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Post by MarkInTexas on Aug 10, 2017 13:03:16 GMT -5
The last time that the #1 movie in America for the first full weekend of August failed to top $20 million was in 1998, when Saving Private Ryan's 3rd weekend topped the chart with $17 million, ahead of newcomers Snake Eyes and Halloween H20. This weekend, the #1 movie in America was The Dark Tower, which opened to $19.5 million. The rest of the chart was equally dull. Dunkirk, in it's 3rd weekend, had another modest drop. The Emoji Movie, in its second weekend, had a fairly standard drop. Girls Trip is now only $15 million away from being the first (and only) summer live-action comedy to hit $100 million, and Kidnap opened to $10 million--not bad for a thriller that had been on the shelf for years and was just as likely to go straight to DVD/Blu-Ray/VOD/Streaming as it was to get a wide theatrical release.
Farther down, audiences largely ignored Detroit, despite strong reviews, a result that will deal a serious blow to its chance at major Oscar nominations. Oh, it took until Tuesday, but Wonder Woman slipped past $400 million.
This weekend will be a battle between follow-ups to unexpected hits, as Annabelle: Creation goes up against The Nut Job 2: Nutty By Nature. Will Nut Job open better than Emoji did? We'll find out.
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Post by MarkInTexas on Aug 18, 2017 12:44:34 GMT -5
No, The Nut Job 2 did not open better than The Emoji Movie. Oops.
Meanwhile, Annabelle: Creation made $35 million.
This weekend is The Hitman's Bodyguard vs. Logan Lucky. These are pretty much the last two movies of the summer. The next couple of weeks bring films long on the shelf that are finally getting dusted off. If the combo of All Saints, Birth of the Dragon, Leap, and Tulip Fever manages to gross $50 million domestic combined, I'll be surprised. Whatever wins this weekend might be able to put up three straight weeks at #1 purely by default.
September 8 brings It, and the Fall box office race begins in earnest. This is as good a place to announce that my Fall Movie Preview will be beginning soon, starting with September's wide releases.
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Post by MarkInTexas on Aug 22, 2017 16:39:17 GMT -5
The Hitman's Bodyguard won the weekend with $21.3 million, with Annabelle 2 in second with $15.6 million, and Logan Lucky having a decidedly unlucky opening with only $7.6 million.
This was a pretty quiet weekend at the box office, but it was bustling compared with what the next two weekends might bring. This weekend, there is a very good chance that no film will hit $10 million for the weekend, and it's almost guaranteed that no film will hit that total over Labor Day weekend.
If Hitman falls 54% or more this weekend, it will be under $10 million. By comparison's sake, Atomic Blonde fell 55% and The Dark Tower fell 59.2%.
The problem is that none of this weekend's three wide releases has much of a chance to hit 8 digits themselves. Right now, Leap!, an animated ballet movie, is set to debut in the most theaters of any of the newcomers, around 2,000. That means, to make $10,000,000 for the weekend, this film that has received almost no advertising that I've seen, will need to make a per-screen average of $5,000. By comparison, the heavily hyped The Emoji Movie had an opening weekend per-screen of a bit over $6,000. The Nut Job 2, which also got a lot of ad play, had an opening per-screen of a bit over $2,000. In short, it's not looking good for Leap!. Birth of the Dragon is set to open in 1,500 screens. Only a tiny handful of movies debuting on that few screens have made $10,000,000 over one weekend. That would require a per screen of $6666.67. Meanwhile, the Christian film All Saints will be opening on a mere 800 screens. For that film to hit $10,000,000, it would need a per-screen of over $12,000. None of those totals seem to be in the cards.
The one wild card is Good Time, the well-received Robert Pattinson thriller that is set to go "nationwide" this weekend, according to Box Office Mojo. How many theaters that means is still not known, but it's not completely out of the question that it could arrive at 2,000 theaters or more this weekend. Then again, the film only grossed about $8,000 per screen last weekend in limited release, and per screens usually plunge when a limited release goes wide.
If this weekend is going to be bad, next weekend will be worse. The only wide release over Labor Day is Tulip Fever, a costume drama that was filmed in 2014 and has been looking for a release date ever since. It's still too early to know how many theaters it will end up opening in, but it has no shot at hitting $10,000,000 for the three-day weekend. Meanwhile, even if Hitman and/or Annabelle manage to squeeze out $10,000,000 this weekend, neither will next weekend. So, Labor Day will almost certainly be the first weekend since Labor Day weekend 2015 to fail to have a film top $10 million. Theater owners are probably already counting down the days until It arrives.
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Post by MarkInTexas on Aug 31, 2017 16:41:18 GMT -5
Congratulations to The Hitman's Bodyguard, which managed to pull in $10.2 million domestic to prevent last weekend from being the first weekend since Labor Day 2015 to fail to have any films top $10 million. This weekend won't be so lucky.
As expected, all of last week's releases performed poorly. Leap! managed 3rd place, more because every other movie managed to make less. Birth of the Dragon managed 8th, making just slightly more than what movie theaters took in from the Mayweather/McGregor fight, even though the latter was a one time event that played in a third of the theaters that showed Dragon 5 times a day for three days. Christian film All Saints didn't even make the Top 15, opening at 16th a bit behind Wonder Woman, which has been playing for almost three months. All in all, this was the worst box office weekend in years.
And this weekend will be worse. This is the first Labor Day since 1992 that won't see a wide release. Indeed, this weekend's biggest opening is 40 years old, namely the restored version of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The other films opening on more than 100 screens are the long-delayed Tulip Fever (whose overqualified cast reflects its once upon a time status as potential award bait), and Hazlo Como Hombre, a Spanish-language film getting a semi-wide release in the hopes it will be the next Instructions Not Included, which came out Labor Day weekend 2013 and ended up grossing an unexpected $44 million, making it the 4th highest-grossing foreign language film in North America of all time. Follow-up Labor Day releases Cantinflas, Un Gallo con Muchos Huevos, and No Manches Frida haven't done nearly as well, but did better than most foreign films in American cinemas do.
But overall, the grosses this weekend will be low. Very low. The #1 film will likely gross under $7 million from Friday to Sunday. It's not out of the question that Close Encounters could end up on top. And that would be appropriate. A film from 1977 winning the weekend while playing on the number of screens a wide release in 1977 would be playing on and earning the amount a #1 film in 1977 would have earned.
