Weekend Thread Sept 20th-22nd

[Unfitclock]

Wow just 6.1 million true Friday is horrible 

[Speedorito]

Transformers One is like Mutant Mayhem last year. Neither franchise is a franchise for young people. And making it animated turns off some older people. The critical acclaim only goes so far. A mid-September release, right before The Wild Robot (a film based on a very popular series), is odd when late August (like MM) was available. Maybe they thought the older demo show up in bigger numbers. Karma for pushing The Wild Robot off its release date I suppose.

 

2 hours ago, JimmyB said:

The box office doesnt really have many surprises anymore.  You need the tentpoles to massively overperform like Inside Out 2 and D&W to fill the gap for the pics that underperform.  Deadline published their annual Box Office 2024 predictions article at the end of last year and exhibition sources were projecting 31 movies that could do more than a century-sized worth of business or more at the domestic box office.

 

2 movies that would be considered a surprise hitting the 100m mark this year is IT Ends With Us and Alien Romulus.  The other 13 movies that hit 100m domestic were on Deadlines list before the year started.

 

Movies that missed the 100m mark that exhibition thought would hit 100m domestic were Bob Marley (just missed), Cabrini (they were thinking its the new Sound of Freedom), The Fall Guy (barely missed), Furiosa (bomb), Horizon (bomb), Horizon2 (removed), Ballerina (moved/reshoot).  

 

Something like Moana 2 will need to pull off a massive overperformance.  We have seen this same pattern time and time again over the past 3 years,

 

https://deadline.com/2023/12/box-office-2024-predictions-movies-cinemas-1235682149/

I’m surprised even Deadline didn’t think IEWU could make 100M Dom, especially when Where the Crawdads Sing, a film based on a less popular and had a lesser popular cast, made 90M not long ago. Interesting to see which the industry hypes and which ones they don’t.

[filmlover]

It doesn't seem like there's much room left for surprises for $100M+ grossers for the remainder of the year. Maybe Smile 2 benefits from being the most high-profile horror movie for Halloween this year, but I think retaining 80% of the audience of its predecessor given how much a surprise hit that was would be considered a win for it. December in particular seems like it's going to have to be carried by Mufasa and Sonic alone given the rest of the month's slate seems on the niche side in terms of appeal.

Edited 17 hours ago by filmlover

[CheeseWizard]

33 minutes ago, Speedorito said:

Karma for pushing The Wild Robot off its release date I suppose.

Tbh that was more tit for tat, since Wild Robot put itself exactly one week after instead of taking any other slot in August or October, which were totally free, especially considering TFOne had the September 13th date locked in during May 2023. 

Edited 17 hours ago by CheeseWizard

[DAJK]

Not sure how exactly I want to word this, but I always thought the whole “Transformers shouldn’t have humans in it, it should just be about the robots” argument was kind of ridiculous/purist. And I think the performance of this movie goes to show that. 

[Maggie]

I wonder how Wolfs would have done in theaters this weekend. At least 20M imo

[grim22]

2 minutes ago, DAJK said:

Not sure how exactly I want to word this, but I always thought the whole “Transformers shouldn’t have humans in it, it should just be about the robots” argument was kind of ridiculous/purist. And I think the performance of this movie goes to show that. 

 

The perfect balance was struck by the Godzilla vs Kong movies. They kept the humans minimal and only for exposition. It took them 3 monsterverse movies to realise no one cares about the human stories so they wisely decided to do away with literally any background for the humans beyond the broadest strokes and treating them as a plot device to get us from one monster fight to the next.

[ZeroHour]

The first trailer for this looked really bad. Didn’t bother to see any of the others. Kinda surprised the reviews are so positive but that’s not enough to get me into a theater. First impressions are pretty important. 

[John Marston]

As for Bayformers I feel if you do some editing on the first four they all become much better. I actually quite dig 3 and 4 (which I know gets a lot of hate but I find a lot to like). 5 is completely unsalvageable though 

[Eric Prime]

5 minutes ago, Maggie said:

I wonder how Wolfs would have done in theaters this weekend. At least 20M imo

Nah. It would have opened to 11M, everybody would freak out, I would be all smug and be all “remember guys, it’s not an NTC. People are too scared to see anything that isn’t based off a thing they already know”, people would be all “Eric, that’s not true!”, and we all move on. It’s a very predictable cycle, Maggie. I think we all know that.

