A2 WEEKEND THREAD | 134.1M DOM OW | Thurs 17m / Fri 36m / Sat 45m / Sun 36m

[TwoMisfits]

14 minutes ago, wildphantom said:

none of those are the equivalent to what TWOW is promising as an experience.
 

For me it’s more the question of whether people will see the film multiple times. Doing $600 million plus domestic means you’ve got to get people coming over and over.  Some people might well just be happy with a one and done. And that’s perfectly understandable seeing as we have had this experience before. 

 

But it's not just "how much experience" but "how much cost for that experience" - everything I posted above is free (or more precisely, sunk cost), so Avatar 2 needs to beat free by a wide margin to bring people in.  And Disney has pushed the price on this movie as high as it can go, trying to premium its experience (we know average ticket price is possibly 20-30% over even Wakanda last month - Shawn was writing exact numbers, but it was Math, and I avoid Math in the morning) - at some point, the market breaks if the price goes high enough.  It may have broken for this movie, especially b/c SO MANY US folks have D+ as a sunk cost already.

 

Edit to Add: And this will also play into repeats - for those who find the value to still go see this, even with sunk cost, will they find value in seeing it again, ESPECIALLY if they are non-subscribers (so, they have to physically pay each time vs just using their "sunk cost" movie subscription?)  It's why I expect AMC to sky for OW and legs for this - all their subscribers are sunk cost ones, so it's free for them to see this every day this weekend...Cinemark - not so much.

 

Edited December 15, 2022 by TwoMisfits

[wildphantom]

4 minutes ago, TwoMisfits said:

 

But it's not just "how much experience" but "how much cost for that experience" - everything I posted above is free (or more precisely, sunk cost), so Avatar 2 needs to beat free by a wide margin to bring people in.  And Disney has pushed the price on this movie as high as it can go, trying to premium its experience (we know average ticket price is possibly 20-30% over even Wakanda last month - Shawn was writing exact numbers, but it was Math, and I avoid Math in the morning) - at some point, the market breaks if the price goes high enough.  It may have broken for this movie, especially b/c SO MANY US folks have D+ as a sunk cost already.

 

yeah, I know what you’re saying. There’s no doubt the cost is more of a factor now than it ever has been. I don’t think it’s a case of people not wanting to pay though. Just maybe not multiple times and they want the real deal for their money.  Everybody knows you can’t really see this thing in a basic theater. Multiplexes need more PLF’s as soon as possible. 

Edited December 15, 2022 by wildphantom

[vafrow]

25 minutes ago, TwoMisfits said:

 

Or, and we need to consider this, everyone stays in with friends/family and watch for free (depending on their streaming service):

Glass Onion on Netflix (for adults)

Strange World on D+ (for families)

Matilda the Musical on Netflix (for families)

Top Gun Maverick on Paramount Plus (for everyone)

 

Now, they came out in 2021, but funny enough, everyone was less sick then and that Spiderman movie was an every quadrant huge draw.  We could have a 2020 Christmas vs 2022 b/c while theaters are fully open, everyone seems to be getting sick all the time, and we seem like we're also gonna have 2 horrid ending weeks of weather for December, way colder and wetter than normal, at least on the East Coast...

 

I'm not going to disagree with you because I legitimately don't know. There are reasons why it could fall off like that.

 

It'll just be a real shame if it does, as it will be harder to rebuild that tradition of going to theatres once it's broken. And it will be due to studios not offering enough product if it does happen.

 

I will disagree about COVID risks though. I felt hesitation around COVID was higher as omicron was running pretty wild, and people who were vaccinated were getting hit. The difference was that the desire to see Spiderman was so high that people went anyways.

[M37]

13 minutes ago, wildphantom said:

none of those are the equivalent to what TWOW is promising as an experience.
 

For me it’s more the question of whether people will see the film multiple times. Doing $600 million plus domestic means you’ve got to get people coming over and over.  Some people might well just be happy with a one and done. And that’s perfectly understandable seeing as we have had this experience before. 

