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

[Giorno]

How about Barbie? Obviously S&B won't be that big but the demos are the same 

[Porthos]

I mean, frankly, if we're gonna go down that route, as I intimated, I tend to think The Little Mermaid is a far better D1 comp than The Marvels.  And, even there, utility is limited for a whole host of factors.

[M37]

Just now, Porthos said:

 

When the question is answered within the next couple of sentences

 

 

😛 

 

===

 

More seriously we don't have a preview number for The Marvels yet, even if we have a decent range.   And, frankly, I'd rather not look at a film which is an outlier for its genre/series as there are usually a long list of reasons why it is an outlier.  Plus we still don't know how it'll finish so it's utility today is somewhat limited.  

 

I do understand the point you're making. But I also think you're playing with fire a bit given the overall mood surrounding The Marvels.  I suppose there are worse D1 to D1 com... overviews to make.

 

At the same time not sure I want to invite a The Marvels v Songbirds commentary in this thread given how the other Marvels threads are going today.

 

(I know I know, it's inevitable — doesn't mean I want to encourage it! )

Honestly, my first instinct was MCU level as well, in terms of frontloadness of presales. Agree Marvels isn't great for other reasons, but maybe GOTG3? Or even FNAF, as that wound up at similar level in terms of finishing pace. Maybe if you squint (and adjust ATP), could use Avatar 2.  But there haven't been many 17-day-ish sales windows recently, either super long or very short, so that especially complicates Day 1-3 comps, as the more compressed schedule is likely to drive up early sales numbers

 

On the higher end, titles like Scream VI and TLM might also be plausible, female skewing nostalgia films but not quite so fan heavy, more walk-up friendly

[Grebacio]

28 minutes ago, Porthos said:

So what are we thinking about for initial comps for Songbirds?  I happen to have FB3 as a comparison, but unfortunately the FB franchise is notorious for over performing here in Sacramento.  Then again, case could be made that Songbirds might also tend to over perform here being a prequel to a fan-driven YA title, though I'm loathe to draw too many conclusions from a sample size of 2.

 

(Then again TLM also over performed locally and if I sorta squint really hard I can see some parallels between it and the YA market, especially one that has a nostalgia hook)

 

Still, aside from FB3 whadda some ideas for Day 1s?  Given how frontloaded FB3 turned out to be, FB3 is a good "Bad Cop" comp.  But would like some "Good Cop" or even Neutral Cop suggestions.

 

Even if I don't decide to track it, discussion might be good for those with recent-ish movies.

Crawdads? Little Mermaid?

 

[PrinceRico]

How are sales for The Hunger Games and The Color Purple 

[TwoMisfits]

16 minutes ago, Porthos said:

 

When the question is answered within the next couple of sentences

 

 

😛 

 

===

 

More seriously we don't have a preview number for The Marvels yet, even if we have a decent range.   And, frankly, I'd rather not look at a film which is an outlier for its genre/series as there are usually a long list of reasons why it is an outlier.  Plus we still don't know how it'll finish so it's utility today is somewhat limited.  

 

I do understand the point you're making. But I also think you're playing with fire a bit given the overall mood surrounding The Marvels.  I suppose there are worse D1 to D1 com... overviews to make.

 

At the same time not sure I want to invite a The Marvels v Songbirds commentary in this thread given how the other Marvels threads are going today.

 

(I know I know, it's inevitable — doesn't mean I want to encourage it! )

 

I actually also agree with comping to the Marvels...not just b/c of it being a female skewing, dedicated fanbase blockbuster budgeted movie...but it's also a fall release in strike season and these have been playing...differently...down the stretch.

 

I also think it will "age range" about the same way...which is why I'm not suggesting FNAF.  I think you'll have an older base coming with some YA, but it will skew 25+, not 25-.

Edited November 1, 2023 by TwoMisfits

[Relevation]

I think a good assortment of comps for Hunger Games would be (all from this year)

 

Scream VI (younger female skewing, fan driven, $40-50M opener in the range I expect THG to get in)

John Wick 4 (somewhat fan driven action film that isn’t a mega opener and similar age skew)

The Little Mermaid (not walkup heavy female skewing blockbuster)

The Creator (young-ish skewing action-ish film which I think is tangentially connected to the action genre in a similar way to THG)

Oppenheimer (core fanbase being pulled, long film like THG, potentially not great Day 1 comp due to sales window disparities) 

 

Don’t think The Marvels works as a comp due to  not having a preview figure and also the nature of high MCU day 1 sales figures, and using a Barbie comp I think would set an unrealistic daily pace for THG that I think would just make the comp look unnecessarily bad

 

I think Scream VI is the winner out of the comps I listed but will take feedback

[Porthos]

4 minutes ago, Giorno said:

How about Barbie? Obviously S&B won't be that big but the demos are the same 

 

Problem with Barbie is how backloaded its sales were, even for a GA skewing film.