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Post by MarkInTexas on Sept 6, 2017 10:17:23 GMT -5
As it turns out, people want to go to the movies on Labor Day weekend, even if the only things new at the multiplex are a 40-year-old film, a Spanish language comedy, and a long-shelved costume drama (albeit one with boobs). Instead of sampling the new films, all of which were largely ignored, audiences turned out in pretty much the exact same numbers to see what they saw last week. The Hitman's Bodyguard spent its third (and final) week at the top of the box office by taking in $10.5 million Friday through Sunday, which actually represents an improvement over the previous weekend. #2 Annabelle: Creation came up nearly even with last week's gross. And on it went down the line. The weekend's only significant loser was Birth of the Dragon, which fell %35 and right out of the Top 10.
That said, this was still an extremely slow weekend, the worst Labor Day weekend since 2000, when Bring It On won for the second weekend in a row. The Hitman's Bodyguard is pretty much guaranteed to be the lowest-grossing 3-time box office champ from this decade, as it hasn't even grossed half of what The Butler, which was the lowest-grossing 3-time winner of the teens until now.
The box office doldrums should be over this weekend, as It arrives to terrify audiences nationwide. How big will it...er, It...get? We'll have to see.
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Post by Desert Dweller on Sept 9, 2017 22:01:49 GMT -5
This weekend I achieved nearly 400 likes (and counting) by pointing out that Hollywood studios are idiotic for blaming Rotten Tomatoes for the Summer box office bust. And if the studios want to stop bad reviews from affecting their films then they should make better films.
Seriously, "Make better films" can get 400 likes! Twitter, you're too easy sometimes.
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Post by MarkInTexas on Sept 12, 2017 15:44:35 GMT -5
$123 million. It was thought that It would open big. No one thought this big, though.
It is the highest grossing September opening of all time, earning nearly three times as much as the former champ (Hotel Transylvania 2). It's also the highest opening for a fall movie, again by a huge margin over Gravity. It's the highest opening for a horror movie, again by a wide margin. Soon, it will be the highest grossing film ever released in September, as it only stands $50 million behind current record holder Crocodile Dundee, which has somehow managed to hold on to that record for 31 years.
How big was It this weekend? Three out of every four tickets sold were to It. Indeed, It sucked the life out of virtually every other movie out. Last week, despite not being a very good weekend, 27 movies that were playing at at least 100 theaters managed a per-screen average of $1,000 or more. This weekend, 7 movies managed that.
The big question is just how big It will end up being? I think looking at the run of the one R-rated film to gross more than It did on it's opening weekend, Deadpool, will provide a good comparison. Like It, Deadpool opened to good reviews and strong word-of-mouth. Deadpool probably has the advantage because it faced less competition in weeks 2 & 3 (Risen, Race, Gods of Egypt, Eddie the Eagle) than It will (American Assassin, mother!, Lego Ninjago, Kingsman 2), and also because horror movies tend to burn out faster than action comedies. However, I suspect the difference will be negligible. Deadpool ended up grossing 36.5% of its final gross on opening weekend. If It posts a similar percentage, that will put its final gross around $340 million. Not too shabby.
Of the week's other openings, Home Again made barely a ripple, only opening to $8.5 million, while 9/11 didn't even make that ripple, taking in only $170,000.
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Post by MarkInTexas on Sept 21, 2017 17:23:47 GMT -5
If It had made $60 million in its first weekend, It would have been a runaway success. Biggest September opening, with an excellent chance of becoming the highest-grossing film ever released during this month. It was looking at a minimun of $150 million domestic, which would make it the highest Stephen King adaption of all time, and with good word of mouth had a real shot at $200 million. Not too shabby for a R-rated horror film with a reported production budget of only $35 million.
But It did not make $60 million in its first weekend. It made it in its second weekend, after a modest 51% drop from its gigantic opening the weekend before. And that is why It is not just a big hit, but a huge blockbuster. It finished the weekend at $218 million, putting it at #8 for 2017, and already ahead of Dunkirk. Since then, it...er, It, has now passed The Fate of the Furious and Logan, and by this time next week will almost certainly have surpassed Despicable Me 3.
Against the killer clown, the killer hot young American didn't have much of a chance. Lionsgate clearly hoped that American Assassin, starring Dylan O'Brien and Michael Keaton, would be the start of a new franchise. Those plans are in doubt as the film opened to just under $15 million. The low budget--$33 million--will probably mean this turns a profit, but sequel plans will probably depend on how it does overseas.
Pennywise conspired with poisonous word of mouth to kill mother!, which was only able to pull in $7.5 million despite starring Jennifer Lawrence. As was widely reported over the weekend, it got a rare Cinemascore grade of F from opening night audiences. This is easily Lawrence's worst opening since The Hunger Games made her a superstar, and with such awful buzz, the grosses are likely to stay low, as only audiences interested on just how batshit crazy the film is come out from here on.
The reign of It likely ends this weekend, as both Kingsman: The Golden Circle and The Lego Ninjago Movie compete for #1. Most likely finishing far, far down is the low-budget, long-delayed Friend Request. Expect audiences who are in the mood for horror to visit (or re-visit) It, instead.
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Post by MarkInTexas on Sept 28, 2017 17:05:14 GMT -5
This month is likely to finish as the biggest September ever in terms of box office, and it has one movie to thank for that...Tulip Fever.
In all seriousness, the record grosses are being driven pretty much exclusively by It, which made another $30 million in its third weekend of release and is now up to $266 million. It, all by itself, is responsible for 44% of September's box office so far. And the second-highest grossing movie of September, so far is Kingsman: The Golden Circle, and its opening was widely seen as a disappointment.
The first Kingsman came pretty much out of nowhere in February 2015 to open to $35 million. It was reasonable to expect the new one, which added such names as Channing Tatum, Jeff Bridges, and Julianne Moore, to do significantly better. However, this topped out at $39 million. That's not a bad opening, but not really what the studio was hoping for.
It (and It) still did better than The Lego Ninjago Movie. Whether because of Lego movie overkill (it is the second Lego movie of the year), or because the Ninjago line is still fairly new, audiences rejected this one, as it opened under $21 million. That's about how Storks, which wasn't part of a franchise, opened last year. Lego Batman also underperformed, but it still grossed $175 million. Ninjago probably won't even gross half of that.
There was also Friend Request, but that barely outgrossed Stronger, which was playing in only a fifth of the number of theaters, and had a fairly disappointing opening itself.
This weekend isn't looking particularly strong, either. Once upon a time, American Made, starring former superstar Tom Cruise, looked promising, but the reviews are largely indifferent, and since the words "Mission" and "Impossible" don't appear in the title, audiences will likely be as well. Back in 1990, Flatliners opened to around $10 million. It's entirely possible that the new Flatliners will open to even less (Ellen Page is a talented actress, but her last wide-release starring vehicle, Whip It, opened to $4 million back in 2009).
