Weekend Thread (11/17-19) | Early Deadline #s - Songbirds 5.75-6M Previews, Trolls 2M

[Issac Newton]

9 minutes ago, Issac Newton said:

 

 

Budget is just $15M will be profitable in a week.

[Issac Newton]

The Hunger Games: The Ballad Of Songbirds & Snakes

 

$19.2M OD (incl. $5.75M Previews)

 

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UPDATE, Saturday AM: Refresh for more analysis The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes came in with an estimated $19.2M Friday. Though right in the range of where we saw it yesterday, the Suzanne Collins prequel is bound to file under the $50M+ projection with $44M-$46M per industry estimates. We’ll update with Lionsgate‘s number when it arrives

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The CinemaScore for Songbirds & Snakes came in at B+, the lowest for the Hunger Games franchise but not far from both Mockingjays‘ A-. However, hope prevails in other exits. On PostTrak, Songbirds & Snakes is still 4 1/2 stars, with 87% positive. Best scores come from women under 25 at 93% who the biggest demo for the movie at 37%. The 18-24 bunch at 45%, the biggest age demo, embraced Songbirds & Snakes with a 90% grade. Women over 25 at 27% gave it an 85%. Men over 25 at 21% graded it at 81% while men under 25 showed up at 15% with an 83% grade. Diversity demos were 50% Caucasian, 24% Hispanic and Latino, 11% Black and 10% Asian. Sixty-nine percent definite recommend. We’ll see how all of this kicks into tonight and beyond.

 

Interesting about the movie is that it’s not a typical NYC and LA type of movie: Highest grossing theater is the AMC Boston Commons with $61K so far. The pic is playing best in the South and Mountain Regions. Imax and PLFs are only fueling 36% of the weekend gross, which seems low. Rotten Tomatoes upticked to 60% fresh with critics.

 

Edited November 18, 2023 by Issac Newton

[Krissykins]

8 minutes ago, TomThomas said:

Ghostbusters 2016 all over again.

That would be the opposite. Most of the people who didn’t like that are only online. 

[JimmyB]

The entire world rejecting an MCU movie, that is a sequel to a billion dollar film just 4 years ago...crazy box office times.

 

Also, November's box office is a disaster. Post Barbie the box office has been a wasteland. Families will be picking up 75-inch TV's for under 400 bucks at Walmart. They'll spend $20 PVOD instead of going to the theater this holiday season.  Streaming will keep raising prices but so will theaters. Inflation will continue to slow but prices won't come down. The buying power of the dollar will just be less.  Hollywood is late to what audiences want but this is different. Sure a movie based on Minecraft will make a lot but a movie based on Borderlands will bomb. People have way more options for their entertainment dollar and are more picky. Times are changing if a movie isnt an event the general audience doesnt care. The box office is top heavy as fuck, we have 2 years of data now, its the new normal.

[TomThomas]

13 minutes ago, Zakiyyah6 said:

Captain Marvel 1.1 billion dollar gross obfuscated what I have been saying for years. Carol Danvers, as she is portrayed in her first movie, is a dull over powered character who is hard to care about. She's the Henry Cavill Superman of the MCU. People thought the film was fine and fun but never attached to the lead character. So that killed her too late nearly 5 years later sequel. 

Cavill was better though.

[Grand Cine]

3 minutes ago, Issac Newton said:

The Hunger Games: The Ballad Of Songbirds & Snakes

 

$19.2M OD (incl. $5.75M Previews)

 

 

I think @charlie Jatinder is true when he said than he see the movie make 14M for True Friday and think that it's just 5M for previews

[filmlover]

The Marvels with a 75%+ second weekend drop, even with competition and the loss of all IMAX/PLF screens, is just OOF. 

 

Hunger Games looking like it'll open with about the same as the last Fantastic Beasts did ($42M), which is more or less what I expected.

[TomThomas]

7 minutes ago, Krissykins said:

That would be the opposite. Most of the people who didn’t like that are only online. 

That's definitely not true. It would be really hard to find anyone who liked it outside US critics and twitter. Very much like The Marvels.

Edited November 18, 2023 by TomThomas

[wildphantom]

5 minutes ago, JimmyB said:

The entire world rejecting an MCU movie, that is a sequel to a billion dollar film just 4 years ago...crazy box office times.

 

Also, November's box office is a disaster. Post Barbie the box office has been a wasteland. Families will be picking up 75-inch TV's for under 400 bucks at Walmart. They'll spend $20 PVOD instead of going to the theater this holiday season.  Streaming will keep raising prices but so will theaters. Inflation will continue to slow but prices won't come down. The buying power of the dollar will just be less.  Hollywood is late to what audiences want but this is different. Sure a movie based on Minecraft will make a lot but a movie based on Borderlands will bomb. People have way more options for their entertainment dollar and are more picky. Times are changing if a movie isnt an event the general audience doesnt care. The box office is top heavy as fuck, we have 2 years of data now, its the new normal.

The Marvels performance is way more to do with people feeling polarised about seeing it due to the shows than anything else. 
 

Otherwise, November’s box office hasn’t been anything unusual, other than a lack of major product for other reasons. 
 

I think your post is way too dramatic. Sure there’s more competition for eyeballs, but that’s nothing new. People have regularly shown they won’t pay $20 for PVOD for one movie in any significant numbers whatsoever. 

[BoxOfficeFangrl]

29 minutes ago, Issac Newton said:

 

 

The original plan was to have it open in limited release on November 10 and expand to "wide" on November 22; then the timeline was moved up two weekends. I saw The Holdovers in October and liked it, but felt it was so early for a Christmas movie. But 95% of them die at the box office after Christmas, plus it's not like the audience for a 1970s throwback movie even comes out to movie theaters anymore.

