What is the most impressive OW record?

[Lumos]

So it seems like every year or two the OW, OD and midnight records fall. Over the past 15 years we've had 8 films break the OW record, 11 films break the OD record and 9 films break the midnight record. All of these record breaking films made huge numbers for their time but how would you rank each of them based on impressiveness? For example most people would consider Stars Wars's midnight record of 16.5 mil to be far more impressive than Half-Blood Prince's 22.8M midnight record. Star Wars nearly doubled the record at the time and it took 3 years for a film to be beat it. Half Blood Prince beat the record by a mere 4mil and was topped only months later.OW record holdersThe Avengers: 207.4m Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2: 169.1m The Dark Knight: 158.4m Spiderman 3: 151.1m Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest: 135.6m Spiderman: 114.8m Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone: 90.3m Jurassic Park: The Lost World: 72.1m OD record holdersHarry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2: 91.1m The Twilight Saga: New moon: 72.7m The Dark Knight: 67.1m Spiderman 3: 59.8m Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest: 55.8m Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith: 50.0m Spiderman 2: 40.4m Spiderman: 39.4m Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone: 32.3m Star Wars: The Phantom Menace: 28.5m Jurassic park: The Lost World: 21.6m Midnight record holdersHarry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2: 43.5m The Twilight Saga: Eclipse: 30.1m The Twilight Saga: New moon: 26.3m Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: 22.8m The Dark Knight: 18.5m Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith: 16.5m Lord of the Rings: Return of the King: 8m Spiderman 1: 7mStar Wars: The Phantom Menace: 6m There really are no right or wrong answers. Some films held the record longer simply because of a lack of blockbuster films over a period of time. But i'm sure everyone on this board has had at least one experience where they came on a BO website and was absolutely floored by a number. That's what I want to hear about.....

Edited May 13, 2012 by Mr Potter

[Lumos]

Most impressive OW's

1. Spiderman: So I started following the box office around 2003. Although I never witnessed Spiderman’s OW record, it was THE film to beat for such a long time. By 2006, I still had never witnessed a film break the OW record and I remember thinking that the record was almost impossible to beat.

2. Spiderman 3: Mind boggling. I remember saying this record would not be beaten for AT LEAST 4 years….just like the first spider man. I guess if it wasn’t for The Dark Knight, I would have been right.

3. The Dark Knight: Still has the record for OW attendance, and beat Spiderman 3 only a year later….a feat I thought was nearly impossible. I think I was predicting an OW of 140M at the time….which was pretty huge for 2008.

4. Pirates of the Caribbean Dead Man's Chest: The first time I witnessed a film break the OW record. This was such a fun film to follow at the box office. Terrible film, but still a huge financial success. It’s also the only film in 15 years to break the OW record that wasn’t a superhero film or book adaption.

5. The Avengers: Very much inflated from 3-D but it’s still the 2^nd most attended OW of all time and the first film to make 200M+.

6. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone: Well it took 4 years, but finally a film beat Jurassic Park the Lost World. I didn’t witness this opening for myself, but I remember the hype quite vividly.

7. The Lost World: First film to make 70M+ OW and held onto the record for nearly as long as Spiderman 1.

8. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2: Only 43% of the gross came from 3D, but it was still the reason why this film broke the OW record. It was the fifth largest OW at the time attendance wise (currently #7), but compared to the other films on the list, I have to put this as the least impressive.

Most impressive OD's

1. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2: Even though this was inflated by 3D it still beat the OD record by a huge +25%. It is the most attended OD of all time and I don’t see any film topping it for a while! TDKR might be able to get to 85mil….

2. Star Wars Revenge of the Sith: Beat the previous record by nearly 25% and was the first film to top 50m…and did it on a Thursday. No one expected it to be THAT big…..

3. Spiderman: Potter was the first film to make more than 30M in one day….a few months later Spiderman opens and does nearly 40m!

4. Star Wars Phantom Menace: Beat the previous record by about +24% on a Wednesday!

5. Spiderman 3

6. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest

7. The Dark Knight

8. The Twilight Saga: New Moon

9. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

10. Jurassic Park The Lost World

11. Spiderman 2

Most impressive midnight grosses

1. Deathly Hallows Part 2: Even disregarding 3D this topped Twilight’s best midnight showing by a good 30%. It’s midnight gross as a whole day would stand as one of the largest OD’s of all time as well!

2. Star Wars Revenge of the Sith: This was the first film to pull in blockbuster numbers at midnight. It doubled the previous record, and held onto it for 3 years!

3. Spiderman: First in the series and it beat Star Wars….enough said!

4. Lord of the Rings: Return of the King: This was a 3.5 hour film released in December. Not exactly midnight record material….

5. The Twilight Saga: New Moon

6. The Twilight Saga: Eclipse

7. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

8. The Dark Knight

Edited May 13, 2012 by Mr Potter

[Rudolf]

http://en.wikipedia....nings_for_films

If you look which new OW record improved on the old the most, you find Return Of The Jedi(1983) did so by 60%. (The Empire Strikes Back(1980) started with a limited release)

So expect AVATAR2 to significantly improve whatever record there will be.

