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

[CheeseWizard]

1 hour ago, AniNate said:

TheWrap did corroborate that budget figure

 

With ‘Transformers One,’ Paramount Looks for More Modest Box Office Grosses From Cybertron (yahoo.com)

Legit feels too good to be true lmao. Though there’s still rumours of a 93 million budget going around the fandom for some reason. Hopefully the 75 one is right though 

[AniNate]

 

 

 

 

[MightyDargon]

Kind of wish both Wild Robot and Transformers had been assigned to better months than September. This was pretty much the "Beetlejuice month".

[WebSurfer]

7 minutes ago, AniNate said:

 

 

 

 

So, it’s beginning to look like TWR will win the opening weekend gross over Tone based on early tracking? Despite having a lower theater count?

[CompoundTheGains]

43 minutes ago, vafrow said:

 

I'm not sure if I fully understand the question, but I think you're asking if people track previews (showtimes on Thursday evening) separate from early access (EA) shows (shows before the Thursday period).

 

The answer is usually yes. However, there's often debate on how much those early access shows canablize Thursday preview sales.

 

For some cases, I'll track separately, but I'll do two comps, one where I compare a film with EA shows, but only use Thursday sales for comps against films that didn't have EA. I also then do one where i combine the EA and Thursday sales to the film with only Thursday. The idea is that the true comp is somewhere in that range.

 

Thank you for the response.  I was confusing some shorthand lingo I was reading but now understand my mistake.  Your answer was very helpful.  Thank you!

[AniNate]

12 minutes ago, MightyDargon said:

Kind of wish both Wild Robot and Transformers had been assigned to better months than September. This was pretty much the "Beetlejuice month".

 

One of them would've been fine, not uncommon for modest ambition animated movies to release in September, Coming out two straight weeks might be problematic though.

 

I do think for purposes of coming out this year and reaching a sizable family audience though, this is the best place they can go the rest of the way. They probably wouldn't compete with Wicked, Moana, Lion King, and Sonic.

 

 

Edited 3 hours ago by AniNate

[Bob Train]

1 minute ago, AniNate said:

 

One of them would've been fine, not uncommon for modest ambition animated movies to release in September, Coming out two straight weeks might be problematic though.

 

I do think for purposes of coming out this year and reaching a sizable family audience though, this is the best place they can go the rest of the way. They probably wouldn't compete with Wicked, Moana, Lion King, and Sonic.

 

 

Transformers should’ve came out a month earlier, IO2 and DM4 were running on fumes by that point.

[vafrow]

9 minutes ago, CompoundTheGains said:

Thank you for the response.  I was confusing some shorthand lingo I was reading but now understand my mistake.  Your answer was very helpful.  Thank you!

 

I encourage people to ask questions. We gravitate to insider lingo and acronyms quite a bit. Asking for clarification is good, because it's probably not just you who has that question.

[AniNate]

4 minutes ago, Bob Train said:

Transformers should’ve came out a month earlier, IO2 and DM4 were running on fumes by that point.

 

Agreed on that but I've harped on that point enough already. And idk, maybe it ends up benefiting from an empty October and early November too.

 

Honestly though Wild Robot's preview tracking still seems very promising. If it manages anywhere close to KFP4 numbers that'd be damn good, and with that long runway my club threshold seems within striking distance.

[TalismanRing]

Local Regal in NYC (4pm)

 

Transformers One: 28/1526

 

COMPS:

IO2: $1.28m

Garfield: $1.02m

Purple Crayon: 676k

Ruby Gillman: $1.56m

Sonic 2:  $1.45m

 

It has barely moved in sales from Mon to now - 25 tickets to 28 tickets and it has RPX showings and the largest screens.   I usually only see that small Mon-Thur movement in very low openers so my theater could be a big outlier.

 

Never Let Me Go: 6/510   Speaking of low openers...

Wolfs: 35/483 - Smallest screens but most tickets sold.  I don't know how wide this has gone though.

The Substance: 37/605 - Not so fast, this one sold more tickets and again have no idea about the size of the roll out.

Edited 3 hours ago by TalismanRing

[Ryan C]

21 hours ago, Ryan C said:

 

The Substance

 

T-0 and T-1

 

Wednesday EA Screenings: 663 Seats Sold (24.8% Increase From Last Time)

Thursday: 579 Seats Sold (18.4% Increase From Last Time)

= 1,242 Seats Sold (21.7% Increase From Last Time)

 

Taken as of 6:40PM Eastern Time

 

IMPORTANT NOTES: Everything I said about this film yesterday pretty much stands today. The buzz just keeps this moving at a much stronger pace than other films of this nature. 

 

Will check one last time tomorrow before the Thursday previews officially start. For now, it's still doing well and is guaranteed to do more than $1M over this weekend. 

 

 

The Substance

 

T-0

 

Thursday: 886 Seats Sold (53% Increase From Last Time)

From 12 Theaters

 

Taken as of 4:00PM Eastern Time

 

IMPORTANT NOTES: Had the theater count been 16 (the maximum amount of theaters I track) this could've sold over 1,000 seats across all of them, but this is still a pretty damn good final day. 

 

I'd put a weekend projection anywhere between $3M and even as high $5M. Always be aware that this could be front-loaded amongst the arthouse horror crowd, but now I feel pretty confident (especially based on this over 50% jump from yesterday) that this movie is going to comfortably beat expectations. 

 

For a movie that I thought was gonna play by the "open in 4 theaters in its first weekend and never reaches 1,000 theaters" game, this is more like it!

