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

[SpiderByte]

16 minutes ago, Giorno said:

It made 80m OW despite being day and date and terrible reviews, marvels is tracking for 50m OW before reviews and being exclusive to theaters and let's not act like the cast of the marvels are movie stars either, nobody in that cast has sold a film based on their name ever 

I'm sorry I know people are really on the Marvels hate train but there is zero fucking way you can say with a straight face Sam Mother Fucking Jackson has never sold a film based on his name

[SpiderByte]

18 minutes ago, Zakiyyah6 said:

The budget and second weekend numbers have zero to do with anything. The film opened with a huge 80M without the actors promoting it. The idea that actors strike is knocking 50M off of the The Marvels opening weekend is pure cope. It's not reality. 

The strike alone, no. But not being able to promote movie, a problem literally no other Marvel release has ever had, absolutely is not a non-factor.

[vafrow]

1 hour ago, Hypercortical said:

Hey, I wanna scrape some pre-sale data in my area. Are there any tracking standards I should know about? Like I see people post data with a region listed. If I just scrape all the theaters that Fandango lists when I search for showing "near [insert city/state/whatever]" is that good enough? And if anyone has any recommendations on break durations to avoid rate limiting, I'd love to hear it. 

 

Labeling it with the basics is definitely helpful. Basically, the more you can tag to the data, the easier it is for others to understand and put into context. But, any data is good data, and do what is feasible and sustainable.

 

But really, just thanks in advance for the effort.

[MysteryMovieMogul]

6 minutes ago, SpiderByte said:

The strike alone, no. But not being able to promote movie, a problem literally no other Marvel release has ever had, absolutely is not a non-factor.

A reminder that the SAG strike occurred just before Comic-Con, and because it was in October, no cast at New York Comic-Con.

[ThomasNicole]

5 minutes ago, SpiderByte said:

The strike alone, no. But not being able to promote movie, a problem literally no other Marvel release has ever had, absolutely is not a non-factor.

No sequel to a 152M opener ended up opening with 40M or maybe less without a mega combo of factors, the strike is just one of too many. 
 

Still, this is the presales thread so let’s stay on topic. Presales are driven ultimately by fans or people really excited, so when it comes to franchises, it doesn’t need actors to have solid presales. The Marvel is doing poorly since day 1 due to many other reasons and we have data to say this for weeks now.

 

 

[Porthos]

1 hour ago, Zakiyyah6 said:

The cast not being able to market the film does not explain the pre-sales being as terrible as they are. If the cast mattered that much then why didn't Five Nights At Freddy's flop? 

 

No one, and I mean no one has seriously suggested that lack of traditional marketing is the sole reason for the state of pre-sales for The Marvels.

 

No.

 

One.

 

I am of the opinion that any one factor is not sufficient to explain the state of pre-sales of The Marvels as no one factor could possibly account for everything that's happening here. 

 

As for the success of FNAF?  There's several things I could say, some snarky, some not.  Instead I'll simply point to the rather unsatisfying fact that some films just catch lightning in a bottle for reasons that are not easily explained in depth, never mind replicated.

 

It's not so much that FNAF got "lucky" as that has implications that it didn't "earn" its success (I think it did "earn" it). It's more that some things are too nebulous to really be able to say in precision beyond, "Well, fans decided they liked it, and the property had a decent number of fans out there." 

 

It got a je nai se quoi that let it shine for a brief moment, before heading back off in the background.  No more, no less.

[DAJK]

Had it not been for the strikes and Dune moving…

 

November 2023 would have had a sci fi based on a classic SF novel, followed by a Marvel sequel, followed by a Hunger Games movie, followed by an original Disney animation. Oh, and throw in a comedy flop (Next Goal Wins), an expanding Oscar hopeful (Holdovers), and an R-rated low budget (Thanksgiving).

 

Wait… is that not November 2013? Enders Game, Thor, Catching Fire, Frozen, Delivery Man, Dallas Buyers Club, Homefront… throw in Free Birds as the comp for Trolls 3 and… wow, history really does repeat itself huh?

[Eric is Quiet]

25 minutes ago, DAJK said:

Had it not been for the strikes and Dune moving…

 

November 2023 would have had a sci fi based on a classic SF novel, followed by a Marvel sequel, followed by a Hunger Games movie, followed by an original Disney animation. Oh, and throw in a comedy flop (Next Goal Wins), an expanding Oscar hopeful (Holdovers), and an R-rated low budget (Thanksgiving).

 

Wait… is that not November 2013? Enders Game, Thor, Catching Fire, Frozen, Delivery Man, Dallas Buyers Club, Homefront… throw in Free Birds as the comp for Trolls 3 and… wow, history really does repeat itself huh?

You may get a smile out of this, but that means one movie next year will cause the Russian government go crazy and hack one of the studios. My money's on Despicable Me 4.

