  

[Shanks]

1 hour ago, EmpireCity said:

Here is the other factor that I see absolutely nobody talking about (at least in the last few pages), but as I pointed out heading into this week that Spider-Man was not going to have anywhere close to the number of screens or shows that it had for the opening weekend.  

 

If you have a 10 screen theater, they were showing it on at least 5 screens the 16th - 21st.  Then on the 22nd they might be down to 3 screens and on the 25th down to 2 screens.  That absolutely contributed to the drop along with the calendar and other factors.  

 

There will be a reset starting this coming Thursday, Dec. 30th.  Theaters are going to be doing their film schedule negotiations tomorrow (Monday) morning for 12/30 - 1/6.  Many are going to drop Nightmare Alley completely or go to 1 show per day.  Same thing with West Side Story.  If they were holding Encanto over, it will be gone.  They will be dropping anything else they had on a split screen like Ghostbusters.  

 

Spider-Man is going to get a lot more shows for the coming weekend.  The hold should be very good.  I see very little fall of in actual demand.  If anything, there wasn't enough supply to satisfy it.  

 

16 minutes ago, EmpireCity said:

Sorry, I was looking at the wrong number.  I think it will be flat or increase over the actual Christmas Day number.  

 

$32m - $32.5m

 

"Aapke Muh me Ghee Shakkar" ~

Edited December 27, 2021 by Shanks