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

[MovieMan89]

I think THG played a bit too frontloaded to call 100 a lock yet as well, though thanksgiving probably pushes it there. Trolls opening isn’t quite high enough to say 100 is “locked” either, but same thing as THG with holiday. I have no faith in Wish getting there with reviews, WDAS films that get received like that are never hits. What I’m getting at is there’s a small chance Nov gives us zero 100 DOM grossers, which is bonkers. 

[wildphantom]

I don’t see how you persuade a significant portion of a mainstream audience to see an MCU film with characters set up in shows they haven’t gotten round to watching yet. 
 

I’ve seen them all and been to see The Marvels, but if I hadn’t then I wouldn’t have gone as I’d feel like I’d be jumping in mid-season. 
 

The drop off is appalling, and almost can’t be compared with other recent MCU drops as its opening was so relatively low last weekend. This is nothing more than a significant chunk of your audience that have chosen not to go for being out of the loop.  Way more to do with the Disney+ shows than how people feel about the MCU imo. 
 

an anomaly? Maybe. 
either way it’ll do the MCU good to have just one film come out next year. A guaranteed hit too as it won’t alienate an interested audience like The Marvels has. 

Edited November 19, 2023 by wildphantom

[wildphantom]

Wouldn’t even surprise me if in Deadpool’s marketing we get the character turn to the audience in a trailer and tell them not to worry if they haven’t seen The Marvels.  That would be a good way to address the debacle and begin to heal. 

[Jean Claude Web Madam]

2 minutes ago, wildphantom said:

I don’t see how you persuade a significant portion of a mainstream audience to see an MCU film with characters set up in shows they haven’t gotten round to watching yet. 

 

 

I keep wondering this too. Maybe inserting an established character from an established tv show could work, but Marvel rushed a lot of it in order to fill up D+ with content.

[Mulder]

2 minutes ago, wildphantom said:

Wouldn’t even surprise me if in Deadpool’s marketing we get the character turn to the audience in a trailer and tell them not to worry if they haven’t seen The Marvels.  That would be a good way to address the debacle and begin to heal. 

There is like literally no way they do this.

[M37]

1 hour ago, JimmyB said:

The numbers are bad. To call that out doesn't seem like being a sad sack it's just reality.  I find that better than "it's fine meme with room on fire" or just sticking your head in sand and ignoring bad data. 

 

2023 50th highest grossing film Domestic is Knock at the Cabin with 35m.

 

2019 50th highest grossing film Domestic is Midway with 56M,

 

2013 50th highest grossing film Domestic is Smurfs 2 with 71M.

Interestingly, I actually looked at exactly this data point, the 50th highest grossing film of each year, a while back, using the year of release. It was steadily in the ~$50-$70M range pre-COVID, though with the box office becoming more top heavy in the 2010s, the market share of that film was steadily in decline for nearly a decade, down to about 0.50%. As the top movies got bigger, that lower middle tier did not grow similarly

 

 

POST-COVID 50th Films

2021 - Green Knight $17.2M (0.38%)

2022 - Marry Me $22.4M (0.30%)

2023 - Currently 65 $32.1 (0.40%)

 

The value of that 50th slot will change over the rest of the year (starting Monday when Trolls jumps over that mark), but so will the total gross market share.  Something like $43M (Creator or Venice) would be my guess, but probably pretty close to that 0.50% market share. Which means the 50th place film for 2023 is still performing in line with the overall box office of the 5 years pre-COVID ... its just that the domestic market has reduced from $11B+ to somewhere around $8 billion annually.

[Halberstram]

1 hour ago, John Marston said:

It is interestingly how Twilight held up much better with general audiences than The Hunger Games. The last Twilight movie became the highest grossing of the series while Mockingjay became the lowest grossing and  the 2020 Twilight book sold more than Songbirds. Funny because HG was portrayed was the anti Twilight due to Katniss being an action girl while Bella Swan was weak and wimpy 

If I recall, Everyone and their mothers, during that time, were making post apocalyptic YA movies. It's not so special, when you dilute the market with similar material. 

