Weekday Numbers [05.28 - 05.30, 2024] | Thursday | 1.85M THE GARFIELD MOVIE | 1.73M FURIOSA: A MAD MAX SAGA

[cannastop]

1 hour ago, BoxOfficeFangrl said:

People who only dip into following box office when it's a movie they are cheering on, so they see neutral/negative reporting of disappointing figures as an unfair and mean-spirited attack. Admittedly, sometimes it is, but those who follow the numbers week in and week out know that's just showbiz and the trades doing their usual thing.

 

So you have situations like that Furiosa defender trying to hold up its #1 opening as something that mitigates/erases the actual numbers being underwhelming, when that's not how it works. it's copium, but the flavors are different depending on how closely one follows the biz. The person hoping that maybe Furiosa will be another Elemental is at least aware of the latter's full box office run.

Some of these tweeters, like Matt Zoller Seitz and Bilge Ebiri, are critics who focus on the content of the movies. So my guess is they see it as crass to assess the financial results of the movie, especially when they're contentious.

[AniNate]

Elemental's legs were impressive even by summer family movie standards. I'm pretty sure Furiosa will have to rely on finding an audience on VOD. Certainly not impossible, but I don't think there's much you can do about the box office bomb narrative now.

[MightyDargon]

Elemental isn't comparable to Furiosa at all in terms of movie type. I don't know how many laymen audiences care about the "bomb narrative" though.

[MattW]

IF showing some great legs. 100m for sure, maybe 110?

 

[Kon]

1 hour ago, MightyDargon said:

Elemental isn't comparable to Furiosa at all in terms of movie type. I don't know how many laymen audiences care about the "bomb narrative" though.

Yeah. This is one of the reasons why I don't understand people using Elemental's legs as a reason than another (pretty different) movie could have good legs. 

 

Also, it's pretty noticeable that movies with good legs tend to be popular between women, but Furiosa has been rejected by female audience at a concept level.

[ThomasNicole]

5 hours ago, AJG said:

It’s not a $200m action tentpole. It’s a $200m “oddity”

 

 

 

both this can be true at once, this is not a typical blockbuster lol

[ThomasNicole]

I mean yeah it´s definitely a bomb, and yeah cinephiles are sad and trying to spin it because everyone knows Wasteland fate is not looking great.

 

That said, why some of you care so much about people online complaining about the bad press? It won´t save this movie and it won´t get supernatural legs, but this idea that movies needs to overperform on OW or get a billion dollars otherwise they´re dead is indeed annoying since the pandemic and a huge problem for the industry as a whole. They simply can´t wait anymore to see how it goes, this is what the whole shortened theatrical windows are about. Social media and press now declares movies a bomb on it´s previews day. Even us, allegedly the people who actually understand box office, are used now to call things a bomb in the moment Charlie posts his early preview number. 

 

Sometimes it materializes like The Fall Guy or likely Furiosa, sometimes they don´t. People called IF a bomb and well, it seems like 110M DOM is back on the menu boys. Maybe people are overreacting to defend Furiosa, but most of these arguments have some valid points, Hollywood never needed exceptional openings to succeed in long term until very recently and now that´s all everyone cares about.

Edited May 31 by ThomasNicole

[AniNate]

I am nostalgic for a time when the first weekend numbers didn't come in until Saturday morning. Everyone needs their hit of numbers like a drug addict the moment the movie is released these days though. 

 

 

Edited May 31 by AniNate

[Barnack]

The article is a bit of a strawmen, for example:

 

But in order to do so, we have to abandon the destructive binary in which only the biggest movies get to open in theaters while smaller, more marginal releases – the ones that actually demand attention and care – are seen as disposable streaming junk.

 

How many movies got to open in theater last year ? more than 400 ? Almost all of them were not among the biggest movies

 

Polite society, focus feature got a nice near 1,000 theater, played for more than full year in theater, how are we in a only the biggest movie play in theater world (or open in them) ?

 

in the cineplex near me, (not even some arthouse, the most basic arcade playing multiplex affair), we have Challengers from Guadagnino, a french (from france) import big success comedy, a japanese anime, a under 10 millions horror movie, etc....

 

this seem a complete reversal of causation and correlation;

There were many reasons for the twin successes of Barbie and Oppenheimer, obviously, and both movies certainly opened huge. But they also had legs: Their opening weekends were only about a fourth of their overall box office, because they stuck around in theaters for months, benefiting from the fact that people liked them and told others to see them, the discourse snowballing until everybody wanted to know what the fuss was about. 

 

Every movie that do good business achieve to keep their theater, it help to keep theater to continue to have good business, but that much more the direction it good, theater chain keep movie that do well, keeping a movie that is not doing well for months would not change things much.

