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

[Porthos]

16 hours ago, Porthos said:

 

Quick and Dirty Kung Fu Panda 4 Sacramento Report [T-1]

1259/20719 (6.08% sold) [+360 tickets] [187 showtimes]

 

 

1.28338x Elemental at T-1               [3.08m]
---

0.60529x GBA at T-1                        [3.08m] [adj'ed for ATP hikes since 2021]
0.99447x Wonka at T-1                    [3.48m]
0.43670x Sonic 2 at T-1                   [2.73m]
0.31318x Minons 2 at T-1                 [3.37m]
1.17774x Shazam 2 at T-1                 [4.00m]
0.88413x Haunted Mansion at T-1  [2.74m]

 

========

 

 

Yeahhhh, not liking what I'm seeing.  Not the best comps, no.  But falling against most of the ones already above 3.5m.

 

Broadly similar to what I remember seeing out of Florida from @TheFlatLannister and what both @el sid and @dallas were showing in their tracks.  Gun to my head, maaaaybe 3.2m.  Ish?  Probably has enough juice to pass 3m at least.  Beyond that?  Well, it's a Q&D so no Dark Magic on the line here.

 

Next, and final, update will be around 4:30pm PST, as I don't do mid-day updates for these sorts of tracks.

 

Quick and Dirty Kung Fu Panda 4 Sacramento Report [T-0] [FINAL] [3:55-4:20]

(all showtimes before 3:55pm sampled at the start of screening)

2346/20841 (11.26% sold) [+1087 tickets] [188 showtimes]

 

1.22827x Elemental at T-0                 [2.95m]

----

0.77324x GBA at T-0                         [3.93m] [adj'ed for ATP hikes since 2021]
1.18785x Wonka at T-0                      [4.16m]
0.59377x Sonic 2 at T-0                   [3.71m]
0.35594x Minons 2 at T-0                [3.83m]
1.41070x Shazam 2 at T-0                [4.80m]
1.01956x Haunted Mansion at T-0   [3.16m]

 

====

 

Sold over a 1000 tickets since last night; still fell against Elemental.  Just goes to show how many tickets are sold for animation films on T-0.  Now I did pull the Elemental sample slightly later due to me having to do The Flash track first (30 minutes later to be precise). So that could end up mattering.   And more than a couple of these comps are flat out lol-worthy (Shazam 2, I'm looking directly at you here).  Still think it's gonna have a slightly higher ATP than Elemental, but not by much.

 

Let's go with my gun-to-the-head gut check last night and stick with 3.2m +/- .3m.

 

FWIW, Lightyear spat out 2.98m which is....   But there was controversy over that being an under reported number for whatever reason.  Not that I wish to revisit that controversy, but it is... interesting that Elemental and Lightyear are in broad agreement.  Almost makes me want to call it 3m flat.  But I just don't have the comp history to really call it.

 

Come to think of it, this is selling a decent chunk of 3D tickets for whatever reason and there is a teeeeeeeeeny amount of PLFs at MTC2 as well.  So, yeah.  Gonna be "optimistic" and say 3.2.  But a flat 3m wouldn't surprise, either.

Edited March 8 by Porthos

[keysersoze123]

I think we can hone in on 3.25m as preview number at this point. Fairly good walkups today I would say. 

[TheFlatLannister]

1 hour ago, M37 said:

Wouldn’t today be T-14?

Yes you're right. Idk I messed up somewhere on my sheet

[Cmasterclay]

Nonzero chance of two movies hitting 50m this weekend?? That'd be a godsend. Still at 47 for Dune and 45 for Panda.

[Maaatt]

10 hours ago, el sid said:

Will report precise numbers later but for the moment: It seems that I completely underestimated Cabrini. Today I looked at its Friday presales and they're indeed very good, ca. 4x better than those for Thursday. Plus it gets showtimes in every theater.

Does anyone else remember the Deadline 2024 box office preview articles? On one of them they went through and listed every movie that currently was seen by exhibition (the theater circuits) of having potential to get past the 100 million dollar century mark at the domestic box office (i think they counted around 23 on the release calendar at that time).

