The Box Office Buzz, Tracking, and Pre-Sale Thread

[BadOlCatSylvester]

26 minutes ago, WrathOfHan said:

The last two Halloween films were terrible sellers in IMAX/Dolby despite large openings. It doesn't make sense to give Exorcist more than 1-2 shows per screen with Eras now.

It's the same reason why Elemental barely had any premium screens to speak of. When any given movie bombs, exhibitors get cold feet and give less screens to its successors. And Elemental was the next Disney animation after the flop combo of Lightyear and Strange World. You get the idea.

 

3 minutes ago, motionpic05 said:

Exorcist should really move. It’s going to get destroyed. 

Everything we've heard indicates the studio knows it's sitting on a dud, so they'll likely try to score as big as they can during that opening weekend and then move on.

[Inceptionzq]

Denver is already at 3711 tickets sold. Comps won't really be useful, but just to get a sense of scale, at least locally: Barbie T-3 was at 4274 tickets sold. Let's see how frontloaded this is.

[DAJK]

Beat comp probably the Hannah Montana Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour. 30M unadjusted from 600 locations.

[The Wild Eric]

6 minutes ago, BadOlCatSylvester said:

It's the same reason why Elemental barely had any premium screens to speak of. When any given movie bombs, exhibitors get cold feet and give less screens to its successors. And Elemental was the next Disney animation after the flop combo of Lightyear and Strange World. You get the idea.

 

Not really. It's actually largely because animated movies typically don't get a ton of PLFs in the first place. Unless you're a major property like Mario or a big sequel like Toy Story 4 or Minions 2, you're not getting IMAX or PLFs, since families typically don't buy premiums anyways. Even Wreck-It Ralph 2 didn't get IMAX due to Fantastic Beasts 2 and only got them a week or two after release, because Beasts 2 failed to make much money out of it and there was nothing else to replace it with.

 

Wish will likely get few premiums as well in favor of Napoleon, but it's not because "oh no Disney movies bomb now", but because of the market and how these type of movies sell.

[harrisonisdead]

14 minutes ago, motionpic05 said:

Exorcist should really move. It’s going to get destroyed. 
 

 

Don't really see how a concert recording is going to affect a horror film. Screen allocation won't be an issue with an otherwise fairly barren slate.

[vafrow]

29 minutes ago, abracadabra1998 said:

Would the best comp here be… Barbie? Female icon and focused and all that. It’ll be way more frontloaded than that of course

 

Barbie was still relatively slow. The demand was strong initially, but not out of this world, and built up slowly. 

 

This should be compared to fan driven franchises like MCU or Star Wars. But, Friday start makes things more complicated, as well as other factors.

 

Doctor Strange MOM would be a good one for those that have it.

[vafrow]

17 minutes ago, Inceptionzq said:

Denver is already at 3711 tickets sold. Comps won't really be useful, but just to get a sense of scale, at least locally: Barbie T-3 was at 4274 tickets sold. Let's see how frontloaded this is.

 

I went back to look at some No Way Home figures, and you had 6613 for Thursday previews on your first update at T-17. Would that be the same coverage area? If so, that gives a sense of scale at what we're looking at here.

[M37]

20 minutes ago, DAJK said:

Beat comp probably the Hannah Montana Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour. 30M unadjusted from 600 locations.

Perhaps some of those religious themed fathom events, or even anime. The audience composition will be different, but the pattern of mega-presales & soft walk-up should be at least in the ballpark 

[WrathOfHan]

Keep in mind Exorcist is still opening on Friday the 13th in October. Better to keep it there than push it up a week for more PLF showtimes (which it will still have on OW). Barbie already showed you can open big with reduced PLF.

Edited August 31, 2023 by WrathOfHan

[Inceptionzq]

12 minutes ago, vafrow said:

 

I went back to look at some No Way Home figures, and you had 6613 for Thursday previews on your first update at T-17. Would that be the same coverage area? If so, that gives a sense of scale at what we're looking at here.

That was Megaplex, not the same coverage area. But my first Denver update was 6470, so close enough, but Denver was after 11 hours versus 3 hours for Megaplex.

[katnisscinnaplex]

Movie	Day	Area	TC	Shows	New	Sold	Seats	% Sold
Taylor Swift	T-43	Jax	5	45	587	587	4,975	11.80%
		Phx	6	45	2,908	2,908	8,375	34.72%
		Ral	6	45	2,294	2,294	6,477	35.42%
	Total		17	135	5,789	5,789	19,827	29.20%

*Two Jacksonville theaters have shows listed but are still closed from the hurricane.

 

Taylor Swift (2 hrs) comps against 24hr movies

 - NWH - .41x (20.52m)

 - Dr Strange 2 - .964x (34.72m)

 - Batman - 1.78x (38.44m)

 

This is without 2/5 of Jacksonville available yet and only 2 hours of sales.  I'd think Friday will be at about 95% capacity when all is said and done.  Just a matter of how many shows it can secure.