If the other remake of an early 90s Julia Roberts thriller, Till Death Do Us Part, which appears to be a unofficial redo of Sleeping With the Enemy, was being released by Screen Gems, which had hits with thrillers The Perfect Guy and No Good Deed in recent Septembers, I'd be pretty confident in its chances. Alas, it's being released by new distributor Novus, so don't expect much. There's also the Christian film A Question of Faith, and the wide release of Battle of the Sexes, which is only going into 1,200 theaters. Fox Searchlight is aware it stars Oscar-winner Emma Stone [Insert Asian joke here], right?
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Post by MarkInTexas on Oct 10, 2017 11:34:22 GMT -5
Last weekend was pretty much a photo finish at the box office, as Kingsman: The Golden Circle won the weekend by less than $34,000 over #2 It--the 13th closest margin between the #1 and #2 film in Box Office Mojo's archives. American Made was right behind, only about $159,000 behind. Meanwhile, Flatliners '17 made less its opening weekend than Flatliners '90 did in its opening weekend--straight dollars, not adjusted for inflation.
This weekend, Blade Runner 2049 opened somewhat below expectations, at $32.7 million. To be honest, I don't really find that too surprising. Yes, Blade Runner '82 is beloved, but it is a cult movie, not really a mainstream movie, and a cult movie that came out 35 years ago, meaning that a lot of potential 2049 attendees have never seen the original.
Warner Bros. was clearly hoping for an opening similar to what Mad Max: Fury Road got 2 1/2 years ago (we'll ignore that Road's opening of $45 million was kind of disappointing itself). However, Max had the advantage of not seeming to be connected to the three Mel Gibson starring films of the 80s. With Tom Hardy taking over the role, the new film felt more like a reboot than a direct sequel, meaning they were more accessible to filmgoers who hadn't seen the other films. Plus, Max's plot, on the surface, didn't seem very complicated. Compare that to 2049, which has both Harrison Ford reprising his role as Deckard, a plot that promises some sort of vast conspiracy that Ford and Ryan Gosling have to unravel, and a nearly 3-hour run time. It's not surprising that filmgoers probably assumed they needed to have seen the original (or at least one cut of the original) to know what was going on, and chose to pass.
In other movie news, the poorly reviewed The Mountain Between Us opened to a so-so $10.5 million, and My Little Pony was able to outgross Kingsman and American Made, but not It, which topped $300,000,000. It will probably have enough juice to pass Spider-Man (which is less than $30 million away), but will probably stall out before it makes it to Guardians of the Galaxy's $390 million. Farther down the chart, The Florida Project had a solid opening, while the well-reviewed Christmas horror comedy Better Watch Out barely made $500 per theater, raising the question why a Christmas horror comedy was released the first weekend of October, anyway.
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Post by Incense on Oct 10, 2017 12:13:06 GMT -5
Blade Runner 2049 apparently really is not doing well. Didn't it just come out last week? Columbus has a lot of theaters, but none of my usual haunts will be carrying it anymore by this Saturday. So I'm going to try to make myself go tonight after work. I just ... ugh, a two hour and 44 minute movie, after a long day at work, and with my teacup bladder, does not sound like the optimal way to go see it.
Also, Victoria and Abdul finally has landed here in Columbus, at least at our local art house theater. I'm going to try to budge my lazy butt out of the house Sunday morning to see it.
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Post by MarkInTexas on Oct 10, 2017 14:19:04 GMT -5
Blade Runner 2049 apparently really is not doing well. Didn't it just come out last week? Columbus has a lot of theaters, but none of my usual haunts will be carrying it anymore by this Saturday. So I'm going to try to make myself go tonight after work. I just ... ugh, a two hour and 44 minute movie, after a long day at work, and with my teacup bladder, does not sound like the optimal way to go see it. Also, Victoria and Abdul finally has landed here in Columbus, at least at our local art house theater. I'm going to try to budge my lazy butt out of the house Sunday morning to see it. To be honest, you'll almost certainly be fine if you wait till this weekend. Movie theaters usually don't post their weekend showtimes until Wednesday or Thursday. Especially in megaplexes, it can be a delicate dance determining what movies will go in which auditorium at what times. In addition, every major movie studio requires theaters to show new films for at least two weekends (they generally require a lot more stuff as well, as the studios can dictate everything from showtimes to auditorium placement to how long into the run a theater can put a movie on a split schedule, but I digress). It's possible that there might not be as many showings of the movie this coming weekend, but it will almost certainly be playing at every theater that showed it this weekend, and it will probably still be playing at the vast majority of the theaters currently showing it next weekend. And to be honest, theaters would be pretty dumb to drop it this weekend, even if they could. The movie underperformed, but was still #1 for the weekend by quite a bit, and since this weekend's new wide releases (the dour-looking The Foreigner and the horror film Happy Death Day, which appears to be Groundhog Day with a lot more dead bodies) don't look all that promising, there's an excellent chance Blade Runner could win again this weekend. So don't worry about seeing it tonight, if you don't want to.
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Post by Incense on Oct 10, 2017 14:27:33 GMT -5
Blade Runner 2049 apparently really is not doing well. Didn't it just come out last week? Columbus has a lot of theaters, but none of my usual haunts will be carrying it anymore by this Saturday. So I'm going to try to make myself go tonight after work. I just ... ugh, a two hour and 44 minute movie, after a long day at work, and with my teacup bladder, does not sound like the optimal way to go see it. Also, Victoria and Abdul finally has landed here in Columbus, at least at our local art house theater. I'm going to try to budge my lazy butt out of the house Sunday morning to see it. To be honest, you'll almost certainly be fine if you wait till this weekend. Movie theaters usually don't post their weekend showtimes until Wednesday or Thursday. Especially in megaplexes, it can be a delicate dance determining what movies will go in which auditorium at what times. In addition, every major movie studio requires theaters to show new films for at least two weekends (they generally require a lot more stuff as well, as the studios can dictate everything from showtimes to auditorium placement to how long into the run a theater can put a movie on a split schedule, but I digress). It's possible that there might not be as many showings of the movie this coming weekend, but it will almost certainly be playing at every theater that showed it this weekend, and it will probably still be playing at the vast majority of the theaters currently showing it next weekend. And to be honest, theaters would be pretty dumb to drop it this weekend, even if they could. The movie underperformed, but was still #1 for the weekend by quite a bit, and since this weekend's new wide releases (the dour-looking The Foreigner and the horror film Happy Death Day, which appears to be Groundhog Day with a lot more dead bodies) don't look all that promising, there's an excellent chance Blade Runner could win again this weekend. So don't worry about seeing it tonight, if you don't want to. Thanks! Usually, the websites I'm used to seem to have the full week's showings up by Tuesday, but today, I noticed that one of them didn't have any showings for the weekend up yet ... maybe I haven't been paying very close attention. I'm kind of torn - I'll always choose going home earlier than later, but I've been gearing myself up to go tonight, and I'm kind of looking forward to it now. I'll admit, Happy Death Day looks a lot like the sort of cheesy horror trash I used to love in college, and I'm currently at 75% likely to go see it.