Yes, but those options are also free (or more accurately, no additional cost), while the Avatar experience is $20+/person. There have been plenty of dead periods where audiences have shown they are mostly comfortable skipping the movies if there isn’t something they want to watch.

Lack of competition can help float somewhat, but not as much as we saw in before times, presumably because the go to movies every week/2 weeks/month crowd is just smaller (or on subscription plans)

[filmlover]

Already have my tickets for 3D on Saturday evening. Ready for The King of the World to show how magical the big screen experience can be once again.

[Eric Prime]

I know it's early, and I do feel we might have to change our expectations on box office on what is a "big hit" after this year. Like we have to come to terms that streaming has caused the box office to likely decline big time the same way it did to TV ratings and album sales (inb4 "but Top Gun/Spider-Man tho").

 

HOWEVER, I do think the advertising campaign is to blame here. It was everywhere, but pretty much all the trailers consisted of "wow, Pandora sure is pretty", and nothing else in terms of story or character that would get people invested. And granted that was the same pull for the first movie, but that just made this new movie look like more of the same with nothing else to look forward to. Which is fine if you're already an Avatar fan who was excited from the word "go", and obviously there's a lot of thoese guys. But if you only saw Avatar once or twice back in '09, even if you liked that experience in '09, the ads don't give you this big hook that makes this stand out as something special. And yeah, add on the fact everybody knows it will be on Disney+ in a couple months, and I feel there's not really something for a casual fan to get invested in. Could be wrong, will probably leg out like crazy, idk idk idk, please don't yell at me

[XXRDJisDoctorDoom]

The numbers we’re currently getting (especially in China) have given me a lot of pause on this hitting $2B. I’m still hopeful but at this point I’m somewhere on the $625M DOM + $250M China + $1.1B OS-C-R train. 

[Valonqar]

Always manage expectations especially when a movie is 3 hours long and isn't the finale like ROTK or Endgame. 

[filmlover]

I'm not worried too much about Avatar even if it "only" opens to about $130-150M since WOM should be strong and there's no real rush to beat the spoilers (and the long runtime likely means a lot of people are waiting to see it later when they have more time). Also probably helps that there's not much out this holiday season (feels safe to say Puss in Boots/Whitney/Babylon will not see numbers similar to what the strong Alvin 2/Sherlock Holmes/It's Complicated trifecta did while the first Avatar was cleaning up over Christmas '09/New Year's '10).

 

It's also going to be completely devoid competition for quite some time, especially with how bleak January looks even by the month's standards, with M3GAN being the only movie with $20M+ opening potential. More likely than not, it will repeat its predecessor's run of seven weeks at #1 until Knock at the Cabin comes out beginning of February, although I'm sort of crossing my fingers that this one goes for eight weeks until Magic Mike's Last Dance comes out Super Bowl weekend to give Channing the bragging rights of being the one to unseat Avatar not just once (Dear John was the movie to dethrone the first, also on Super Bowl weekend), but twice.

Edited December 15, 2022 by filmlover

[Nero]

26 minutes ago, XXR Tulkun Rider said:

The numbers we’re currently getting (especially in China) have given me a lot of pause on this hitting $2B. I’m still hopeful but at this point I’m somewhere on the $625M DOM + $250M China + $1.1B OS-C-R train. 

As of now I'm also the same opinion that under Spidey is possible. 

[Nero]

19 minutes ago, Valonqar said:

Always manage expectations especially when a movie is 3 hours long and isn't the finale like ROTK or Endgame. 

You change pretty quickly lol. 

[Brainbug]

6 hours ago, Brainbug said:

Avatar 2 under Jurassic World DOM and WW?

 

40 minutes ago, XXR Tulkun Rider said:

The numbers we’re currently getting (especially in China) have given me a lot of pause on this hitting $2B. I’m still hopeful but at this point I’m somewhere on the $625M DOM + $250M China + $1.1B OS-C-R train. 