[jeffthehat]

1 hour ago, Hypercortical said:

Hey, I wanna scrape some pre-sale data in my area. Are there any tracking standards I should know about? Like I see people post data with a region listed. If I just scrape all the theaters that Fandango lists when I search for showing "near [insert city/state/whatever]" is that good enough? And if anyone has any recommendations on break durations to avoid rate limiting, I'd love to hear it. 

 

Yeah, I think going by theaters in your area on Fandango is a good approach. I don't think it matters that much in the end which theaters you pick though. As long as you keep tracking the same theaters, you'll get direct comparisons on how much interest there is in a movie relative to others. 

 

I just do time.sleep(5) between urls (I'm a bad programmer). It gave me problems during Eras but has been working well lately. When it would act up during Eras all I had to do was wait 15-30 mins before it started working again. 

[Hypercortical]

1 hour ago, Tinalera said:

I do manual counting myself, so admittedly I cant be much help. I am replying to thank you for wanting to join in and contribute with numbers-the more the better. I know there are a some here could definitely help you out-once welcome another counter is always welcome

lol, I actually ended up manually counting. I think I would have had to use selenium to webscrape fandango because data isn't pre-loaded into the html, and selenium doesn't seem to work on my machine. I could have kept looking for a solution, but I was impatient, So here are my manual results for:

 

Thursday Previews for The Marvels
Theaters Near Atlanta, GA (according to Fandango)

Day: T-4	Shows	Seats Sold	total seats	% seats sold
14 theaters	118	1369	23,518	5.82%

 

(There's clearly a strong preference for AMC theaters around here. Some of the AMC theaters have as much as 43% seats sold)

Edited November 6, 2023 by Hypercortical
first edit: forgot to specify day; Second edit: mispelled "atlanta"; Third Edit: forgot to specify Film

[Johnny Tran]

To be honest, I've been seeing The Marvels trailers/TV Spots everywhere for weeks now.  They are promoting it all over sports programming etc. Despite the strike going on,  I'm not really buying the idea that there's a lack of awareness for the movie.  Presales are driven by the ultra super fans mostly anyway who absolutely know there is a movie coming on 11/9 starring Carol and Fury. 

[Flip]

2 hours ago, Relevation said:

International presales comps look bad enough to where $65M seems pretty hard imo

 

Also not to diss on Charlie but didn’t he call ATSV at $125M+ INT OW and then it did $88M

spiderverse presales were suggesting that number though, and IIRC he thought it was releasing in some markets OW that it ended up releasing in later 

[YM!]

42 minutes ago, Eric Presley said:

You may get a smile out of this, but that means one movie next year will cause the Russian government go crazy and hack one of the studios. My money's on Despicable Me 4.

Putin couldn’t tolerate being defeated by Minion farts.

[Mulder]

2 hours ago, ThomasNicole said:

I’m feeling a Rise Of The Beasts with THG, which is good for 100M budget. 
 

Nothing outstanding about it’s sales but it’s consistently solid at this point and showing signs of life, which is good. Help with actors promoting and solid reviews should seal the deal. 
 

Expecting 55ish OW, maybe 60M if everything goes right. 

Definitely the most surprising franchise recovery this year honestly.

[Porthos]

3 minutes ago, Mulder said:

Definitely the most surprising franchise recovery this year honestly.

 

This is Turtles erasu...

 

...

 

Wait.  The series would have had to been popular in the first place to actually 'recover' wouldn't it?

.

 

 

I withdraw my objection. 

 

(I actually agree with you, but I do think TMNT's success this year came out of effin' nowhere)

[charlie Jatinder]

3 hours ago, keysersoze123 said:

Hunger Games: The BOSS

ahan. The BOSS.

[Relevation]

10 minutes ago, Porthos said:

 

This is Turtles erasu...

 

...

 

Wait.  The series would have had to been popular in the first place to actually 'recover' wouldn't it?

.

 

 

I withdraw my objection. 

 

(I actually agree with you, but I do think TMNT's success this year came out of effin' nowhere)

My guy Mutant Mayhem is only like the third highest grossing TMNT film domestically and fourth highest worldwide (and one of those is from 1990 unadjusted!)

 

also the answer’s Saw

 

[Porthos]

2 minutes ago, Relevation said:

My guy Mutant Mayhem is only like the third highest grossing TMNT film domestically and fourth highest worldwide (and one of those is from 1990 unadjusted!)

 

also the answer’s Saw

 

 

Gotta have an Animation Penalty adjustment. 👍

[Relevation]

1 minute ago, Porthos said:

 

Gotta have an Animation Penalty adjustment. 👍

Remind me again what was the highest grossing superhero movie domestically this year 

[Porthos]

Just now, Relevation said:

Remind me again what was the highest grossing superhero movie domestically this year 

 

Exception, rule. 🙂

 

(really though, the Animation Penalty is a well known phenomenon, even with the occasional exception)