 

It's a little difficult with Barbs as it had an EA-only day of sales before the rest of the slate went up, but on the first "full" day of sales locally it sold 436 tickets, with 196 more already in the bank (for a total of 632 tickets).  For comparison, after its first full day of sales, FNAF sold 639 tickets.  And horror is one of the more backloaded genres there is! 

 

Okay, this says more about FNAF's own set of circumstances (young gaming audience, D&D, not glowing reviews).  Fair enough.  I'll bring in TLM then.  TLM sold 454 tickets on D1.  Even if I decide to scrunch the EA and D1 Barbie sales into one day of 632, that's still not indicative of just what Barbie would become.

 

Real closest analogy I probably have to Barbie's pre-sale run is something more like the JW films.  And even there I'm not entirely sure it works given Barbie's 'u-curve' wasn't deep at all.

 

Barbie really is in a class of its own.  At least until it isn't. 😛 

 

[M37]

22 minutes ago, Giorno said:

How about Barbie? Obviously S&B won't be that big but the demos are the same 

Barbie isn’t going to be a useable comp for just about anything. The combination of volume and pace over time just isn’t something we see very often - remember how it was growing on the chart against every single comp I threw at it? (Short of Minions/Venom massive surges, but those were mostly final week growth, not continuous over the long haul)

 

If one wants a higher pace comp but with some level of early sales/fanbase, then ATSV is a much better choice, if not TLM or Scream VI (but are off-genre and so may not comp $ value as well)

[Porthos]

2 minutes ago, Relevation said:

I think Scream VI is the winner out of the comps I listed but will take feedback

 

Scream VI has R-rating and 3D and a 3D Fan Event early showing (same day, but boosted the 3D percentage).

 

Pace is a good idea.  But much like Wick 4, ATP considerations are in the mix.

 

===

 

FWIW, an initial look out of Sacramento suggests a D1 under FB3's first day of sales, so I'm not even sure I'm going to track it.

 

At the same time, I'm almost certain that it will be above Scream VI's first day of sales.  In fact, I'd be very surprised if it wasn't.  Then again, as @M37 noted been a while since we had a T-18/T-17/T-16/T-15 pre-sale length window so length of pre-sales also plays a bit of a role.

 

Will say it doesn't look DOA after an initial check of things. Which isn't nothing!  But I barely have a hint of the internal D1 sales (it's sold about 25 more tickets between a check I made at 11am and 12:30pm) so I really am withholding judgement right now.  One of the reasons I was looking for feedback on what to look for here. 🙂

[Grebacio]

Crawdads was also PG-13, female driven and based on a book.

[Porthos]

3 minutes ago, M37 said:

Barbie isn’t going to be a useable comp for just about anything. The combination of volume and pace over time just isn’t something we see very often - remember how it was growing on the chart against every single comp I threw at it? (Short of Minions/Venom massive surges, but those were mostly final week growth, not continuous over the long haul)

 

If one wants a higher pace comp but with some level of early sales/fanbase, then ATSV is a much better choice, if not TLM or Scream VI (but are off-genre and so may not comp $ value as well)

 

AtSV is the other one I have in my back pocket, yes.

 

If FB3 is the "Bad Cop" comp (frontloaded, bad-meh reviews, little GA non-fanbase interest), that'd be the "Good Cop" comp I had of "hey this is actually good"/GA non-fans do get interested.

[Porthos]

1 minute ago, Grebacio said:

Crawdads was also PG-13, female driven and based on a book.

 

Yeah, but I didn't track Crawdads. 😛   Not sure of anyone who did here, actually.  Might be someone around who has some numbers for it though.

[M37]

31 minutes ago, TwoMisfits said:

 

I actually also agree with comping to the Marvels...not just b/c of it being a female skewing, dedicated fanbase blockbuster budgeted movie...but it's also a fall release in strike season and these have been playing...differently...down the stretch.

 

I also think it will "age range" about the same way...which is why I'm not suggesting FNAF.  I think you'll have an older base coming with some YA, but it will skew 25+, not 25-.

I agree very much with that last point, but FNAF didn’t sell like a PG13, walk-up heavy horror film, it was much closer to an adult MCU audience, with high fanbase a lower walk-ups pattern. That (potentially) makes the comp viable even if the audience demos are different 

[keysersoze123]

Key thing for  Hunger Games is how it sustains after opening day. Since its having a very short presale cycle, it should have better steady state pace than movies with longer PS cycle.  Do we know if premier is already scheduled?

[JustLurking]

16 minutes ago, keysersoze123 said:

Key thing for  Hunger Games is how it sustains after opening day. Since its having a very short presale cycle, it should have better steady state pace than movies with longer PS cycle.  Do we know if premier is already scheduled?

Not sure about premiere but I remember seeing review embargo is on the 9th, quite early, they must be confident in the film.