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Post by MarkInTexas on Oct 19, 2017 3:46:01 GMT -5
Thanks! Usually, the websites I'm used to seem to have the full week's showings up by Tuesday, but today, I noticed that one of them didn't have any showings for the weekend up yet ... maybe I haven't been paying very close attention. I'm kind of torn - I'll always choose going home earlier than later, but I've been gearing myself up to go tonight, and I'm kind of looking forward to it now. I'll admit, Happy Death Day looks a lot like the sort of cheesy horror trash I used to love in college, and I'm currently at 75% likely to go see it. So, did you make it to either movie?
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Post by MarkInTexas on Oct 19, 2017 4:22:52 GMT -5
It was a Happy Death Day indeed for Universal and Blumhouse's latest low-budget horror comedy as it easily opened at #1 with $26 million. If the grosses weren't as impressive and the reviews weren't as strong as Blumhouse's smash hit duo earlier this year of Split and Get Out, the fact that Death Day had already made back twice its production budget by the end of the day Friday should ease any worries. Worst case scenario is probably a gross around $60 million, best case could be making it to $100 million. With two more weekends before Halloween, no new horror titles opening this weekend (unless you count Madea), and a PG-13 rating, Happy Death Day could end up a lot closer to the best case scenario than anyone imag...what's that noise? Who's there? Oh no! OH NO! STOP! HELP! AAAAAUUUUUUUGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH........
It was a Happy Death Day indeed for Universal and Blumhouse's latest low-budget horror comedy as it easily opened at #1 with $26 million. If the grosses weren't as impressive and the reviews weren't as strong as Blumhouse's smash...
OK, enough of that dumb joke. In other movie news, The Foreigner, the rather dour-looking teaming of Jackie Chan and Pierce Bronson, opened decently in third with $13 million. The film has already proved extremely profitable overseas, so any extra money it makes in North America is just gravy. Opening considerably less well is Marshall, the portrait of Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall as a young lawyer. It couldn't quite make the top ten, opening in 11th with $3 million, though it was only playing at 821 theaters. Performing even worse was Professor Marston & the Wonder Women. This drama, about the kinky personal life of the creator of the iconic superhero, inexplicably got a wide release into 1,200 theaters by a studio hoping to cash in on the success of that comic's smash hit adaption earlier this year. As it turns out, there isn't much crossover audience between a mainstream studio superhero movie and an R-rated historical drama, as Marston opened to only $736,000, and a per-screen of roughly $600 for the weekend.
Farther down the list, two limited release films that, on paper looked like Oscar contenders, Breathe and Goodbye Christopher Robin, stumbled out of the gate both critically and commercially, meaning neither film is likely to be remembered come nomination time.
Blade Runner 2049 proved to not be leggy, as the ultra-expensive sci-fi sequel fell 53% in its second weekend and now seems unlikely to break $100 million domestic. It's doing better overseas, but people looking forward to Blade Runner 2050 might need to start being prepared to be disappointed. As for every other movie out right now...the 6-week old It outgrossed every other holdover film. So expect Hollywood to greenlight a movie about a sexy college student stalked by a sexy clown over and over and over again.
This weekend feels like Hollywood cleaning out its cupboard, with two films that bounced around the schedule (Geostorm and Same Kind of Different As Me) finally opening, along with insta-sequel Tyler Perry's Boo 2: Tyler Perry's Second Madea Halloween, Starring Tyler Perry As Tyler Perry's Media And Has Tyler Perry Showed You Tyler Perry's Great Reviews From Tyler Perry's Work On (Not) Tyler Perry's Gone Girl A Few Years Ago?, the Norwegian-set thriller The Snowman (which Universal seems to be dumping) and the true story fire-fighting drama Only the Brave, opening against the current real-life wildfires in California. While the supremely silly-looking Geostorm or the even sillier-looking Tyler Perry's Tyler Perry's Maeda Halloween 2 look most likely to win the weekend, this weekend looks so dire that history might be able to repeat itself and Happy Death Day could be #1 again.
[Aliens attack. The radio plays Sonny and Cher]
It was a Happy Death Day indeed for Universal and Blumhouse's latest low-budget horror comedy as it easily opened at #1 with $26 million. If the grosses weren't as impressive and the reviews weren't as...fuck.
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Post by Incense on Oct 19, 2017 8:49:09 GMT -5
Thanks! Usually, the websites I'm used to seem to have the full week's showings up by Tuesday, but today, I noticed that one of them didn't have any showings for the weekend up yet ... maybe I haven't been paying very close attention. I'm kind of torn - I'll always choose going home earlier than later, but I've been gearing myself up to go tonight, and I'm kind of looking forward to it now. I'll admit, Happy Death Day looks a lot like the sort of cheesy horror trash I used to love in college, and I'm currently at 75% likely to go see it. So, did you make it to either movie? Nope! Still hoping to, but probably won't make it till Tuesday to either, and it will likely be Happy Death Day.
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Post by MarkInTexas on Oct 26, 2017 13:34:22 GMT -5
The thing about cleaning out the cupboard is that no one really is interested in the junk you find at the back. Hollywood was reminded of that as moviegoers rejected nearly every one of the new offerings.
The only one that showed any sign of life, was, sadly and predictably, Tyler Perry Presents Tyler Perry as Tyler Perry's Madea in Tyler Perry's Boo 2: A Madea Halloween, which managed to scare up $21.2 million. That's not bad for a quickie sequel that, from all accounts, was crafted together about as carefully as a 5th grader's science project he waited until 10 pm the night before its due to start working on, but even that was a mild letdown, as last year's Boo 1 opened to $28.5 million. Boo 2 will likely be very profitable, but hopefully, we won't see Boo 3 haunting multiplexes this time next year. At any rate, Perry will hopefully be too exhausted after finishing the two other films he's making for next year, including another Madea film (Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral, coming in August) to actually try to put together a fourth film in 12 months, but you never know.