 

For the most part its a fairly predictable list, with the first releasee of 2024 that was seen as having a chance being Bob Marley:One Love. The title that jumped out at me though was ”Cabrini” which at that time id barely even heard of and thought was insane. Their brief justification was basically just that its the studio that made Sound Of Freedom & targets an audience that is often underserved (religious), which is true but man i still don’t get who was seeing this to get to north of $100 million domestic. Ever since then ive been curious to follow how it tracks to see if i just have a blind spot in this area or if the exhibition sources informing the article were delusional/overly optimistic.

[Eric Burnett]

Quorum Updates

Love Lies Bleeding T-8: 17.35%

Immaculate T-15: 24.85%

Challengers T-50: 18.85%

Back to Black T-71: 26.26%

The Garfield Movie T-78: 37.29%

The Wild Robot T-197: 18.43%

 

Cabrini T-1: 23.11% Awareness

Final Awareness: 17% chance of 10M

Low Awareness: 15% chance of 10M

 

Imaginary T-1: 41.2% Awareness

Final Awareness: 85% chance of 10M, 49% chance of 20M

Horror Awareness: 100% chance of 10M, 55% chance of 20M

 

Kung Fu Panda 4 T-1: 67.79% Awareness

Final Awareness: 100% chance of 20M, 90% chance of 30M, 86% chance of 40M, 76% chance of 50M, 67% chance of 60M, 52% chance of 70M, 33% chance of 100M

Animation/Family Awareness: 100% chance of 50M, 75% chance of 70M, 50% chance of 100M

 

Arthur the King T-8: 38.57% Awareness

Final Awareness: 40% chance of 10M, 6% chance of 20M

Low Awareness: 23% chance of 10M, 4% chance of 20M

[TheFlatLannister]

2 hours ago, TheFlatLannister said:

Last couple of hours have seen good walkups. It's conformably beating Argylle, Night Swim, and Mean Girls in Miami. 

Really good walkups in Miami. Every comp is pointing to $3M+

 

Average is at $3.2M

[abracadabra1998]

On 3/3/2024 at 8:30 PM, abracadabra1998 said:

 

Minneapolis St. Paul Area Previews:

 

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (T-18):

Day: T-18	Shows	New Seats	Sold	Seats	% Sold
Totals: 17 theaters	90	85	258	16847	1.53

 

Type of tix:		Total:	New:	Percentage:
PLFs:		196	62	75.97
MTC1:		142	39	55.04
Marcus:		35	6	13.57
Alamo:		36	18	13.95
Other chains:		45	22	17.44

 

Comps:

2.06x Haunted Mansion (w/ EA): $6.4 Million

1.63x Wonka: $5.71 Million

1.2x Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom: $5.4 Million

1.14x TMNT (w/ EA): $6.28 Million

 

Average: $5.95 Million

 

Definitely running hot here. Any other comp ideas?

 

Minneapolis St. Paul Area Previews:

 

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (T-14):

Day: T-14	Shows	New Seats	Sold	Seats	% Sold
Totals: 17 theaters	92	67	325	17219	1.89

 

Type of tix:		Total:	New:	Percentage:
PLFs:		257	61	79.08
MTC1:		173	31	53.23
Marcus:		40	5	12.31
Alamo:		55	19	16.92
Other chains:		57	12	17.54

 

Comps:

1.27x Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom: $5.71 Million

0.96x TMNT (w/ EA): $5.29 Million

0.39x FNAF: $4.09 Million

0.4x Indy 5: $2.9 Million

 

Average: $4.5 Million

 

Changed up the comps a bit, will add BoSS at T-11 (giving it a few more days to "catch up" since it had only been on sale for two days at T-14).

Edited March 8 by abracadabra1998

[charlie Jatinder]

1 hour ago, Cmasterclay said:

Nonzero chance of two movies hitting 50m this weekend?? That'd be a godsend. Still at 47 for Dune and 45 for Panda.

2 50s & 2 10s

[keysersoze123]

Kung Fu Panda 4 MTC1 Previews Final - 60821/464807 876836.13 3210 shows

 

Very good walkups. This should be 3.5m if we go with 25% ratio. Will update Friday later. 