The best improvement of a non sequel was Batman(1989) with 37%.

The Avengers had impressive 22% and Star Trek II:The Wrath of Khan(1982) only 1%

The Lost World: Jurassic Park(1997) was with over 4 years the longest lasting OW recordholder not only because of less competition but it also smashed the old record by 36%

Edited May 13, 2012 by Rudolf

[Ozymandias]

Uh, I find it hard to believe TA sold less tickets on OW than TDK.

[ecstasy]

So this thread was made to downplay the Avengers success.Over 200m opening weekend is the most impressive ever.There's just no way around it.

[zlazer]

So this thread was made to downplay the Avengers success.Over 200m opening weekend is the most impressive ever.There's just no way around it.

Let's say Tdkr makes 195m ow which is more impressive

[rockNrollaDIM]

The Avengers. 200m is a gigantic barrier to cross... Beat the OW record by almost 40m... There's no denying it.If TDKR beats TA then it will be even more impressive considering lack of price gouging.

[Lumos]

So this thread was made to downplay the Avengers success.Over 200m opening weekend is the most impressive ever.There's just no way around it.

Pssh downplaying TA's success? That wasn't my intention at all, but i'm sorry if i offended you by putting it as the 5th most impressive OW. Some people are so sensitive about the films they loveAlso, i'm kind of disappointed with the responses I've been getting. TA=current largest OW of all time in $, therefore it's the most impressive opening in history? I was hoping we could dig a little deeper but okay.....

[Rudolf]

Pssh downplaying TA's success? That wasn't my intention at all, but i'm sorry if i offended you by putting it as the 5th most impressive OW. Some people are so sensitive about the films they loveAlso, i'm kind of disappointed with the responses I've been getting. TA=current largest OW of all time in $, therefore it's the most impressive opening in history? I was hoping we could dig a little deeper but okay.....

Did you give a reason why you think SM has the most impressive OW-record?It was not the longest recordholder (that was LW:JP) nor did it improve the most the old record (neither absolute nor relative). It crossed a round number barrier, but so did Every Which Way But Loose (with one 0 less).

[Webslinger]

In their individual contexts, each of these records - at least the ones since I really got the hang of following the numbers in 2002 - knocked my socks off.

Spider-Man was the first $100 million opener on record. 'Nuff said.

One "sort-of" record not mentioned here that is worthy of being considered is the opening day of The Matrix Reloaded, which came out to $37.5 million plus $5 million from late night previews the night before. Even with the R-rating affecting who could buy tickets, it more-or-less matched Spider-Man's opening day from the year before. And with how red-hot it stayed through the weekend, it could very well have taken down the weekend record had it opened on Thursday rather than Friday. It was insane, and a testament to just how hotly anticipated that movie was before the disappointed reactions from audiences settled in.

Okay, caveat: Spider-Man 2's record opening day record was relatively pedestrian considering that it was not a single-day gross record (that record had been set five-and-a-half weeks earlier with the $44.8 million Saturday by Shrek 2 - which was a jaw-dropping achievement), but it more than made up for any highly minor disappointment by racking up an eye-popping $180 million between its Wednesday opening and the holiday on Monday.

Revenge of the Sith blew me away. Even with how high Shrek 2 had gone on a single day the previous year and even though it had considerable help from its midnight gross, I could barely wrap my head around how a movie could make $50 million in a single day. And it seems funny to talk about now, when there was bitching-and-moaning aplenty over The Hunger Games "only" making a little less than $20 million at midnight, but the report that Sith had done $16.5 million at midnight seemed like surreal news at the time, especially considering that midnight screenings weren't nearly as widespread then as they are now.

In addition to acting as half of the fuel for the most intense board battle BOM had, Pirates: Dead Man's Chest was insanely impressive for a few reasons: First, it took down Sith's opening day record. Beloved as the first Pirates was, seeing it go higher on its first day than the finale of a series with a legacy that reached as far back as Star Wars. Second, it finally toppled Spider-Man's weekend record, which had stood for more than four years at that point. And third, it blew virtually everything else from the summer of '06 out of the water then and there; it out-opened the next highest opening of that summer - X-Men: The Last Stand, which itself had a great opening - by 32%.

Spider-Man 3's opening was astounding as well. It nearly had the first $60 million day, it had the first $50 million day that wasn't an opening day, and it had the first $150 million weekend. Of course, it had absolutely nothing in the way of competition that weekend, but that's more a testament to just how utterly scared rival studios were to open anything against a movie with such a high level of hype. Equally astounding were the facts that there were two more $100 million openers that month (a feat that has not since been replicated) and that the movie quickly proceeded to shrivel up and die at the box office after that weekend.