Boo 2 may be awful, but at least it was reasonably cheap. Geostorm, which wrapped its original shoot before Boo 1 even went into production, opened to $13.7 million, meaning its only another $103 million away from earning back its production budget. Farther down the chart, the blandly titled Only the Brave proved once again that audiences aren't really interested in paying for dramatizations of recent real-life tragedies, especially when a similar real-life tragedy is playing daily on the nightly news. Brave only made about $6 million. The thriller The Snowman got awful reviews, many of which discussed the bizarre decision to name Michael Fassbender's lead detective character Harry Hole (yes, I know that's the name in the book, but characters getting renamed isn't unheard of). Audiences stayed away, as it opened to $3.3 million. The Christian glurgefest Same Kind of Different As Me couldn't even make the top 10, opening at #12 with $2.5 million.
Audiences didn't go see much of anything else, either. History didn't repeat itself, as Happy Death Day plunged 64%. The movie has made back its budget and them some, but I'm sure Universal and Blumhouse was hoping for better legs.
This weekend looks fairly quiet as well. Jigsaw looks like the best bet to win, but how many people are really interested in seeing Saw 8, 7 years after Saw 7? Subrurbicon will have to hope star power makes up for poor reviews, and everyone who missed Miles Teller last week as a potentially dommed fireman will probably flock to miss him this week as a depressed soldier in Thank You For Your Service. This doesn't seem as dead as the weeks before It opened last month, but it does feel like Hollywood is in a holding pattern until Thor arrives next week.
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Post by Ben Grimm on Oct 26, 2017 13:43:17 GMT -5
I'm starting to suspect that either Miles Teller is terrible at choosing project or has been so thoroughly rejected by audiences that he can only get cast in movies that are actually money-laundering operations. Alternately, it can be two things.
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Post by MarkInTexas on Nov 2, 2017 12:38:42 GMT -5
With the close of the two-month fall movie season, we can place the season's films into two categories: It and Every Movie That Wasn't It. It was appropriately named, as It was pretty much it this fall, making more than three times what Kingsman: The Golden Circle, the second-biggest film will end up grossing domestically. After It, there isn't much good news out there. Happy Death Day will turn a very nice profit, and Victoria and Abdul is the It of the art-house circuit (albeit with far fewer evil clowns). Beyond that, though, the last two months have been pretty dire.
To bring the season to an appropriate end, Jigsaw won last weekend with a $16.6 million opening. Luckily for Lionsgate, the film only cost $10 million, so Saw 8 will end up in the black. That said, this opening was below every previous Saw opening except Saw VI, by which point the series was running on fumes (upgrading to 3D for Saw 7 a year later helped that film's box office). The studio probably had reasonable hope that it could outgross the opening of the very first Saw way back in 2004. Nope. In fact, Jigsaw's opening is the smallest amount earned by a film debuting at #1 since Chappie 2 1/2 years ago. I wouldn't hold your breath for Jigsaw 2/Saw 9.
At least Jigsaw will earn some money. That can't be said for the other two wide releases this weekend. Thank You For Your Service showed that people were even less interested in seeing Miles Teller as a depressed solider than they were at seeing him as a doomed firefighter in Only the Brave, opening at $3.8 million. And people were much more interested in seeing Matt Damon be stranded on Mars, or fight monsters in ancient China, or buy a zoo, or literally anything other than playing a white-collar guy who gets mixed up in very dark behavior in George Clooney's Suburbicon, which opened to $2.8 million. That's the worst 3-day opening ever for a film starring Damon. About the one bright spot on the box office chart is the surprisingly decent opening of the Kevin Sorbo directed-and-starring Christian film Let There Be Light, which pulled in $1.7 million on only 373 screens, a gross, sad to say, that was probably juiced by the presence of the film's executive producer, Minister for Propaganda Sean Hannity.
The box office should be much, much improved this week, with the arrival of the first holiday movies. Already playing, for some reason, is A Bad Moms Christmas, which opened 54 days before the titular holiday this year. Joining it tomorrow will be Thor: Ragnarok, which had moviegoers buzzing from the first trailer. Word is that the film delivers the goods. Expect Thor to take in slightly more than $16.6 million this weekend.
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Post by MarkInTexas on Nov 8, 2017 12:05:30 GMT -5
So the box office lesson of the last few months is that, when in doubt, release a film about a killer clown or a Norse god.
Thor: Ragnarok rode strong reviews (93% on Rotten Tomatoes) and several buzzworthy trailers to new heights for the series, opening at nearly $123 million, which improves on the opening of Thor: The Dark World by nearly $40 million. The film is already more than halfway to Dark World's $206 million final domestic gross, meaning that Ragnarok should be the highest-grossing Thor movie by Thanksgiving at the latest. How much higher will it go after that? If it follows Wonder Woman's path, that would suggest a final gross around $485 million. That's probably incredibly optimistic, but a final tally between $360 million and $400 million seems pretty doable.
Opening way back in 2nd is A Bad Moms Christmas, whose first screenings on Wednesday could have easily been attended by people coming straight from Halloween parties the night before. During its first five days, Moms took in nearly $23 million, a bit under what the original did in its first three days last summer. Bad Moms 1 had incredible legs, a feat unlikely to repeated by Bad Moms Christmas, especially with Daddy's Home 2, which for all the world looks like the PG-13, male version of Bad Moms Christmas, opening this weekend.
Farther down the chart, tiny studio Electric Entertainment gave the biopic LBJ, starring Woody Harrelson as the former president, a semi-wide release. Unfortunately, poor reviews couldn't convince many people to go, as LBJ opened to a little over $1 million. Meanwhile, the well-received coming-of-age comedy-drama Lady Bird (no relation to LBJ) opened to the highest per-screen of the year, taking in over $91,000 on each of the four screens showing the film. The reviews and box office should make the film a major player in this year's Oscar race, with the film, director Greta Gerwig, star Saoirse Ronan, and co-star Laurie Metcalf all strong possibilities for nominations.
Another potential Oscar contender fell on its face as Last Flag Flying, driected by Richard Linklater and starring Bryan Cranston, Steve Carell, and Laurence Fishburne, only opened to $40,000 on four screens. Unlike Lady Bird, reviews were less than enthusiastic, and Flag suddenly looks like an also-ran. In an example of how expectations can affect results, Flag's opening is seen as a huge disappointment, while the $35,000 opening of My Friend Dahmer, the unheralded but well-received drama about the high school years of the future serial killer, was considered a triumph.