Edited 3 hours ago by Ryan C

[BadOlCatSylvester]

So, I'm guessing Beetlejuice 2 actually keeps the top spot this weekend now that Transformers is looking like a nonstarter in the vein of Dungeons and Dragons.

19 minutes ago, Bob Train said:

Transformers should’ve came out a month earlier, IO2 and DM4 were running on fumes by that point.

One should've been the franchise's grand return after a nice, long 15-year rest. Instead, it's out the year after Rise of the Beasts, and now it has to pay the price. At least Paramount likely saw this coming and wisely kept the budget at a modest level, so they won't lose too much on it.

[MightyDargon]

30 minutes ago, Bob Train said:

Transformers should’ve came out a month earlier, IO2 and DM4 were running on fumes by that point.

Deadpool would've eaten too many of its demos despite being "age inappropriate".

[vafrow]

9 hours ago, vafrow said:

 

Transformers One, T-1, Western GTA (southern Ontario), Thursday Previews and Early Access shows 

 

Previews

Total Sales: 80

New Sales: 26

Growth: 48%

Theatres: 5

Showtimes: 13

Tickets per Showtime: 6.2

Chains tracked: MTC4

Ticket Premium in effect: Y

 

Wednesday EA Shows (15 minutes before showtime)

Showtimes: 1

EA Sales: 62

New sales: 22

Growth: 55%

 

Previews Sales by Showtime

Late Afternoon: 8/1

Early Evening: 45/6

Late Evening: 27/6

 

Preview Sales by Format

Dolby: 13/3

Dolby 3D: 29/4

IMAX: 27/4

4DX: 11/2

 

Comps (preview to preview)

0.190x KFP4 for $0.9M

0.219x IO2 for $2.8M

0.051x DM4 for $1.4M

2.667x Garfield for $5.1M

0.541x GB:FE for $2.5M

 

Average: $2.6M

 

 It didn't maintain the momentum I hoped. It's still not a bad final day, but all the comps did better.

 

This track has been all over the place for me though,, so I'm reluctant to make any bold predictions here. Transformers is also a walk up friendly franchise, so we'll see how that goes.

 

And I know studios aren't thinking of trackers when deciding release strategies, but I really do dislike all of these early access shows. I'm pretty sure 4 of 5 locations in my sample having them has thrown off the tracking.

 

As at 4:15, sales are up 24, or 30%. Not particularly great.

 

Hopefully walk ups close to evening showtimes are stronger.

[CheeseWizard]

50 minutes ago, WebSurfer said:

So, it’s beginning to look like TWR will win the opening weekend gross over Tone based on early tracking? Despite having a lower theater count?

I can’t see the tweet, what’s the count?

[Ryan C]

I don't want to derail the thread, but I literally just saw a thread on the box office reddit forum that was "Can My Old Ass outgross Megalopolis?"

 

I shouldn't be surprised because it's the internet, but talk about people taking one tweet way out of proportions and saying that My Old Ass (a movie that doesn't even have an official theater count when it's expanding wide) will outgross more than the movie that has all the PLFs and IMAX screens. 

 

As awesome as it would be for something like My Old Ass to gross more than Megalopolis, the amount of people just wanting that movie to fail and saying it will because of one tweet is absolutely ridiculous and proof that a lot of people have no clue how tracking pre-sales or even just box office in general works. 

[AniNate]

3978 for TFOne, 3700 for Wild Robot

 

Could always change with the final TC, and as it is I don't think the TC is lower enough to make a significant difference. I feel like it has the potential to be much much bigger tbh given that at some more presale heavy theaters Wild Robot is pacing close to or even ahead of TFOne in total preview sales with a week to go.

[TheFlatLannister]

22 hours ago, TheFlatLannister said:

FLORIDA 

TRANSFORMERS ONE

 

Thursday 

 

T-1

SHOWINGS	SEATS SOLD	TOTAL SEATS	PERCENT SOLD
598	2456	119061	2.1%

^{*numbers taken as of 6:00PM EST}

SEATS SOLD SINCE YESTERDAY

304

 

SHOWINGS ADDED SINCE YESTERDAY

0

 

COMPS

T-1

(1.628x) of Garfield $3.09M

(0.811x) of Kung Fu Panda 4 $3.08M

Comps AVG: $3.08M

 

Pretty sizable drop against comps. Could be just O/U $3M for Thursday previews (+ whatever EA is) 

FLORIDA 

TRANSFORMERS ONE

 

Thursday 

 

T-0 *Final Update

SHOWINGS	SEATS SOLD	TOTAL SEATS	PERCENT SOLD
598	3005	119061	2.5%

^{*numbers taken as of 4:00PM EST}

SEATS SOLD SINCE YESTERDAY

549

 

SHOWINGS ADDED SINCE YESTERDAY

0

 

COMPS

T-0

(1.555x) of Garfield $2.95M

(0.746x) of Kung Fu Panda 4 $2.84M

Comps AVG: $2.89M

 

A pretty mediocre finish, no way to spin it. Definitely thinking under $3M for Thursday now. Going with $2.8M true Thursday, probably gets reported as $3.5M previews with EA

Edited 2 hours ago by TheFlatLannister

[Roxanne]

Checking in on my local and following vafrow's advice to track the final day, TF One has gone from 2 sold at 8 AM to 13 at 5 PM. I'll check it again at the showtime proper in two hours to see what's up then.

 

No movement all day for The Substance or Never Let Go, which are at 1 and 0 sold respectively.

[YM!]

TFO is looking like another Lego Ninjago in my honest opinion: $40-50m potential with a decent start to presales, then really bad presales and projected around $30m+ OW and now underperforming walkups with really bad Friday comparisons