[DAJK]

Really great walkups tonight for Panda across pretty much every theater I looked at. Comps point to 3x The Bad Guys and Trolls 3 (true Thursday) previews. Ahead of Lightyear and Elemental by a healthy margin (pretty much any non-Spiderverse or Minions animated movie post-Covid). 

 

Wouldn't be surprised if previews come in above 3M (dare I say 3.5?), but I'll hedge my bets for now, since all other trackers are suggesting somewhere around 3M. But don't be shocked if the number comes in tomorrow morning at 3.5M.

 

Imaginary is less impressive. 750k give or take is what I'm seeing from my markets. And WOM isn't likely to be good, so I wouldn't be surprised if this winds up in high single digits for the weekend.

 

Cabrini is what really surprised be. Very, very strong numbers here. And what's more, a lot of those were walk-ups, not pre-bought Church groups. Curious what this is going to look like over the weekend. 

Edited March 8 by DAJK

[HummingLemon496]

It's doing 4M previews 

[abracadabra1998]

Maybe Minne didn’t overshoot too much after all 👀 good to hear about walk-ups! This and Dune co-existing is awesome for the marketplace 

[HummingLemon496]

If Kung Fu Panda opens to $50M+ (it most likely will), then that means @JD Asencio was correct when he (or she?) said to remember the walk ups and cited Transformers: Rise of the Beasts as an example, a film that originally tracked for $30M+ but opened to $61M

[Porthos]

16 minutes ago, HummingLemon496 said:

If Kung Fu Panda opens to $50M+ (it most likely will), then that means @JD Asencio was correct when he (or she?) said to remember the walk ups and cited Transformers: Rise of the Beasts as an example, a film that originally tracked for $30M+ but opened to $61M

 

The thing about RotB is we saw the strong walkup performance coming about a week in advance.

 

The thing about animation films, especially ones geared to kids is, they ALL have strong walkups.  Well, the vast majority of them, at any rate.

 

The tricky part is, figuring out just how strong those walkups will be, as since it's usually concentrated in the last two days, being able to see just how high the wave crests can be... difficult.  If not impossible in some cases.

Edited March 8 by Porthos
reworded my point for clarity

[HummingLemon496]

4 minutes ago, Porthos said:

 

The thing about RotB is we saw the walkups come about a week in advance.

 

The thing about animation films, especially ones geared to kids is, they ALL have strong walkups.  Well, the vast majority of them, at any rate.

 

The tricky part is, figuring out just how strong those walkups will be, as since it's usually concentrated in the last two days, being able to see just how high the wave crests can be... difficult.  If not impossible in some cases.

Well I've personally been expecting a Shazam 2 OW for this for a long time so it (personally) comes as a pleasant surprise

[emoviefan]

The Box Office is back baby!

[dallas]

Is this the first time since the weekend of May 10, 2019 that two movies have done $50M each in the same non-summer/non-Christmas weekend? 

[von Kenni]

12 minutes ago, Porthos said:

 

The thing about RotB is we saw the walkups come about a week in advance.

 

The thing about animation films, especially ones geared to kids is, they ALL have strong walkups.  Well, the vast majority of them, at any rate.

 

The tricky part is, figuring out just how strong those walkups will be, as since it's usually concentrated in the last two days, being able to see just how high the wave crests can be... difficult.  If not impossible in some cases.

Any idea what kind of metrics studios use to estimate walkups in advance like what we've seen for Kung Fu Panda?

[keysersoze123]

1 hour ago, keysersoze123 said:

Kung Fu Panda 4 MTC1 Previews Final - 60821/464807 876836.13 3210 shows

 

Very good walkups. This should be 3.5m if we go with 25% ratio. Will update Friday later. 

Kung Fu Panda 4 MTC1 Friday - 75984/815822 1105206.10 5509 shows

 

Its about walkups any way. So where it finished today is not relevant. Assuming around 20% ratio it would need to be around 2.6m for 13m true friday(which will be around what is required for 50m OW). Let us see how things go tomorrow.