Weekend Thread | July 7-9 | Weekend Estimates on Page 32

[Bob Train]

That's an excellent hold for Indy. Probably looking at an around 50% drop.

[Unfitclock]

@Eric Bunny you’re probably right I’m not sure about other areas but insidious is selling really well near me tonight 

[AMC Theaters Enjoyer]

9 minutes ago, Shawn said:

Figuring that will do much better in the evening. Hopefully.

Looking at my local theater, the 7:20 showing for Joy Ride is selling almost three times the 4:40 showing that I’m going to soon. So that theory is probably true.

 

(I should note that this theater is very walk up heavy though)

[Torontofan]

18 minutes ago, Last Man Standing said:

The funniest movies to me barely or don't at all touch controversial topics, Wet Hot American Summer, Walk Hard, Zoolander, really the only great comedies that are seen as controversial are Borat and Tropic Thunder.

 

Tropic Thunder was interesting as it seems it became more liked and popular over time

[Shawn Robbins]

3 minutes ago, Unfitclock said:

@Shawn but the black phone previews where’s just from Thursday it has early access added in it just doesn’t make sense how it would do less than 2x it’s previews on true Friday 

Fan base and poor WOM midsummer. Nope barely did around 2x last July and wasn't a 5th movie in a series.

[Shawn Robbins]

10 minutes ago, YM! said:

Out of curiosity how are Across and Elemental holding?

 

2.3 and 2.6, respectively.

 

Numbers this early from this source often go up, though I haven't tracked them as much this summer so this is just raw info passing along.

[JohnnyGossamer]

4 minutes ago, Torontofan said:

 

Tropic Thunder was interesting as it seems it became more liked and popular over time

 

[ringedmortality]

Just now, JohnnyGossamer said:

 

 

Another reason why Cruise is the GOAT

[CJohn]

Hoping Insidious goes up 1-1.5M. WOM is terrible tho. I might see it over the weekend.

[M37]

1 hour ago, baumer said:

 

Hey @Shawn good to see you here and as always thanks for the updates. That Indy number might be a little bit optimistic but if my theory holds true, that Indy is definitely a weekend movie based on the much older demographics, then that number doesn't seem to outlandish. If that is the number that would put it in line for maybe 26 million for the weekend and that would be a decent drop.

Fwiw, I agree with you. Definitely a more casual/less metro audience, so would expect higher weekends (and holidays). That Wed number was more of reversion to baseline than a signal of weak legs IMO (though I suspect MI7 is going to hit it pretty hard)

[LegionWrex]

Oh yikes just saw the numbers for Insidious. Cause $40M is off the table then, was way too ambitious too quickly with that.

[IronJimbo & Sheldon's Son]

Hopefully that Elemental number goes up a bit more. I know it's summer and all but +24% from Thu to Fri still seems way too low to me. It's still higher than Elvis's 4th Friday (2.3m) though so $150m is still well within reach.

[rebelscum86]

9 hours ago, M37 said:

It was -72% off a 2 day total though, full day of “previews” on Mon + Tue holiday effect. I expected Wed to be closer to $3M tbh 

 

How many shows do 3pm previews get? I'm not sure it should really be seen as such big deal since we are use to adding previews into Friday. Every theater around me has 4 shows of SoF whether they start at 10am or 12pm.

 

9 hours ago, baumer said:

 

You guys should see some of the absolutely pissed off diatribes I get from people on Instagram when I try to explain this. I actually start off by saying "as much as I'm looking forward to seeing this movie and as much as I want it to make gobs of money, it did not dethrone Indiana Jones on Tuesday'" lol and this drives some people absolutely crazy. It's actually kind of humorous. 

 

I don't know how we should view the 3m pay it forward in terms of were it gets added to the gross, but they are legitimate retail purchases. There are NGOs that bought out theaters of Black Panther and Capt. Marvel to give away tickets to families. I believe one bought 40,000 tickets at once for Black Panther.

 

8 hours ago, BadOlCatSylvester said:

That's nuts, considering how little hype there was for this one. I guess the original cast returning must've been a bigger deal than I'd thought. An early sign of much better things to come in July where the only failure I'm expecting is Haunted Mansion, compared to the landmine that was June.