[Kon]

1 hour ago, Spidey Freak said:

I get that it's juicy seeing the MCU fail this hard but tbh when the franchise that sold itself on its charismatic actors has its biggest bomb when the actors couldn't promote it until it was too late, is it really a fair and square L?

The issue is that audience has show a lack of interest on The Marvels from the beginning.

 

Actors promotion couldn't really create interest or hype in a movie. Their promotion could help to intensify interest in a movie, but the interest needs to exist first.

 

Now, even if we assume the movie would cause a really better box office due to actors promotion (which is extremely unlikely), that would still mean the MCU brand and Captain Marvel are extremely poor on popularity.

Edited November 19, 2023 by Kon

[Eric Prime]

https://deadline.com/2023/11/indie-box-office-the-holdovers-saltburn-stop-making-sense-1235627331/

 

Quote

And Stop Making Sense, the remastered version of the iconic 1984 Talking Heads concert film by Jonathan Demme, took in $14k on 24 screens for a gross of over $5 million. The restoration, which premiered at TIFF and opened shortly after, has now made more money than it did during its entire initial release. The total then was $4.95M and the original ran for 41 weeks, starting on Oct. 19 1984. A24’s young demo meant that the majority of the audience was seeing it in theaters for the first time.

 

“Jonathan Demme captured the joy we had on stage 40 years ago and it has been an incredible experience to share that with audiences again.  We are so proud of this milestone, and introducing Stop Making Sense to an entirely new audience has been especially meaningful to us,” said the iconic band in a statement to Deadline.

 

@Jake Gittes thought this would make you smile

[Johnny Tran]

I just don't think hitting the panic button is warranted because an MCU movie flopped and some other tentpoles had a rough Summer.  

 

Barbie was a massive hit.  Oppenheimer was a massive hit.  Horror is doing well.  The Nun II is going to be yet another profitable movie in the Conjuring movie verse.  FNAF just had a huge opening weekend despite it being a same day streaming release.  

 

There's other hits that I'm forgetting but the point is Hollywood just needs a little bit of a reset.  There are movies that are selling and selling big but they are targeting different tastes than just comic books. 

 

I think this could actually be GOOD for cinema. 

[MovieMan89]

Disney will have a better year next year is the only silver lining for them. Virtually impossible Apes, DP3, and IO2 can all bomb on the level of the all-timers this year. If they do… well then, guess Iger will finally be selling…

[Brainbug]

5 minutes ago, MovieMan89 said:

Disney will have a better year next year is the only silver lining for them. Virtually impossible Apes, DP3, and IO2 can all bomb on the level of the all-timers this year. If they do… well then, guess Iger will finally be selling…

 

War for the Planet of the Apes already came very close to beeing a serious underperformer. I dont see how Apes 4 can gross more than it.

 

Inside Out 2 unfortunately has a very big problem: Audiences have been trained to think by Disney that Pixar movies are now to be consumed at home on Disney+. It has the very well-liked first one going for it, but unless it also scores amazing critical and audience reviews, i dont see it performing that well.

 

Deadpool 3 seems like the safest bet.

[Ashley]

3 hours ago, wildphantom said:

I don’t see how you persuade a significant portion of a mainstream audience to see an MCU film with characters set up in shows they haven’t gotten round to watching yet. 
 

I’ve seen them all and been to see The Marvels, but if I hadn’t then I wouldn’t have gone as I’d feel like I’d be jumping in mid-season. 
 

The drop off is appalling, and almost can’t be compared with other recent MCU drops as its opening was so relatively low last weekend. This is nothing more than a significant chunk of your audience that have chosen not to go for being out of the loop.  Way more to do with the Disney+ shows than how people feel about the MCU imo. 
 

an anomaly? Maybe. 
either way it’ll do the MCU good to have just one film come out next year. A guaranteed hit too as it won’t alienate an interested audience like The Marvels has. 

If they couldn't persuade them to watch the TV shows at home when they've been out over a year then that tells me no-one is interested

[JimmyB]

25 minutes ago, Johnny Tran said:

I just don't think hitting the panic button is warranted because an MCU movie flopped and some other tentpoles had a rough Summer.  

