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

[HummingLemon496]

INB4 a $25M opening for Aquaman 

Edited November 21, 2023 by HummingLemon496

[Mulder]

Under 500 tickets is kind of insane. I get holiday movies have good legs but if (Admittedly, IF here) it goes too low I can't see a good multiplier helping it that much, especially if it gets bad or mediocre WOM. 20 x 5 only gets it to 100.

[JonathanMB]

1 hour ago, Porthos said:

 

Virtually impossible due to the holidays:

 

 

(ETA: Sorry meant to quote M37's post!)

Pitch perfect 3 is probably a good comparison point, as that movie was wildly frontloaded that weekend, dropping -37% on Saturday and another -61% on Sunday. That it still managed a 5+ multiplier is actually pretty crazy. Granted, we've had two A-budget superhero movies this year score the worst multipliers ever for a $100M+ opener and $50M+ opener respectively, so maybe Aquman pushes the limits of that if audiences reject it like they did those two.

 

50 minutes ago, Mulder said:

I feel like Wish getting poor reviews torpedo'd it. I know usually reviews don't matter for animated fare, but I feel like Disney's rep has taken such a beating that those reviews do matter. Maybe if the GA who does see it ends up liking it, it can pull a mini-Elemental run but that's a big if.

 

Disney animated films have thrived the most when they're bringing in not only the kids but the entire family (toddlers to teens) and even older crowds that don't have kids because of the high quality of their work. It's why they broke all sorts of records in the '90s, then faded in the '00s before returning to power in the '10s. The fact that this is going to be WDAS's first rotten film in nearly 20 years is probably going to scare a lot of those fence-sitters away. Always impressive how consistently cyclacle this industry can be...

Edited November 21, 2023 by JonathanMB

[Brainbug]

The end of Disney.

 

The end of Superhero movies.

 

The only hope for theaters is Wonka. A wonky hope.

 

Godzilla Minus One alone cant safe theaters! 

 

 

 

[Eric is Anxious]

2 hours ago, MovieMan89 said:

I swear, if Paul King didn’t give us another Paddington delight with Wonka, it will be the biggest missed opportunity imaginable right now. The way that will destroy everything if it’s that good with audiences begging for anything appealing this holiday… probably 400+. 

Resident Timothee stan. Just gonna tell you...400 is never gonna happen. Like...come on now.

[Vector Sigma]

I don't think the DCEU dying is a good excuse anymore. I know a few people with gigantic comic-book collections who were completely unaware DC was getting a new universe. At some point I just wonder, are people just not interested in superhero movies anymore? Of all of my students, the only superhero movies they saw recently were No Way Home and Wakanda Forever. 

[CJohn]

We are flopping left and right.

[TheFlatLannister]

20 minutes ago, Mulder said:

Under 500 tickets is kind of insane. I get holiday movies have good legs but if (Admittedly, IF here) it goes too low I can't see a good multiplier helping it that much, especially if it gets bad or mediocre WOM. 20 x 5 only gets it to 100.

In my market all big blockbusters start with at least 1k tickets sold in the first few hours (Disney springs does a lot of the lifting)

 

Indy 5 started with 1319

TLM started with 1515

Spider-Verse 2277 

 

I get that the Holidays will surely depress OW sales, but 400?? That's like Elemental or Blue Beetle lmao

[Halberstram]

1 minute ago, TheFlatLannister said:

In my market all big blockbusters start with at least 1k tickets sold in the first few hours (Disney springs does a lot of the lifting)

 

Indy 5 started with 1319

TLM started with 1515

Spider-Verse 2277 

 

I get that the Holidays will surely depress OW sales, but 400?? That's like Elemental or Blue Beetle lmao

Good lord. Somebody pray for James Wan. 

[Brainbug]

7 minutes ago, TheFlatLannister said:

In my market all big blockbusters start with at least 1k tickets sold in the first few hours (Disney springs does a lot of the lifting)

 

Indy 5 started with 1319

TLM started with 1515

Spider-Verse 2277 

 

I get that the Holidays will surely depress OW sales, but 400?? That's like Elemental or Blue Beetle lmao

 

Who could have known that Aquaman 2 could sink this low? It seems almost fishy.

[Giorno]

first one came during the peak of comic book movies, even a critically demolished venom made 860m with an october release in the same year, the market has changed so much that a fantastically well recieved guardians movie can't even make those numbers

[Porthos]

Going to keep this ***ON TOPIC*** and talk solely about BUZZ and TRACKING here.

 

People probably don't want to hear this, but...

 

We are just, JUST NOW, exiting a period where the Hollywood Hype Machine — you know one of the things that generates buzz — was not just shut down, but was actively suppressed.  Both by Hollywood and by social media types and other folks elsewhere online who were sympathetic to strikers.

 

Compounding that, the DCEU is in transition.  Everyone knows this.  So even if there was some sort of self-sustaining hype possible outside of the Hollywood Hype Machine, that too has been actively suppressed.  

 

And I do mean the words "actively suppressed" here, as there are real, actual, tangible forces that are acting like anti-buzz, for lack of a better term.

 

Now the transition of the DCEU to the DCU or whatever they're calling it was always gonna put a massive weight on the scales for this movie.  Or be a tremendous headwind.  Pick whatever metaphor one wants, I'm game.

 

But we can not, and should not, just ignore the fact that even if WB/Hollywood wanted to Hype Up this movie the last few months, they really couldn't.  Even if they tried, a decent chunk of the audience wouldn't have been receptive to it.  And that sort of ACTIVE ANTI-BUZZ doesn't go away just like that *snaps fingers* thanks to the SAG strike being (probably) over.