 

I like Patrick Wilson a lot since Alamo and didn't even know 2 other Insidious movies were made. I recognized this one instantly b/c the original cast.

 

8 hours ago, TomThomas said:

A friend of mine is a big fan of stuff like Insidious, The Conjuring, The Nun, Annabelle etc, but he said he doesn't consider them real movies (with the actual story, characters and artistic merit), but more like thrill rides/attractions which he watches just for screamers and never rewatches them since they served their purpose on their first watch.

 

I love horror movies. Films don't have to be about plots and strict left brain logic. Tone, tension, sound, getting any purposeful reaction with film craft is real film making. Paul Thomas Anderson has some of the most famous scenes that aren't logically cathartic but are emotionally cathartic based on the visual and auditory elements he is putting together and I don't think people would say his films aren't real movies.

Edited July 7, 2023 by rebelscum86

[baumer]

15 minutes ago, rebelscum86 said:

How many shows do 3pm previews get? I'm not sure it should really be seen as such big deal since we are use to adding previews into Friday. Every theater around me has 4 shows of SoF whether they start at 10am or 12pm.

 

I don't know how we should view the 3m pay it forward in terms of were it gets added to the gross, but they are legitimate retail purchases. There are NGOs that bought out theaters of Black Panther and Capt. Marvel to give away tickets to families. I believe one bought 40,000 tickets at once for Black Panther.

I like Patrick Wilson a lot since Alamo and didn't even know 2 other Insidious movies were made. I recognized this one instantly b/c the original cast.

 

I love horror movies. Films don't have to be about plots and strict left brain logic. Tone, tension, sound, getting any purposeful reaction with film craft is real film making. Paul Thomas Anderson has some of the most famous scenes that aren't logically cathartic but are emotionally cathartic based on the visual and auditory elements he is putting together and I don't think people would say his films aren't real movies.

 

I'm not criticizing the pay it forward amount, and I certainly don't think they're doing it first and foremost to pad their box office on Tuesday lol. I think these guys really truly an honestly want people to see this movie so it can expose what's happening in the world.

 

I was just simply pointing out that the $3 million and pay it forward sales was added to the Tuesday box office along with the Monday box office which means that it really didn't make more than Indiana Jones on tuesday.

[rebelscum86]

6 hours ago, wildphantom said:

Deadline 

“Already, Indiana Jones‘ first week at 4,600 theaters is ahead of No Time to Die‘s $75.2M (the pic finaled at $160.8M). Remember, the 007 finale opened at a time when everyone was still skittish about returning to cinemas during the pandemic.”

 

This is such garbage. NTTD is like the third biggest grossing film of all time in the U.K. when everyone was apparently ‘skittish’. Fact is the movie did not far off what Spectre did in the US.  It was not affected by other factors whatsoever. 

 

I would have seen this if it wasn't for lock downs.

 

4 hours ago, grim22 said:

 

The funniest development story is the new Friday the 13th movie - its been in development through all the different horror genre changeups in the past 15 years and has had scripts for all of those change-ups. There was the straight up hard-R torture porn version developed, then a found footage version developed, then a subversion of expectations one where Jason's Dad is the actual killer, and a legacy sequel version when Halloween happened to the random Crystal Lake TV Show in the works at Peacock which will likely never end up happening either. The legal battle behind the franchise prevented anything associated with it from coming out. Even now, the end result was that the screenwriter only owns domestic rights, so no actual theatrical movie can happen until that is sorted out since New Line owns OS rights.

 

I believe fans love these movies for the creative kills and only one of those sounds like it could give fans that.

 

2 hours ago, Brainbug said:

 

My theory (theory! Not fact!) why comedies have just ... sucked for years now is that the writers are simply afraid. They are afraid of accidently making a "controversial" joke (heated political climate and all that, though i really dont want to dive deeper into this actually) that could result into Twitter having a meltdown ... or Threads in the future i guess. So they take the "safe" route and just make the characters loud and obnoxious, because screaming means funny apparently.

 

Big mainstream comedy movies like Bruce Almighty or Superbad really seem like a thing of the past. Kinda like romance movies, nobody cares about that anymore. I mean, what do people actually find funny these days? It seems to me that humour is more subjective than ever today. Though maybe thats just me beeing stupid, thats also a very real possibility.