Next week, the holiday movie train rolls on with not only the aforementioned Daddy's Home 2, but also with Kenneth Branagh's all-star adaption of Murder on the Orient Express, starring Branagh and Branagh's spectacular mustache, which may be the best cinematic mustache since Kurt Russell's in The Hateful Eight. In the meantime, I'll be posting a special Box Office Discussion this weekend discussing the grosses of ultra-early Christmas movies, Christmas-themed films that get a wide release at least 13 days before Thanksgiving.
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Post by MarkInTexas on Nov 16, 2017 18:26:48 GMT -5
The last two weekends have seen the wide release of four movies. All four movies are, to some extent or another, hits. That's certainly an improvement over the last two months.
Once again, Thor: Ragnarok won the weekend, and has now outgrossed the first two Thor movies. It's up to $212 million, and probably has at least another $100 million left in the tank. It now has direct competition from Justice League, but with that film's poor reviews, Thor might hold on better than expected.
The nation's ongoing wresting with the acts of high-profile abusive men didn't keep audiences from turning out to see a film featuring a pair of gentlemen who had made headlines for their off-camera abusive actions in the past. Daddy's Home 2, featuring the bad-boy combo of Mel Gibson and Mark Wahlberg, as well as the good-guy combo of Will Ferrell and John Lithgow, opened to $29.7 million. That's not as much as the first Daddy's Home made on its opening weekend two years ago, but that film opened on Christmas Day and had the week between Christmas and New Year's to suck up the grosses. Daddy's Home 2 will have the upcoming 5-day Thanksgiving weekend to earn some cash, and with no other live-action comedies with kid appeal opening until Jumanji arrives Christmas week, Daddy's Home 2 could have some decent legs.
Also potentially having decent legs is Murder on the Orient Express, which opened better than expected at $28.7 million. The all-star mystery, starring Kenneth Branagh as legendary detective Herclue Poirot, and Kenneth Branagh's mustache as itself, predictably skewed older. It will have a bit more competition for the adult audience than Daddy's Home will have for the family audience, but older people tend not to rush out to see new releases right away, meaning that the Express could chug along for several more weeks.
A Bad Moms Christmas opened somewhat softly last weekend, but proved to be surprisingly resilient this weekend, falling a mere 31.6%. The film is still likely the finish with less than the first film did last year, but it should be in the black by the end of its domestic run.
Lady Bird followed up it's huge limited opening last week by hitting the top 10 this week, despite playing at only 37 theaters. The Big Sick followed a similar path over the summer to its final $42 million gross, except Lady Bird is already outperforming Big Sick in terms of per screen. If the film can keep it up, it could easily find itself with a final gross over $50 million. Another film likely to rack up major Oscar nominations, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, launched to $322,000 on four screens this weekend, and should also play well as it goes wide in the coming weeks.
This weekend will bring Justice League and the return of Wonder Woman (good!) as well as Batman, Superman, director Zack Snyder, and bad reviews (bad!). It should make over $100 million this weekend, but how much more is up in the air. Also arriving is Wonder (not to be confused with Wonder Woman, Wonderstruck, or Wonder Wheel), starring the charming pre-teen Jacob Tremblay as a boy with facial deformities and Julia Roberts and Owen Wilson as his parents. It could do very well with family audiences not wanting to see battling superheroes or feuding daddies. For Christian kids, there's The Star, an animated retelling of the birth of Jesus, complete with plenty of talking animals voiced by B-list celebrities. It will probably be a miracle if it manages to break out.
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Post by MarkInTexas on Nov 22, 2017 13:18:53 GMT -5
A couple weeks ago, I mentioned how expectations can color our views of results. We got to see this clearly this weekend at the box office. The #1 film debuted to nearly $94 million--and is seen as a collossal failure. The #2 film, which co-stars the biggest female movie star of the last quarter-century and is based on a best-selling book, debuted to $27.5 million--and is seen as a huge success. Expectations...
The #1 movie was, of course, Justice League, DC's answer to The Avengers, complete with some direction by Joss Whedon. This is the 5th movie in the extended DC Universe, and the first four all opened over $100 million. Meanwhile, just two weeks ago, Thor: Ragnarok took in nearly $123 million in its first three days. While no one expected Justice League to top Thor, making more than Wonder Woman did in its first weekend in June ($103 million). After all, this one had Wonder Woman, and Batman and (shhhh!) Superman (shhhh!).
So, yeah, opening $10 million under what Wonder Woman did in June is not a good thing. JL will likely drop big this weekend thanks to Coco, but it does have an advantage that there is only one wide release scheduled over the next three Fridays. The utter lack of new product might help JL have better legs than it otherwise would have, at least until Star Wars arrives to obliterate all competition. Still, this will likely be pretty much done by the time it ekes out $200 million.
The surprise at #2 is Wonder, whose woman, Julia Roberts, is...well, Julia Roberts. Box office-wise, she is a long way from her 90s peak, as you have to go all the way back to Erin Brockovich in 2000 for a film where she's the clear lead that made over $100 million domestic. I've been wondering for a while if this could end up becoming another Blind Side. That film opened the Friday before Thanksgiving against a box office juggernaut (Twilight: New Moon), and took in a surprisingly strong $34 million. The film just kept playing, jumping to $40 million over the three days after Thanksgiving, and staying in the top 5 through New Years. By the time it finally fell out of the Top 10 in late January, Blind Side had made $233 million, and would eventually finish with $255 million.
That lofty figure is probably too lofty for Wonder, which unlike The Blind Side, has a new Pixar movie to compete with in its second week. But with nothing else on the horizon to steal potential audiences away, Wonder should easily top $100 million.
Farther down the list, The Star, the low-budget Christian animated comedy about the animals at the birth of Christ, opened in 6th with just under $10 million. That's not exactly a promising debut, and with Coco arriving to suck up all the family movie oxygen, it should fall fast. Still, it is low budget enough that it might be able to turn a small profit when all is said and done.
With Justice League and Wonder on the scene, most of the holdovers, including Thor, Daddy's Home 2, Murder on the Orient Express, and Bad Mom's Christmas, all fell off this weekend.
On a more limited front, the expansions of both Lady Bird and Three Billboards... went well, as both films made the top 10. Farther down the chart, the new Denzel Washington vehicle, Roman J. Israel, Esq., performed weakly on 4 screens.
Roman J. Israel is one of two wide releases this week, the other being Coco. The latter is getting not-great reviews (at least not-great for Pixar). Last year, Moana opened over Thanksgiving to $56 million over the three-day, and $82 million over the 5-day weekend. If Coco comes in much less than that, it will be seen as the latest disappointment in a year full of them so far.
