THE OFFICIAL BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER WEEKEND THREAD | 181M OW

[Krissykins]

If someone has decided the break even point for Black Adam is $500m, I’m sure it’ll make the other $80m or so required from home revenue worldwide. 
 

We’ve had a lot of $200m+ superhero films this year: Wakanda Forever budget is $250m, Thor Love and Thunder’s was $250m and Doctor Strange 2 was $200m. 
 

I don’t think that Love & Thunder budget was reflected on screen, at all. 
 

The Batman ($185m) was the cheapest of the bunch and actually looked the best IMO. 

[XXRDJisDoctorDoom]

1 minute ago, Verrows said:

We still have so far to get the box office as a whole back on track.

 

This is it. This is as far back on the track as it's going and even this will start eroding over time. 

[PlatnumRoyce]

2 hours ago, M37 said:

Keep in mind BP caught a very large second wind, morphing from an MCU film with a Black lead to something more socially significant (see also Get Out)

 

I don’t know if those numbers are out there, but I wouldn’t be surprised if those demo numbers shifted a fair amount for weekends 2 & 3, and would be more reflective of the expected baseline for the new release 

Because Black Panther's a top 10 grossing film of 2018, it's final posttrak numbers were published in MPAA theme report

* 36% caucasian, 35% black, 18% hispanic, 6% asian, 5% other

Posttrak only polls the first 2 weekends of a film so you can weight weekend 1 and 2 to come out with implied second weekend audience composition. Checking methodology at end of link, there might be a more fixed wk1 to wk2 ratio so (min sample discussion)

I'll probably do it but not until some point in the midweek. 
https://www.motionpictures.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/MPAA-THEME-Report-2018.pdf

Edited November 13, 2022 by PlatnumRoyce

[Verrows]

2 hours ago, BoxOfficeFangrl said:

It's a bit of a chicken-or-egg scenario: do the prestige releases make less because the specialty chains are gone/reduced, or have those chains remained closed because their core audience (more mature, white) has largely abandoned theatrical moviegoing? Did the $100,000-200,000 per theater average headlines fuel hype and draw more people to theaters in the following weeks? Maybe a $40-50K post-pandemic "record" PTA just doesn't move the needle the same way. And even before, some movies with huge limited openings just fizzled out in wider release.

.

 

Parasite opened on Joker's second weekend: a 131K per theater average from 3 theaters, 2 in Los Angeles. Here is where it played:

 

 

Up to 6 auditoriums per day from one theater alone, including the biggest one (800-seat Cineramadome), so 4-5 shows per day, all weekend: 80-90 showtimes, possibly, plus a whole other LA theater as well, so possibly 120-130 showtimes total, from 2 theaters (even more if there were Thursday previews). It's not the Arclight never showed blockbusters, but they weren't necessarily the priority for them. For those theaters, the platforn releases were the blockbusters.

 

Now, the Arclight and Landmark are closed. In LA, The Fabelmans is showing at a couple of AMCs in the area. For Sunday, Fandango shows 10 showtimes for one theater and 8 for the other. Over a weekend, that's 54 showtimes, maybe 60 or 70 because of Thursday previews, and they squeezed in more shows Friday/Saturday. But AMC is a major chain and there's Wakanda Forever, so Fabelmans didn't get the biggest rooms, and definitely not any 800-seat auditoriums. Some prestige movies work around this in different ways: avoiding CBMs so they get more space in limited release, or eschewing the major multiplexes. But it's a vastly worse landscape for platform releases post-2020, even compared to blockbusters.

 

 

 

 

Great post! Makes a lot of sense.

[Ken]

I started an account here, 4 years ago, for no good reason. Is the Avengers 4 teaser out?

[Verrows]

1 hour ago, Ozymandias said:

Theaters will become a thing for the poors while our wealthy betters stay home streaming sipping wine in their surround sound home theaters.

Let them. It's a lonely, sad existence doing everything you can without having to walk out your front door, including working. No wonder so many of them were all for lockdowns forever.

 

I don't envy that life, that's for sure. I still love going to theatres as much as I ever did, though I do miss the hustle and bustle of theatres when they were busier before. WF may have opened to $180M but it sure didn't feel like it at the theatre. That's inflation + more theatre locations for you.