 

I guess the plan now is to put it on PVOD here in another week or two and hope awards buzz carries it in the countries where it comes out in January.

[Grand Cine]

It's really strange for HG to have a a B+ cinamscore and to have very good exits in Posttrack

[Dale Cooper]

16 minutes ago, Barnack said:

Hunger Games without a Hunger Games is a harder sale (and you cannot do the games 3 movies in a row either) and those high concept affair are almost always better in a barely explain world that are just a metaphor for a real one, would it be the cube or something else. Do again the director change to have one that have time to do the movie, a single one, etc... if it is really good maybe it match Catching Fire but that already exceptional.

I mean, if it had been a brilliant movie (much better than the first two), it's hard to know what would have happened but that doesn't really feel like something to consider.

 

16 minutes ago, Barnack said:

The first Potter was probably the biggest one of the whole franchise, but even without taking inflation into account not every Potter movie opened bigger than the one before, maybe you meant the first Lords of the Rings ?

No, I meant Potter. I forgot that the second one opened lesser than the first, but other than that they all grew in box office in their first day of release (and probably would all have had bigger OWs than their predecessors, even though it's hard to compare Wednesday openings with Friday openings). It's a stark contrast to how sizeably Mockingjay Pt 1 fell from Catching Fire even on previews and opening night. I would think that at least the core fans would stick with it being split in two parts (they did so for Potter and Twilight at least). That to me suggests that there simply was a lower interest by that time than for the first two movies. I very much doubt that it being just one movie would have changed that.

[Krissykins]

7 minutes ago, TomThomas said:

That's definitely not true. It would be really hard to find anyone who liked it outside US critics and twitter. Very much like The Marvels.

I disagree. Haven’t seen the Marvels yet so can’t comment. But it seems like Twitter hates it. 

[Grand Cine]

"Second place goes to Universal/DreamWorks Animation’s Trolls Band Together which is coming up strong with a $30M opening after a $9.37M Friday. The Walt Dohrn-directed threequel gets an A CinemaScore, just like the first one. PostTrak is great at 87% and 68% recommend with kids under 12 hugging Trolls 3 at 95%. Mom leaning at 69% female, with 57% of the audience between 18-34. The largest quad was 25-34 years old at 29%. Diversity demos are 38% Latino and Hispanic, 36% Caucasian, 7% Black and 19% Asian/other. Trolls 3 are ruling South Central, Midwest and West. The Cinemark Rialto in Rialto, CA is the highest grossing venue in the nation with over $16K"

 

Trolls 3 have the same positive response as HG (+ better cinemascore) and the same demo in genre and age ( a little older) but more diversity ( very good score for Latino)

[Coldbird]

33 minutes ago, Zakiyyah6 said:

It's definitely paying for the sins of Eternals, Love and Thunder, Quantumania and yes despite people denying it because it made a very frontloaded 950M, Multiverse of Madness. But it can only pay for the opening weekend. The word of mouth is all on the film itself. 

Dont forget the shows, secret invasion was the nail in the coffin

[interiorgatordecorator]

Third place belongs to Disney’s The Marvels with a second Friday of $2.8M (ouch, -87%) and second weekend forecast of $9.7M, -79% –the biggest second weekend drop ever for an MCU title, and a running total of $64.5M by EOD Sunday.

 

 

[Barnack]

3 hours ago, JimmyB said:

Families will be picking up 75-inch TV's for under 400 bucks at Walmart. They'll spend $20 PVOD instead of going to the theater this holiday season.  Streaming will keep raising prices but so will theaters. Inflation will continue to slow but prices won't come down. The buying power of the dollar will just be less.

Which historically help not hurt the cheapest entertainment option, like going to the movie theaters (Avatar box office was during the financial crisis).

 

Giant TV have been cheap for a very long time now, I am not sure if this is a new variable.

 

3 hours ago, JimmyB said:

. Sure a movie based on Minecraft will make a lot but a movie based on Borderlands will bomb.

I too am a bit suspect of the discourse around VG adaptation, one of the biggest franchises just got a 98% audience score on RT just released and it did not reach 45m domestic.

 

Uncharted was already a movie trope made into a game like Tomb Raider, did really well but nothing special, less obvious to adapt stuff into movies like Warcraft big nothing outside China, Minecraft does not seem like a sure thing at all.

 

I am sure a billion dollar was thrown around when Pokemon Detective Pikachu was announced during the Pokemon Go mania and got Deadpool to do the voice...

 

Monster Hunter did not work, last Mortal kombat didn't.

 

China market aside, it is easy to overblow how much box office changed for the non top of the food chain affair:

 

The Equalizer franchise

2014: 101m / 185m WW

2018: 102m / 190m WW

2023:  92m / 193m WW

 

Creed:

2015: 109m / 173m WW

2018: 115m / 213m WW

2023: 156m / 274m WW

 

John Wick

2014:  43m /  88m WW

2017:  92m / 171m WW

2019: 171m / 326m WW

2023: 187m / 432m WW

 

Guardian of the Galaxy, excluding China

2014: 685m 

2017: 769.8m

2023: 758.6m

 

AntMan, excluding China

2015: 413

2017: 503

2023: 424

 

Mission Impossible, excluding China

2015: 562

2018: 606

2023: 519

 

All those change (positive or negative) seem like they could have happened in the 2019 world.

Edited November 18, 2023 by Barnack

[M37]

Does that Trolls Friday include the EA shows last Saturday? Because if so - and I would guess that it does - $30M isn’t happening 

[Issac Newton]

 

 

[charlie Jatinder]

21 minutes ago, Grand Cine said:

I think @charlie Jatinder is true when he said than he see the movie make 14M for True Friday and think that it's just 5M for previews

~5.3 ish previews. ~13.8M ish FRI.

Edited November 18, 2023 by charlie Jatinder