[Shawn Robbins]

On 10/27/2023 at 8:37 PM, M37 said:

I don't have a strong lean one way or another yet, it just seems the Wish LRF is awfully high to start. Ending up there wouldn't totally shock me, but the midpoint of your 3-day is basically double Encanto and more than quadruple Strange World. Especially with how weak Disney's family product has been of late, from Lightyear to Strange World, Mermaid doing OK*, and Elemental getting to $150M, but by strong WOM, now OW. Elemental may have brought some people back into the Disney family fold and raised the ceiling, but probably not in an OW rush kind of way.

(*Mermaid's domestic numbers were very good, but the international totals suggest a much lower expected ~$140-$190M DOM, based on a 35-43% DOM share (exuding China) of previous Disney LA remakes. Math may have changed post-COVID, but that broader point is that it appears Black audiences in the US boosted TLM's grosses in a way that wasn't replicated in other countries, nor should be expected for Wish)

 

So the lower bound of Wish's LRF gross range is basically higher than any Disney family film post-pandemic (adjusting Mermaid), and the upper bound includes a lot of the "Dead Zone", where no film post-pandemic has finished with a gross between $225M (Shang-Chi) and $324M (Oppy) [except Mermaid, but again see above]. And honestly I'm not sure where the "buzz" is - and it may exist and just be off my radar - to justify such a lofty initial expectation; certainly not from presales (which frankly don't tell us much either way), and also having to share family audience with Trolls over the extended holiday week.

 

Something like ~$40M OW (3-day) / $160M total would seem to me to be solid if not high end target this early, pending more information ... and yet that would be outside the current ranges.

All fair points!

 

It's very possible the range is a bit high. Time will tell. Ordinarily, I'd be right there with you and @keysersoze123 in pushing extra caution toward Disney films given their post-COVID track record... but, I think the majority of those films -- (Encanto with COVID keeping a big portion of the audience at home, Strange World with no real idea who its audience was, Elemental with the softening appeal of Pixar to today's kids) -- had baggage to carry in some way or form.

 

Conversely, as someone who is not in the target demographic, to me Wish looks more like the kind of traditional, original, comedic, "princess" film with a core audience they haven't appealed to since Frozen II and the likes of Tangled/Moana (Mermaid being the exception, which itself had some unfortunate racially-tinged baggage of its own).

 

Plus, with it being their official 100th anniversary poster movie (figuratively and literally speaking), I think the model deserves to be a little bullish this far out under the assumption that they won't mess up the movie itself and that they'll market it like the tentpole it's positioned to be over Thanksgiving.

 

Social media growth is definitely a factor in the LRF at the moment as well, aided somewhat by the studio's decision to slow-drip market buzz via a new song release each week. But whether or not those create any additional traction will be important before we get to a point pre-sales and/or reviews start telling us more.

 

I'm definitely not married to any particular number or range at this point, and would not rule out anything on either end of the spectrum, especially with so many movies aimed at women that are coming out this month. (How often do we get to say that?)

[keysersoze123]

I think range will change for multiple movies this month for sure :-)

[Hilts]

On 10/31/2023 at 9:28 PM, Hilts said:

 

 

Priscilla							OK
Thursday - showings starting 4pm						ATP	$13.24
Day	Theatres	Showings	Daily Sold	Total Sold	Total Seats	% Sold	Growth
T-6	7	14	6	19	1,471	1.29%	46.15%
T-5	7	14	4	23	1,471	1.56%	21.05%
T-4	7	14	13	36	1,471	2.45%	56.52%
T-3	7	14	17	53	1,471	3.60%	47.22%
T-2	7	15	17	70	1,491	4.69%	32.08%
MTC1	4	7	+12	41	564	7.27%	41.38%
MTC2	1	2	-2	8	204	3.92%	-20.00%
MTC3	2	6	+7	21	723	2.90%	50.00%
Comps
Asteroid City					0.424x	=	$0.47m
My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3					0.824x	=	$0.45m
A Haunting In Venice					0.378x	=	$0.45m

 

Comp average: $460k

 

Priscilla							OK
Thursday - showings starting 4pm						ATP	$13.20
Day	Theatres	Showings	Daily Sold	Total Sold	Total Seats	% Sold	Growth
T-5	7	14	4	23	1,471	1.56%	21.05%
T-4	7	14	13	36	1,471	2.45%	56.52%
T-3	7	14	17	53	1,471	3.60%	47.22%
T-2	7	15	17	70	1,491	4.69%	32.08%
T-1	8	20	4	74	2,010	3.68%	5.71%
MTC1	4	9	+2	43	768	5.60%	4.88%
MTC2	2	5	+3	11	519	2.12%	37.50%
MTC3	2	6	-1	20	723	2.77%	-4.76%
Comps
Asteroid City					0.356x	=	$0.39m
My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3					0.685x	=	$0.38m
A Haunting In Venice					0.302x	=	$0.36m

 

Comp average: $380k

 

Quietest day at T-1 I have tracked. Ran the numbers twice to be sure. Shame.

[Giorno]

so tommorow around 10 AM or so will be 24 hours on sale for S&B?