[Verrows]

1 hour ago, Eric Killmonger said:

@Cmasterclay Okay, I think I found some good data.

 

MPAA's data showed that white audiences only made up 54% of moviegoers last year, below the 62% general population from the 2020 Census. Likewise, at-home viewing (includes pay tv, streaming, digital, DVD, etc.) is around the 60% range, depending on the format. Below the general population, but the disparity is there. Age demos also have ages 40+ underindexing like crazy in terms of theatrical business. Granted also with home viewing apart from cable.

 

https://www.motionpictures.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/MPA-2021-THEME-Report-FINAL.pdf

 

By comparison, in 2019, white moviegoers, while still below the general population, is still at 57%. The ages were also much more in line with the general population too. At-home viewing also saw big increases as well with white people and ages compared to 2019. Couldn't find anything when it comes to income or education, but the viewer shifting is absolutely real, and that's definitely hurting some movies. Whether theaters getting "less white" is a good or bad thing is up to you of course, and that's arguably a conversation for a whole other day.

Well...it's certainly not good. It's not good when ANY demo is lacking. We want all demos going to theatres and keeping that experience alive.

[Ipickthiswhiterose]

Lyle, Lyle Crocodile's run is....bizarre.

 

I mean I know all kids' films have late legs, even the ones that are technically flops, but has there been such example of a film being simultaneously such a big well-called-before-the-event flop, a kind-of sleeper hit, a complete meh and late legs so good it's down less than 25% between weekend 3 and weekend 6.

 

Totally a product of the timing and the covid production backlog, I understand. But given we've had already had two family films this year where one's gone from borderline flop to genuine hit (Bad Guys) and another from definitive flop to perfectly respectable (Superpets) on the back of late legs, it's been an interesting narrative of the year.

[Verrows]

1 hour ago, Poseidon said:

 

The problem is, there used to be 2 Elvis', 2 Crawdas, 2 Smile, 2 Tickets or even more a year.

 

The problem is, that people got very picky in what they chose to watch at the movies and that's the problem here. 

I feel like I'm beating a dead horse here but I have to make the point again: it's also about lack of product. There used to be 2 of those because 2 or more of those actually came out, period!

 

There just isn't enough product right now because studios are still gunshy about greenlighting anything that doesn't belong to a franchise.

[Verrows]

25 minutes ago, K'uk'ulkan XXR said:

 

This is it. This is as far back on the track as it's going and even this will start eroding over time. 

See I don't believe that. If we're talking about peak numbers for one movie then I could see it. I'm talking about overall numbers driven by all the product in the marketplace. That can improve if studios are willing.

[Cooper Legion]

27 minutes ago, Krissykins said:

If someone has decided the break even point for Black Adam is $500m, I’m sure it’ll make the other $80m or so required from home revenue worldwide. 

This is not remotely how it works -- if something needs 500M to breakeven that is with ancillaries already baked in, so this is double counting them. 

 

Edited November 13, 2022 by Legion By Night

[Ipickthiswhiterose]

1 minute ago, Verrows said:

Well...it's certainly not good. It's not good when ANY demo is lacking. We want all demos going to theatres and keeping that experience alive.

 

Experience is where it's at though and neither cinema buildings not filmmakers still understand this.

 

Cameron understands it.

Rowling understands it, though can't always execute it.

 

Affect is king. That's why in the absence of genuine affective offers audiences are doing the best they can with horror (affect) and generating their own affect via Memberberries (Nostalgia and hearkening to a past era). 

 

Cinema's have only pushed experience a little and in niche territories, but only a bit because it's genuinely very hard to spread bets: the more affect involved the more different types of audience responses there becomes - but it's amazing that we still have only Cameron trying to create affective worlds and thinking of cinema experience-first.

 

The other greats, despite still being great filmmakers, still don't seem to get how experience is curated anymore. Which is why Spielberg thought West Side Story was film people wanted in 2021 and Scorsese thought people wanted a slow burn contemplative mob movie  in 2019. And Tarantino and much of his brethren keep making self-referential movies about movies about movies about movies. 