 

Comps against T-0 morning sales

 - Super Mario - .535x (16.97m)

 - Barbie - .608x (12.9m)

 - Space Jam - 1.306x (17.11m)

[dobrevv]

when is her searchlight movie coming  out since shes on tour next year 

[el sid]

Sorry I quit for today.
I tried several times to get access but no chance. Now it says "please wait 10 minutes", earlier it were 5 and 3 minutes. Of course it weren't only 5 minutes but I waited. Then the page turned black and later it said that no showtimes are announced yet for The Nun II on September 7 and 8 (and of course it had already showtimes yesterday). And when it comes to The Equalizer, only the AMC Centerpoint link worked (20 sold tickets today, it were 13 yesterday).
Normally it's annoying but today... 😝. Of course the Taylor Swift fans are to blame.

Maybe it works better tomorrow.

[keysersoze123]

Bad news is I may not be able to get final number for Equalizer. Reason is Taylor Swift Eras tour has clobbered the site. This is a NWH level event at this point :-)

Edited August 31, 2023 by keysersoze123

[AMC Theaters Enjoyer]

10 minutes ago, keysersoze123 said:

Bad news is I may not be able to get final number for Equalizer. Reason is Taylor Swift Eras tour has clobbered the site. This is a NWH level event at this point 🙂

Same thing for me when I went to check those numbers.

[vafrow]

2 hours ago, vafrow said:

Taylor Swift Eras Tour, southern Ontario, D1, hour 2, T-44

 

Total sales:  5620

New Sales: 5620

Growth from yesterday: n/a

Theatre Count:  50

Showtimes:  198

Tickets per showtime: 28.384

Coverage Radius: 143km

Estimated population coverage: 8-10M

Theatres Tracked: MTC4

 

I have nothing that can really serve as a comp on this. Even things I tracked at a local level that were big like ATSV or Barbie did not have starts like this. My D1 on ATSV locally was 24 sales compared to 86 for hour 2 locally here, and doesn't take into account the ticket price.

 

Barbie locally was slow, as it got added after other theatres, so it's no help.

 

To provide context and scale though, comparing TSwifts hour 2 figure (at over six weeks out) to morning of figures for other recent movies over the same radius.

 

4.84x T-1 Blue Beetle

6.33x T-1 Equalizer

7.97x T-1 Gran Turismo

 

My figures are also so out of date, that when I've lost count, i can't go back and double check a number because it's changing so rapidly.

 

I think it's safe to say we have our next event film.

 

I just did a mini pull on a subsample. In the 2-3 hours from when I pulled this morning, sales have gone up by a factor of 2.8x.

 

Lots of the early evening shows are approaching sell out levels, so, it will be interesting to see where the overflow goes to, whether it's matinees, late shows are Saturday and Sunday times.

[Ezen Baklattan]

AMC Location	Sold	Capacity	% Sold
Assembly Row	987	1,032	95.64%
Boston Common	2,079	2,119	98.11%
South Bay	708	742	95.42%
TOTAL	3,774	3,893	96.94%

 

AMC Location	Fri	Sat	% Diff
Assembly Row	987	1,202	21.8%
Boston Common	2,079	1,948	-6.3%
South Bay	708	552	-22.0%
TOTAL	3,774	3,702	-1.9%

 

 

I checked all the AMCs on the area, and the trends are the same. Everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) for Friday night is either sold out or down to wheelchair + companion seats, even the theaters outside the Boston metro area.

 

Of course, Boston won't represent the entire country, but with ticket prices uniform, I think we'll see more of this than people think. That, and the Boston Common has large auditoriums and seat capacities.

 

Tickets are behind for Saturday, even with showtimes as early as 9am, but I expect spillover to be strong from Friday. As for Sunday, who knows?

 

Also any good tips on formatting and copying tables here? lol

Edited August 31, 2023 by Ezen Baklattan

[XXRDJisDoctorDoom]

2 hours ago, Inceptionzq said:

Denver is already at 3711 tickets sold. Comps won't really be useful, but just to get a sense of scale, at least locally: Barbie T-3 was at 4274 tickets sold. Let's see how frontloaded this is.

It’ll be massively frontloaded. I’m guessing as a %, 1st 24HR sales will be 2-3x the same equivalent of NWH.

[misterpepp]

This concert film wasn’t going to be officially announced until next Wednesday! When was the last time BOT of all things caused an announcement shift like this?

 

Extremely proud of my sources and myself. This was easily the biggest scoop we’ve uncovered so far.

[filmlover]

Already seeing commercials for Trolls on TV saying November 17. It's clearly not moving.