 

[XXRDJisDoctorDoom]

5 minutes ago, Brainbug said:

 

 

 

DOM is more likely than WW. It would have to do like $800M OS-C-R to come below it worldwide and that would be truly shocking. 

[Cap]

52 minutes ago, Eric The Last Airbender said:

Could be wrong, will probably leg out like crazy, idk idk idk, please don't yell at me

The only reason I’m going to yell at you is the bingo card said Monday Morning Quaterbacking On Friday, and it is Thursday, sir.

 

I had that post queue up for 12:01AM 😂😂😂 Bestie can confirm!

 

5 hours ago, Cap said:

😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

meanwhile, I’m just thinking to myself, maybe it’s time to admit that I was right, and the marketing for this movie has been terrible. They’re treating it like everyone knows what avatar is, instead of re-introducing us to the series, as if it was an original story. the first trailer gave nothing away. The second trailer didn’t give anything away except for some vague you need to protect the people. And it hasn’t been until this week, I’ve seen the humans are coming back and we need to stop them. 

 

where is my trailer? That’s like it’s been 10 years and here’s the recap in five minutes so you know what’s going on. You gotta make me care about the blue people again.

 

4 hours ago, Cap said:

I also don’t think they did enough to sell us on “that old 3d was shit and we fixed it”. 
 

but the bingo card says that were Monday morning quarterback in on Friday, so technically… I have to wait a whole 24 hours before I respond back to you more about this 😂😂😂

 

[Cooper Legion]

Don’t worry cap, I have a feeling we can pull off more than 24hrs of Monday morning quarterbacking, just this once, as a treat

[Flopped]

James Cameron back in his Abyss era? 

 

 

[Eric Prime]

 

[stuart360]

5 minutes ago, Flopped said:

James Cameron back in his Abyss era? 

 

 

Hopefully, The Abyss is amazing.

[ThomasNicole]

China situation is really a bummer, i'm very sad even if the possibility of people still not coming out strongly was being discussed for days with evidences.

 

I think most people aren't really lowering their predictions from everywhere. But i think everyone was counting with 400M or so from China in their 2B predictions. 

 

Now that it's probably gone (unless this have some miracle super legs there which is unusual for the market), is way easier seeing the movie missing the 2B milestone only because of this. Sadly i see it too. 

 

This could easily end in the NWH type of numbers, still huge and i doubt media will complain after such a weak year overall, but it's sad knowing that a lot of money was left on the table. 

 

But on a positive note, early audience reception everywhere it's already released is superb or at least very good, which is probably the most important and difficult thing the movie needed to achieve, don't make people disappointed after over a decade of hype and promises, and seems like it will achieve that. And of course it have until February without major competition, so while it's more unlikely now, we can still hope the 2B milestone can happen, the WOM seems like it will be there for it.

[stuart360]

1 minute ago, ThomasNicole said:

China situation is really a bummer, i'm very sad even if the possibility of people still not coming out strongly was being discussed for days with evidences.

 

I think most people aren't really lowering their predictions from everywhere. But i think everyone was counting with 400M or so from China in their 2B predictions. 

 

Now that it's probably gone (unless this have some miracle super legs there which is unusual for the market), is way easier seeing the movie missing the 2B milestone only because of this. Sadly i see it too. 

 

This could easily end in the NWH type of numbers, still huge and i doubt media will complain after such a weak year overall, but it's sad knowing that a lot of money was left on the table. 

 

But on a positive note, early audience reception everywhere it's already released is superb or at least very good, which is probably the most important and difficult thing the movie needed to achieve, don't make people disappointed after over a decade of hype and promises, and seems like it will achieve that. And of course it have until February without major competition, so while it's more unlikely now, we can still hope the 2B milestone can happen, the WOM seems like it will be there for it.

Christmas coming, very little competition, including in Jan, good wom.

 

It aint over yetThomas.