 

People want tactile and their own agency, and if you don't give them tactile and agency they'll create their own fun.

[Ipickthiswhiterose]

6 minutes ago, Verrows said:

There just isn't enough product right now because studios are still gunshy about greenlighting anything that doesn't belong to a franchise.

 

Yup.

 

Mortal Engines, Nutcracker and a few others were a collective that came out at a really bad time (and also were perhaps the wrong ones). They really taught a lesson that it is a bad idea to invest hard in original or lesser know franchise creating content.

 

Even more of a shame is the Northman. It's everything cinema *should* be trying to do, except - maybe - in that case it was too niche. But it's that kind of thinking, and only thinking of this kind, that is going to shift us into a more productive era that's less reliant on established properties.

 

I think of Jurassic World, Force Awakens, The Hobbit Trilogy and Beauty and the Beast as the four originating pillars of this era: all actively horrible - and more importantly INSANELY UNCREATIVE films that were, unfortunately, gargantuan successes that taught production studios that that is what to green light. We haven't got out of this pattern yet. The MCU isn't the one that's the problem actually IMO, they're just the ones playing the current game best. 

[grey ghost]

1 hour ago, Hades said:

Ryan Renolds marketing masterclass will be needed.Im sure he will deliver again...Disney should thank FOX

 

Disney thanked them by paying them a dump truck full of money.

 

 

[CJohn]

Theaters are dead. In other news, water is wet.

[BoxOfficeFangrl]

34 minutes ago, Verrows said:

I feel like I'm beating a dead horse here but I have to make the point again: it's also about lack of product. There used to be 2 of those because 2 or more of those actually came out, period!

 

There just isn't enough product right now because studios are still gunshy about greenlighting anything that doesn't belong to a franchise.

Marry Me was a simultaneous day-and-date release, which never helps the box office. Kaley Cuoco made a romcom with Pete Davidson and it went to Peacock. We hardly get to tell if anyone new is a box office draw, because most of their non-tentpole movies premiere on streaming. Twenty years ago, a Kaley Cuoco gets put into the "next Julia Roberts" pipeline. She did The Wedding Ringer but that was sold as more of a Kevin Hart-Josh Gad buddy comedy. But now she's doing a limited series, because that's more reliable than going for movie stardom.

[eddyxx]

42 minutes ago, Verrows said:

Let them. It's a lonely, sad existence doing everything you can without having to walk out your front door, including working. No wonder so many of them were all for lockdowns forever.

 

I don't envy that life, that's for sure. I still love going to theatres as much as I ever did, though I do miss the hustle and bustle of theatres when they were busier before. WF may have opened to $180M but it sure didn't feel like it at the theatre. That's inflation + more theatre locations for you.

I dunno where you guys live but here in Charlotte, WF was doing sell outs all day on Friday and Saturday. And my theaters were busy with traffic when i went both times. I live in a very urban area so maybe that’s the difference. 

[Krissykins]

35 minutes ago, Legion By Night said:

This is not remotely how it works -- if something needs 500M to breakeven that is with ancillaries already baked in, so this is double counting them. 

 

How is it? Someone said they think it needs to gross $500m at the box office to break even. How and where are ancillaries already included? 

[Verrows]

2 minutes ago, eddyxx said:

I dunno where you guys live but here in Charlotte, WF was doing sell outs all day on Friday and Saturday. And my theaters were busy with traffic when i went both times. I live in a very urban area so maybe that’s the difference. 

Yeah my location plays a part. Not out in the boonies but not urban either. I live in a smaller city adjacent to a bigger city (Calgary).

 

I also went to a 4:20 showing so that doesn't help. 

[Cooper Legion]

6 minutes ago, Krissykins said:

How is it? Someone said they think it needs to gross $500m at the box office to break even. How and where are ancillaries already included? 

Needing 500M to breakeven means that it needs 500M of box office to breakeven. That is after ancillaries. If something is below the breakeven point, that means failing to breakeven after ancillaries. It comes from the 2.5x rule of thumb which includes prod costs, marketing cost, other costs vs theatrical rev+ancillaries.