The Dark Knight had me at a loss for words considering just how dramatically different its performance was from Batman Begins. Breaking Spider-Man 3's opening day and weekend records was incredibly impressive considering that it was a more serious movie coming off a far less (financially) successful predecessor and was opening in the middle of July rather than an otherwise empty early May weekend. If obligated to pick a favorite, it would probably be this one, if only because the extent of its record-breaking success snuck up on us more so than any of the other listed movies. It was expected to be a huge hit with everything it had working in its favor in the months leading up to its release, but there was hardly any discussion about the weekend record until the week or two before it came out.

New Moon was flipping crazy. It was a really slow night in my dorm room that night because neither my roommate nor I had any plans prior to seeing Inglourious Basterds at a campus screening at 10, so I checked the latest guesstimate updates/holymotherofgodthisshitscrazy! crowd reports every 45 minutes or so on my computer up until a report/rumor some time around 7 or 8 that it had already pulled in $55 million. Daily record was going down, so I had this conversation with the roommate, paraphrased:

Me: Holy fuck, dude. Night's not even over yet and New Moon has made 55 million. It's gonna set a new opening day record.

Roommate: Well no shit, it's Twilight.

Me: Okay, yeah, but consider this: the first movie made, like, $70 million in its first weekend. The new one is gonna make more than that in one day.

(*pause*)

Roommate: Wait... how is that even possible? Like, where the fuck did all those new fans come from?

I expected the final Harry Potter movie to deliver midnight and opening day records that would leave me picking my jaw up from the floor, and indeed it did. It's friggin' unbelievable that we've hit a point where a movie can make $43.5 million at midnight. Add that to what Avengers made during regular business hours on its opening day and we have reached the time where a $100 million opening day is indeed possible - and this movie came a little less than $9 million away from accomplishing that feat. If I had told this information to myself back when Sith broke the midnight and daily records, the head of my 2005 self probably would have exploded. That said, the weekend record it set was kind of "meh" by comparison.

Avengers is the latest to defy gravity. Its accomplishments - an $80 million opening day (not a record, but still undeniably massive), a near-$70 million Saturday, a bigger Sunday than any previous movie's Saturday, and a sum of $200 million in a single weekend - speak for themselves.

Edited May 19, 2012 by Webslinger

[The Stingray]

1. The Avengers2. Spider-Man3. Batman4. Return of the Jedi5. The Hunger Games

[Lordmandeep]

Avengers is very impressive because it held so well over the weekend.It broke the Sat Record, the Friday Non Midnight record and the Sunday record and it did so by huge huge margins.Even factoring out 3D, TA Sunday is still the biggest ever and the Saturday is tied with Spider Man 3 and Spider Man 1.We will not see such a opening for a while.TDKR will break records but based on how TDK opened, it will be more front loaded.

Edited May 23, 2012 by Lordmandeep

[Totem]

Shouldn't this be in the BO forum.

[Jessie]

1. 300 - Its Friday estimates completely took me by suprise, no-one expected it.2. Spider-man - with 3d it will have probably earned over 175 mil today and it had such a small theatre count compared to blockbusters nowadays.3. The avengers - simply because its a mammoth and not only did it beat the OW record, it did it admission wise aswell.4. THG - it managed to sell more tickets than than the Potter finale lol, what more needs to be said.5. Borat - it's PTA was pretty damn impressive for the sort of film it is.

[Punishment]

For me it was the $50m opening day for Star Wars ROTS. I am a big Star Wars fan and I remember thinking that number was crazy huge.Of course this makes the Harry Potter DH2 opening day all the more impressive now.But the SW ROTS opening day will always hold more meaning for me personally.Honorable Mention:-The Avengers first and second weekend grosses-Avatar's 3rd through 7th weekend grosses and Titanics 8th through 16th weekend grosses

[The Stingray]

2 things I've been wondering about.1. How much would Spider-Man 2 open to if it had a normal 3-day opening weekend?2. What would The Phantom Menace OW and total be if the movie was very good instead of very bad?Any thoughts?

[Jessie]

2 things I've been wondering about.1. How much would Spider-Man 2 open to if it had a normal 3-day opening weekend?2. What would The Phantom Menace OW and total be if the movie was very good instead of very bad?Any thoughts?

Phantom menace would have been about 80-85m maybe and that's being generous. Spiderman 2 wouldn't have been as big as DMC IMO, Probably 125m, not as big as DMC.

[acab]

Although they are not ow records the Borat and The Passion of the Christ openings were equally jaw-dropping like many of the big guns.

[Lordmandeep]

Um I think the quality of the film would have no impact on the film in 1998..Today of course...

[4815162342]

2. What would The Phantom Menace OW and total be if the movie was very good instead of very bad?Any thoughts?

I doubt the OW would have been affected that much because there was already a huge rush for the film. Its legs would have been extended a decent bit (and they were already great).The big effect would have been on the opening for Attack of the Clones, which would have seen a nice increase from the 80 million it opened to.