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Post by MarkInTexas on Nov 29, 2017 17:22:32 GMT -5
Coco, as expected, won Thanksgiving, by earning nearly $73 million over the 5-day weekend, and $50.8 million on the Friday-through-Sunday segment. As solid as that is, it is actually below what fellow Thanksgiving openers Moana and Frozen did on their opening 5-days last year and four years ago, respectively. Coco did do considerably better than The Good Dinosaur did over the frame 2 years ago, though.
The good news for Coco is that it's not that far off of Moana, which topped out at $248 million. That's probably beyond what Coco can do, but $200 million plus should be doable. With no other family films on the horizon until Ferdinand in mid-December, Coco should have relatively decent holds. It will almost certainly win this weekend, and it also seems likely to win the weekend of December 8, when Just Getting Started is the only new wide release.
Coming in a not-so-distant second was Justice League, which held up fairly well. Yes, it dropped 56% compared to last weekend, but it ended up only $9 million behind Coco over Friday-Sunday. Still, it seems certain that Justice League will be the lowest grosser of the 5 DC Extended Universe films so far.
Wonder held up very well, dropping only a bit under 18% to make $22.6 million over the three-day. This won't be the second coming of The Blind Side, which made $40 million over the Friday-Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend in 2009, but there's no reason to assume that Wonder won't also play strongly in the coming weeks and could wind up around $150 million.
Farther down the chart, audiences more or less ignored Denzel Washington in the poorly reviewed Roman J. Israel, Esq., which went wide to less than $4.5 million. This should end up as Washington's lowest grossing film since The Great Debaters. The Dickens biopic The Man Who Invented Christmas also did poorly, making only $1.8 million in 5 days.
Doing very well, however, were Three Billboards..., Lady Bird, and Call Me By Your Name. The first two took in over $4 million each in semi-wide release. Call Me By Your Name launched on four screens on Friday and grossed over $100,000 per screen. Another Oscar contender, The Darkest Hour, earned a very solid $43,000 per screen on it's 4-theater launch.
This weekend will be dull, as no new films are going wide. The first weekend of December is usually a dead spot on the calendar, as studios have avoided any major releases on this weekend since The Last Samurai opened softly in 2003, and Aeon Flux crashed and burned in 2006. But there usually is something opening wide, even if it's a low-budget horror movie. Oddly, Krampus did well from this weekend 2 years ago, so it's surprising that no studio is willing to throw something at the wall and see if it sticks. Instead, it's a good weekend for potential Oscar nominees, as The Disaster Artist, The Shape of Water, and Wonder Woman Wonderstruck Wonder Wonder Wheel all launch in limited release.
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Post by MarkInTexas on Dec 3, 2017 0:11:38 GMT -5
The first weekend of December is currently a dead zone in terms of releases. Part of that is because movie attendance naturally is sharply reduced from the previous long Thanksgiving weekend. But a major reason is because the studios have had a few major films flop on that weekend, though analysis suggests that it was less the weekend than the film.
In the late 80s and early 90s, the first weekend in December launched a number of solid hits. Tequila Sunrise, The Naked Gun, Christmas Vacation, Misery, and Star Trek VI all had solid runs after opening on this weekend. In 1992, however, The Distinguished Gentleman opened poorly on that date, finishing 4th behind holdovers Home Alone 2, The Bodyguard, and Aladdin. Putting aside that all three of those films were huge hits, Gentleman suffered from being a wan political comedy coming as Eddie Murphy's career was seriously cooling off. The failure of Gentleman, however, seemed to spook the studios, who bypassed releasing anything at all on that weekend in 1993. The widest release was an underwhelming Oscar bait vehicle for Debra Winger, A Dangerous Woman, which only went out on 293 screens.
In 1994, the only wide release was Trapped in Paradise, a lame heist comedy starring Nicolas Cage, Dana Carvey, and Jon Lovitz as the possibly the least likly set of brothers in movie history. Not surprisingly, audiences took a pass. 1995 saw two dumps on that date: White Man's Burden, a race relations drama that John Travolta signed to make before Pulp Fiction revitalized his career, and Wild Bill, a Western starring Jeff Bridges. Both got minimal advertising, and ended up with minimal box office. 1996 saw a return of the big budget movie with Daylight, starring Sylvester Stallone. The fact it flopped is often blamed on its release date, but its grosses were in line with the two Stallone movies of 1995, Judge Dredd and Assasssins. At any rate, that prompted the big studios to skip that weekend again in 1997. 1998 saw the release of Gus Van Sant's bizarre remake of Psycho, a film that, like The Distinguished Gentleman, Trapped in Paradise, and Daylight, would have flopped no matter what weekend it opened. At any rate, the studios didn't release any new films on that weekend in either 1999 or 2000.
2001 brought the first success out of that slot in 10 years when Behind Enemy Lines proved to be a modest hit. That prompted the studios to return to that date with the unwanted, unloved sequel Analyze That and the crime drama Empire. The latter wasn't a blockbuster, but it didn't need to be. IN 2003, The Last Samurai was by far the biggest film to come out on that weekend ever. Most critics believe it underperformed, but its opening was in line with what Vanilla Sky had done two years earlier and what Collateral would do the following summer. Samurai ended up being poltroon by a small amount, meaning it could be seen as a mild success. Also opening that weekend in 2004 was the dance movie Honey, with did decent business
The first weekend of December in 2004 bought only the limited release of Closer. 2005, on the other hand, bought out the film that probably ensured that no big-budget films would ever land on that weekend. But that's a story for next time.
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Post by MarkInTexas on Dec 3, 2017 16:22:45 GMT -5
In 2006, Paramount released Aeon Flux, a $65 million live-action adaption of the clut action animated series, starring Charlize Theron on the first weekend of December. Beset by awful reviews, the film perdictably flopped. Even though, once again, the film's failure had little to do with its release date, studios finally decided to abandon releasing anything of consequence on that weekend.
That weekend in 2007 saw the poorly received The Nativity Story, which had attracted some controvery when the film's 16-year-old star was revealed to be pregnant a couple of months before the film came out, as well as the horror movie Turistas and the overtitled National Lampoon's Van Wilder: The Rise of Taj. None made much of an impact. The only wide release over the weekend in 2007 was the thriller Awake, starring Jessica Alba and Hayden Christanson. In 2008, Punisher: War Zone got awful reviews and little box office, as did Cadallac Records and Nobel Son.