[Ryan C]

Didn't get around to saying anything about this yesterday, but seeing Transformers One stumbling to even be #1 for the weekend when it seemed like a guarantee a few weeks ago genuinally sucks. 

 

I would say I'm surprised, but there were plenty of signs that were pointing towards a $25M-$26M opening that may be fine on a $75M budget, but still weak when compared to expectations and the reviews it had. 

 

The Wild Robot opening literally the week after doesn't help (though I think people need to tone down their expectations with that movie), but after seeing plenty of people say this, I think it's clear that Paramount messed up the marketing for this one. 

 

I didn't have the biggest reaction to the first trailer, but I guess it really did give a terrible first impression for a lot of fans/people. Compare that to TMNT: Mutant Mayhem which has good impressions from its trailers and a much more appealing art style to sell to audiences. Though Transformers One's animation is great, the look of the robots probably did turn off people who either are used to seeing Transformers in live-action or wanted to see a art style more akin to Mutant Mayhem. 

 

Oh, and Transformers as a brand seems to be in a weird position where it's way more popular in live-action film than animation. I don't know why it's hard for people to give it a chance (especially with this franchise literally being based on an animated show), but this is clear that general audiences just can't get past associating Transformers with either Michael Bay or seeing human characters. 

 

Overall, hopefully Paramount decides (after two attempts to revive it) to put this franchise to rest after this. That, or they show us legitimate proof that merchandising/toy sales are high enough to warrant greenlighting another Transformers movie. 

[AniNate]

15 minutes ago, CheeseWizard said:

Tbh that was more tit for tat, since Wild Robot put itself exactly one week after instead of taking any other slot in August or October, which were totally free, especially considering TFOne had the September 13th date locked in during May 2023. 

 

Well, TFOne is probably gonna be the movie that suffers. It could've moved back to August when Wild Robot staked its date but instead it decided to try scaring it off. As a new film IP Wild Robot is definitely better off with the long runway until Wicked, as opposed to potentially losing an audience a month after it opened when Beetlejuice came out. The movie generally just has more "autumn" vibes than summer also.

 

 

Edited 17 hours ago by AniNate

[Flopped]

Random question: when was the last time a good movie became a box office hit in America?  

[Eric Prime]

3 minutes ago, Flopped said:

Random question: when was the last time a good movie became a box office hit in America?  

Beetlejuice 2. Not that long ago hon.

[filmlover]

Wolfs would've performed similarly to The Nice Guys in a best case scenario. In reality, it probably would've landed in the same high single digit territory followed by low $20M total that Fly Me to the Moon and The Bikeriders did.

[crazymoviekid]

21 minutes ago, Maggie said:

I wonder how Wolfs would have done in theaters this weekend. At least 20M imo

Went to see it last night. It screams $13M-$15M opening and legging to $40M-$50M. 

 

My 30 screen theater had 29 seats sold, so it made at least $740. Times that by 3 for the full day and times that by the 50 theaters (Deadline) it's in, made around $111K yesterday. 

Edited 17 hours ago by crazymoviekid

[CheeseWizard]

10 minutes ago, AniNate said:

 

Well, TFOne is probably gonna be the movie that suffers. It could've moved back to August when Wild Robot staked its date but instead it decided to try scaring it off. As a new film IP Wild Robot is definitely better off with the long runway until Wicked, as opposed to potentially losing an audience a month after it opened when Beetlejuice came out. The movie generally just has more "autumn" vibes than summer also.

 

 

I wouldn’t be shocked if that was on the table, and they just didnt do it cus they got paranoid that Illumination would move Despicable Me 4 just to fuck with them some more. 

[filmlover]

Will say it would be nice if The Wild Robot was able to turn critical acclaim into a strong opening, even though I'm thinking $30M is where it lands for now. At least to provide some positivity since it's sandwiched between what's looking to be two major underperformers.

[Flopped]

7 minutes ago, Eric Prime said:

Beetlejuice 2. Not that long ago hon.

 

It's passable I guess. 

 

Re Wolfs, I can't imagine anything more boring than seeing a Brad Pitt/George Clooney movie in 2024. 

[AniNate]

Too bad we don't seem to have any overall MTC tracking anymore. Those 4m/5m regional preview comps for Wild Robot are exciting, but it's also looking really bad in my region. Hopefully it's just more walkup driven here.