 

Barbie was a massive hit.  Oppenheimer was a massive hit.  Horror is doing well.  The Nun II is going to be yet another profitable movie in the Conjuring movie verse.  FNAF just had a huge opening weekend despite it being a same day streaming release.  

 

There's other hits that I'm forgetting but the point is Hollywood just needs a little bit of a reset.  There are movies that are selling and selling big but they are targeting different tastes than just comic books. 

 

I think this could actually be GOOD for cinema. 

Theaters don't care if a movie is a hit relative to it's budget. It's all about foot traffic, tickets sold, concessions sold.  

 

The Nun 2 might be another profitable movie in the Conjuring verse but it made almost 100m < Nun 2018.  If we assume an average ticket price of $10, that's 10 million fewer tickets sold.

 

This is the same for a movie like Meg 2. It made 395m WW but that's a huge difference from the 529m the first Meg made in 2018.

 

So, an MCU movie bombing, or Indy 5 making 400m < Indy 4 from 15 years ago, it takes alot to fill that gap.  The more the year goes on the more it looks like Barbie and Oppenheimer was this one off movie event.  

[Jean Claude Web Madam]

I just remembered that initially The Marvels was supposed to be released in July, against Barbie and Oppenheimer.

That would have been a whole new level of bloodbath.

[Bob Train]

12 minutes ago, Brainbug said:

 

War for the Planet of the Apes already came very close to beeing a serious underperformer. I dont see how Apes 4 can gross more than it.

 

Inside Out 2 unfortunately has a very big problem: Audiences have been trained to think by Disney that Pixar movies are now to be consumed at home on Disney+. It has the very well-liked first one going for it, but unless it also scores amazing critical and audience reviews, i dont see it performing that well.

 

Deadpool 3 seems like the safest bet.

If WOM is good, then Inside Out 2 should clear the first one. That is why Elemental outgrossed TGD despite similar critical reviews: good WOM.

[ringedmortality]

Just got out of Hunger Games. I don't understand the mixed reviews at all! It's easily the best of the franchise. It is so good. Zegler's performance reminded me why I fell in love with her in West Side Story to begin with.

 

It is shot beautifully, I think there's a lot of really nice editing choices, I thought the music was beautiful, I liked that it wasn't cliche YA crap like the shit in the original movies.

 

I really gotta say I'm dumbfounded why this was received the way it was.

[eeetooki]

5 hours ago, Firepower said:

Actors promoting it wouldn't do shit, especially when it's the least popular or likable ones, it didn't even soften second weekend drop, unless you suggest it would've dropped in high 80s if actors didn't do late promo push.

 

Honestly aside from being bad movies, the new generation of actors and actresses really lack the charisma of the original Avengers. I mean aside from the odd few, none of them original Avengers can carry movies on their own but when they were in the MCU they could at least keep the audience interested. This is why Antman 3, despite being a horrible movie, is still the second highest grossing live action CBM this year (so far). And despite Love and Thunder being a mess, I will probably still watch another movie with Chris Hemsworth being Thor, but I haven't watched 80% of the MCU and TV series that came after Endgame.

[John Marston]

53 minutes ago, ringedmortality said:

Just got out of Hunger Games. I don't understand the mixed reviews at all! It's easily the best of the franchise. It is so good. Zegler's performance reminded me why I fell in love with her in West Side Story to begin with.

 

It is shot beautifully, I think there's a lot of really nice editing choices, I thought the music was beautiful, I liked that it wasn't cliche YA crap like the shit in the original movies.

 

I really gotta say I'm dumbfounded why this was received the way it was.

 

not enough Marvel humor 

[TwoMisfits]

8 hours ago, Krissykins said:

Hoping this stays above $10m with actuals. Wish it had done more though. But $15m budget this is fine.

 

@TwoMisfits I do have to take the win on our chat about Journey to Bethlehem last weekend. I know you thought $3-5m open and $20m total, but a 60% drop and total is only $4.3m. I think it’ll get dropped this week. 

 

Probably - yeah, I'll give you that one.  I didn't know Christmas with the Chosen was coming in December when I wrote that...and obviously, faith goers are gonna pick that one over Sony's release...