 

Stuff like: , and the only things that can make money are the biggest of movies, I imagine are hyperbol, but even as a exaggeration are ridiculous, in a world in which Blumhouse exist, does any hollywood exec thing such thing ? Disney keep Searchlights only for prestige, convinced it is a money pit ? They just released the First Omen in theater.

 

And stuff like that:

To do that will mean recommitting to making better films,

 

Good plan, if only someone at Paramount would have thought, what about making better films ! Sadly it was voted down by the others board member that say, no say to Tom Cruise to make worst movie to see how it goes.

Edited May 31 by Barnack

[Barnack]

2 hours ago, ThomasNicole said:

Hollywood never needed exceptional openings to succeed in long term until very recently and now that´s all everyone cares about.

It was quite quick the transition from, theatrical is not the future anymore, it will all be about OTT streaming business, to not only theatrical is super important, but you better have a monster OW at it, almost a full 180 in that regard.

[ThomasNicole]

2 hours ago, Barnack said:

It was quite quick the transition from, theatrical is not the future anymore, it will all be about OTT streaming business, to not only theatrical is super important, but you better have a monster OW at it, almost a full 180 in that regard.

Exactly, and i´m not sure if that´s sustainable.

 

It´s very hard to capture the zeitgeist culturally before anyone see the movie like happened with Barbie in order to get a monster OW. It happens with very few movies, even MCU are having some duds despite being a TV show at this point, that´s why theaters seems to need to be saved every 6 months.

 

Deadpool will be like the 7th savior since the pandemic and yet things are still awful because they´re not enough.

[wildphantom]

I wonder what the money numbers are like for a first week of PVOD on a title like The Fall Guy.  
 

[Kon]

8 hours ago, ThomasNicole said:

Sometimes it materializes like The Fall Guy or likely Furiosa, sometimes they don´t. People called IF a bomb and well, it seems like 110M DOM is back on the menu boys. Maybe people are overreacting to defend Furiosa, but most of these arguments have some valid points, Hollywood never needed exceptional openings to succeed in long term until very recently and now that´s all everyone cares about.

 

Is it so recently? I'm not sure this situation started due to COVID or short theatrical windows. The big OW trend seems to have started with superhero movies 

 

Honestly, I suspect people are just used to MCU movies where a 60% fall for their second weekend was good due to big OW.

Edited May 31 by Kon

[JimmyB]

Opening weekends and judging a movie's box office performance off the opening weekend has been a thing for 20 plus years.  We can look at the calendar and know which movies are going to be the few hits.  Last year, we were all going crazy about Flash, Indy, Elemental, Transformers, Fast X all underperforming domestic.....IMO that was a huge red flag....Barbie saved the summer.   Another Barbie/Oppy isnt coming to save the summer.  Things are changing.  Theaters wont die but they are going to be less of them. Bowling, skating rinks, arcades used to be huge too not so much anymore.

 

Here's a quote from an article from 2001 about Planet of the Apes opening... "The nature of the business now is that you make a lot of your money on the first weekend on special-effects movies because you have to get your core audience right away," he added. "'Planet of the Apes' does not seem like a film that will hang on to a lot of its audience over the next few weeks. It's a dark movie without a lot of long-haul appeal."

 

 

 

https://www.upi.com/Archives/2001/07/29/Planet-of-the-Apes-easily-wins-US-box-office/9067996379200/

[cannastop]

 

[AJG]

4 minutes ago, cannastop said:

 

 

Bloody hell. 
 

The weekend thread might not reach 5 pages.

[Eric is Quiet]

9 minutes ago, cannastop said:

 

I'm seeing Ezra tomorrow, because my mom said she saw an ad for it and thought she had to see it. I have no clue what it is, other than it has Robert De Niro in it.

[filmlover]

Is Disney not even bothering to report a theater count for Young Woman and the Sea? A rare total Dump & Run job from Mickey.

[PlatnumRoyce]

5 minutes ago, filmlover said:

Is Disney not even bothering to report a theater count for Young Woman and the Sea? A rare total Dump & Run job from Mickey.

Yet they prominently included it in all references to their theatrical release calendar. Is this stealthily a trial balloon for some alternate distribution pattern?

[Eric is Quiet]

6 minutes ago, filmlover said:

Is Disney not even bothering to report a theater count for Young Woman and the Sea? A rare total Dump & Run job from Mickey.

The tweet above mentions they have no plans to reveal a theater count nor any grosses. Funny how even ten years ago, this would have debuted in 2,000+ theaters and make a modest $45 million. Probably could have done something like that even today on an empty weekend and barren summer like this. But of course, these studios probably want movie theaters to die because capitalism or something. Pathetic.