 

So is it really a surprise it is having a soft opening?

Is it really a surprise that MOST films released post July are facing problems?

 

Sure there's been the occasional viral breakout.  But film after film after film has either not reached expectations or had some sort of problem on their rollout.  Maaaaaaaaaaaybe there's a reason for that.

[Valencia]

14 minutes ago, Halberstram said:

Good lord. Somebody pray for James Wan. 

Nah it’s ok

This will be like the 8th? DCEU bomb in a row.

 

The 6th CBM to flop in 2023.

 

And “The Marvels” has already taken the crown for biggest failure of the year, as this even made the news channels to make fun of it.

 

This flopping will go unnoticed.

[Kon]

9 minutes ago, Porthos said:

Going to keep this ***ON TOPIC*** and talk solely about BUZZ and TRACKING here.

 

People probably don't want to hear this, but...

 

We are just, JUST NOW, exiting a period where the Hollywood Hype Machine — you know one of the things that generates buzz — was not just shut down, but was actively suppressed.  Both by Hollywood and by social media types and other folks elsewhere online who were sympathetic to strikers.

 

Compounding that, the DCEU is in transition.  Everyone knows this.  So even if there was some sort of self-sustaining hype possible outside of the Hollywood Hype Machine, that too has been actively suppressed.  

 

And I do mean the words "actively suppressed" here, as there are real, actual, tangible forces that are acting like anti-buzz, for lack of a better term.

 

Now the transition of the DCEU to the DCU or whatever they're calling it was always gonna put a massive weight on the scales for this movie.  Or be a tremendous headwind.  Pick whatever metaphor one wants, I'm game.

 

But we can not, and should not, just ignore the fact that even if WB/Hollywood wanted to Hype Up this movie the last few months, they really couldn't.  Even if they tried, a decent chunk of the audience wouldn't have been receptive to it.  And that sort of ACTIVE ANTI-BUZZ doesn't go away just like that *snaps fingers* thanks to the SAG strike being (probably) over.

 

So is it really a surprise it is having a soft opening?

Is it really a surprise that MOST films released post July are facing problems?

 

Sure there's been the occasional viral breakout.  But film after film after film has either not reached expectations or had some sort of problem on their rollout.  Maaaaaaaaaaaybe there's a reason for that.

 

FNAF makes 79M on its first weekend. The hype totally based on brand power.

 

If the opening weekend of a franchise movie get less than that, it couldn't be due to the strikes. I mean, if the strikes don't reduce the hype for FNAF enough to get less than 79M, it shouldn't affect other movies to make less than that.

Edited November 21, 2023 by Kon

[Arlborn]

27 minutes ago, CJohn said:

We are flopping left and right.

It's cute (in the worst possible sense of that word) to see some people who love cinema (I assume anyone crazy enough to sign up on this obscure corner of the internet loves cinema) laughing at everything flopping and saying stuff like "hah, I hope Hollywood learns a lesson", when I'm pretty sure that:

 

a. The lesson Hollywood will learn from this is certainly going to be wildly different from the one the person saying it wants. (spoiler alert: they'll double down on nostalgia)

 

b. Movie theaters have just endured a horrible couple of years due to COVID and they already know they'll endure a pretty bad 2024 because of reshuffling due to the strikes, and then they see their best season of the year(Thanksgiving to Christmas) going up in smokes before their eyes and they must already be calling their accountants to ask whether they can even survive the next year.

 

 

But yeah, let's laugh, that'll teach 'em

Edited November 21, 2023 by Arlborn

[John Marston]

I think Aquman will do better than this first day suggests but still a sizable drop from the first 

[Halberstram]

31 minutes ago, CJohn said:

We are flopping left and right.

[TheFlatLannister]

The nostalgia trend - which Eric was talking about earlier - in Hollywood is only going to get worse and worse with each flop. More than half of the films being greenlighted in Hollywood are nostalgic trips 

[Porthos]

11 minutes ago, Kon said:

 

FNAF makes 79M on its first weekend. The hype totally based on brand power.

 

If the opening weekend of a franchise movie get less than that, it couldn't be due to the strikes. I mean, if the strikes don't reduce the hype for FNAF enough to get less than 79M, it shouldn't affect other movies to make less than that.

 

17 minutes ago, Porthos said:

Sure there's been the occasional viral breakout.  But film after film after film has either not reached expectations or had some sort of problem on their rollout.  Maaaaaaaaaaaybe there's a reason for that.

 

I specifically was inferring FNAF (and TET for that matter) when I mentioned the "occasional viral breakout".
 

But I would point out that those two viral breakouts were from outside the Studio System.  One was from the world of video games and with virtually no in-built film fan base and the other from the world of music.

 

Both of those worlds would be less receptive to the anti-buzz forces that are running rampant in the world of entertainment. 

 

Also, calling FNAF "franchise movie" is... Rich, IMO.  It is totally a franchise movie series now.  When it was greenlit?  Not particularly.  IP-based?  Sure.  Not the same thing though.

 

Even so, the occasional viral-based breakout in no way diminishes just how much Hollywood has been handicapped by the dual strikes.  And it's gonna take some amount of time for that damage to be unwound.

[M37]

23 minutes ago, Porthos said:

Now the transition of the DCEU to the DCU or whatever they're calling it was always gonna put a massive weight on the scales for this movie.  Or be a tremendous headwind.  Pick whatever metaphor one wants, I'm game.

Gotta go with “be an anchor” for this film, right?