 

It doesnt help that i rewatch Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz every year and get reminded that these two movies are funnier than everything Hollywood has done in the last 10 years combined.

 

 

 

 

 

2 hours ago, BestPicturePlutoNash said:

I think people are just lazy lol. 

 

Comedies require wit and structure and set-up. But with the rise of the improvised driven Apatow comedies, it's cheaper and less time consuming to produce a basic script and just stick a camera in front of actors and have them mug. 

 

No Hard Feelings was hyped as JLaw unlike you've ever seen her. And besides the nude scene (she was already nude in movies before!), it's a half-baked idea overly dependent on her elevating the material with improv. Cocaine Bear and Strays are similar too. These reasons contributed to the genre dying out in the last decade. The Change-Up, The Sitter, The Watch (though, admittedly that did suffer from the Trayvon Martin stuff too lol), The House, Rough Night. Audiences got tired of watching stars repeat the same stupid vulgar shit. The few comedies that did breakout in the latter half of the decade (Sausage Party, Good Boys) didn't carry massive legs because the opening weekend audiences realized the concept only went so far

 

But nowadays people just seem to find "viral" memes and online comedians funny which is mostly the same thing. Someone makes stupid faces in front of a camera and riffs on easy topics and concepts like Trump or whatever. They laugh at the concept of a joke rather than the joke itself?

 

I wrote a comedy once for a script jam. Done in 3 days so not good (1 pass). Chose comedy b/c it wasn't my thing and was experimenting. Had no middle act and just kind of ends but got a lot of feed back that people laughed every page. Maybe I'll share the script some day. Ended up making a comedy indpendently to, really don't know how that happened, b/c again it's not my thing, but that won't be shown, though it did have some scenes. There are 2 scenes from I still chuckle when I remember them.

[M37]

23 minutes ago, rebelscum86 said:

How many shows do 3pm previews get? I'm not sure it should really be seen as such big deal since we are use to adding previews into Friday. Every theater around me has 4 shows of SoF whether they start at 10am or 12pm.

It wasn’t 3pm, it was full day, some as early as 9am (which is why I put it in “ “s), and on a pseudo holiday with the 4th the day after. Also these kinds of films can be frontloaded, often on level of anime. So the Wed number in isolation is really all that mattered IMO, not the drop from a double holiday full day preview 

[M37]

2 hours ago, DAJK said:

Those have to be true friday #s right? No way Insidious does only 8M Friday after 5M Thursday.

 

Also, thanks for the numbers @Shawn!

Said this a few times, but the post-4th of July Thursday is the most inflated of the summer (year?), almost like a Friday itself, lowering the Th/Fri ratio and IM significantly 

 

Usually it’s a tentpole opening here, like Thor’s sub-5x last year, but the effect is the same 

Edited July 7, 2023 by M37

[baumer]

1 hour ago, LegionWrex said:

Oh yikes just saw the numbers for Insidious. Cause $40M is off the table then, was way too ambitious too quickly with that.

Nobody was ever thinking 40 million for insidious. I was told it was tracking between 20-28 million. If it breaks 30 that's not a number a lot of people saw coming.

[PenguinHyphy]

Raunchy comedy sucked during its heyday, and they probably still suck now. People have finally matured and are resolutely rejecting it, so studios need to stop trying to have it happen again. They went from Coming to America, Plane, Trains & Automobiles, Clueless, Mean Girls and other comedy that relied on characterization, cleverness, pointedness and timing to Step Brothers like crassness. America Pie and Judd Apatow are the two worst things that have ever happened to studio comedy because none of that was timeless, and you are seeing the effects now of what happens when you rely on gimmicky humor 

[baumer]

9 minutes ago, PenguinHyphy said:

Raunchy comedy sucked during its heyday, and they probably still suck now. People have finally matured and are resolutely rejecting it, so studios need to stop trying to have it happen again. They went from Coming to America, Plane, Trains & Automobiles, Clueless, Mean Girls and other comedy that relied on characterization, cleverness, pointedness and timing to Step Brothers like crassness. America Pie and Judd Apatow are the two worst things that have ever happened to studio comedy because none of that was timeless, and you are seeing the effects now of what happens when you rely on gimmicky humor