In 2009, the weekend begin to see the release of failed Oscar bait films on a regular basis. That year, those films were Brothers, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Tobey Maguire, and Natalie Portman, and Everybody's Fine, starring Robert DeNiro, Drew Barrymore, and Sam Rockwell. In addition, that weekend saw the release of the low-budget action movie Armored and something called Transylmania, which managed an opening weekend per-screen of $262 and made nearly a million less than Up in the Air, which opened on 15 screens.
The only release on that weekend in 2010 was a martial arts western called The Warrior's Way, another dump. Studios passed on the weekend completely in 2011. In 2012, failed Oscar bait returned with the crime thriller Killing Them Softly, starring Brad Pitt, as well as the horror film The Collection were dumped. The 2013 Oscar dump was Out of the Furnace, which starred two Oscar winners, three Oscar nominees, and a future Oscar winner.
Starting in 2014, the weekend became home to horror. That year, The Pyramid was released, and last year saw the release of Incarnate.
2015 also saw a horror movie, albeit a horror comedy. Krampus was the first unqualified hit to be released on that weekend since Behind Enemy Lines. It's $16 million opening was easily the most a new movie made on that weekend since The Last Samurai.
Even beyond its bad reputation, I understand studios' reluctance to release anything on this weekend. Films opening here will miss the Thanksgiving bonanza, and could easily be played out by the time the lucrative Christmas week arrives. However, their refusal to consider this date for major releses tends to create a logjam later in the month. There are six movies opening Christmas week. There's no way I believe that an anticipated movie like Jumanji would be particularly hurt by opening this weekend instead of right before Christmas. Same with the raunchy comedy Father Figures. A film that opened poorly in November, like Roman J. Israel, Esq. or The Man Who Invented Christmas might also benefit from getting out of the Thanksgiving pileup.
The same thing looks like it will happen again next year. Currently, there are 18 movies set to go wide over the two-month holiday movie season. Not one of them is scheduled for the first weekend of December.
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Post by Desert Dweller on Dec 4, 2017 1:51:34 GMT -5
In 2006, Paramount released Aeon Flux, a $65 million live-action adaption of the clut action animated series, starring Charlize Theron on the first weekend of December. Beset by awful reviews, the film perdictably flopped. Even though, once again, the film's failure had little to do with its release date, studios finally decided to abandon releasing anything of consequence on that weekend. That weekend in 2007 saw the poorly received The Nativity Story, which had attracted some controvery when the film's 16-year-old star was revealed to be pregnant a couple of months before the film came out, as well as the horror movie Turistas and the overtitled National Lampoon's Van Wilder: The Rise of Taj. None made much of an impact. The only wide release over the weekend in 2007 was the thriller Awake, starring Jessica Alba and Hayden Christanson. In 2008, Punisher: War Zone got awful reviews and little box office, as did Cadallac Records and Nobel Son. Your dates here appear to be off. Aeon Flux was released December 2005, correct? Turistas and The Nativity Story were released in 2006. 2007, from what I just looked up had Awake open Nov 30, so I guess that counts as the first weekend in December. It was the weekend after Thanksgiving, at any rate. It was the following weekend, starting Fri. Dec 7 that had the big movies open. I wonder if a lot of the fear of opening on this weekend comes from studios afraid that the subsequent weekends will be eaten up by the huge blockbusters that often open in December. Things like Harry Potter, Star Wars, LOTR, etc. It really feels like studios are more willing to open films AFTER those blockbusters than before them. This seems strange to me. I'd much rather open a film like "Jumanji" two weeks BEFORE Star Wars than 5 days after it. Check the daily numbers for Star Wars: The Force Awakens. That was the #1 film until something close to 30 days later. While I don't expect The Last Jedi to do the numbers Force Awakens did, I'd still be pretty leery about opening a film 5 days later. Now I know the calendar with that pre-Christmas release works really well. But I see no way that Star Wars won't still be #1 in its 2nd weekend. Rogue One was still #1 in its second weekend, and it didn't have Luke Skywalker in it. Maybe they just really don't want to bother opening films that early when the Holiday box office brings such a boost to the daily numbers? Opening after kids are out of school might give enough of a boost that it won't matter if your film is getting beat by Star Wars.
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Post by MarkInTexas on Dec 4, 2017 13:25:45 GMT -5
Oops. Yes, Aeon Flux was 2005 and The Nativity Story was 2006. I got back on track with 2007 (the real 2007) and Awake, or otherwise I would have noticed already.
I suspect that studios might think they're leaving money on the table by releasing films in this slot, given how front-loaded most wide releases are these days. As I said, any movie released on this weekend will both miss the lucrative Thanksgiving weekend and could be played out by the lucrative Christmas-New Year's week.
Interestingly, while working on my response, I did a bit of research, and discovered that, while not nearly as radioactive, the second weekend of December is also greatly underutilized. This weekend, the only wide release is the lightly advertised Just Getting Started. Last year, the only wide release was Office Christmas Party, a film that no other studio should have been running scared from. Two years ago, the only wide release was In the Heart of the Sea, a megaflop that pretty much everyone could see coming. Three years ago was another megaflop everyone could see coming, Exodus: Gods and Kings. Studios have apparently decided that the Christmas week bonanza is so great that they're fine with the logjam instead of moving some of those title to a couple of weeks before.
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Post by Desert Dweller on Dec 4, 2017 23:20:42 GMT -5
Disney has figured out that around 10 days before Christmas is the best time to open a mega blockbuster. Films that high school and college kids will pay to see over and over on that extended winter break. Films that family members can go see together. They can generate weekday grosses that would beat weekend day grosses from 2 weeks prior.
So, it might just be worth it to hold your movie and open it to hit that Winter Break sweet spot. Even with the increased competition, you might still be able to make more money than opening ahead of Christmas.
Especially with how so many 14-22 year olds are doing Final Exam prep the first weekend of December? You probably could open a movie successfully that weekend, but definitely not a big blockbuster aimed that age group.
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Post by MarkInTexas on Dec 13, 2017 12:39:09 GMT -5
There's been exactly one movie that directly opened wide since Thanksgiving: the geezer comedy Just Getting Started, whose theatrical run will soon be just getting ended after opening at #10 and $3.2 million. This reminds me of this weekend in 2012, when the Gerard Butler vehicle Playing for Keeps proved it probably should have waited for January. But even that largely forgotten comedy managed to take in $5.7 million its first weekend. To put it in prospective, this is easily his worst wide opening since 2007's Feast of Love, a film mostly remembered for the large amount of nudity crammed into a Love Actually ripoff.
On the limited release front, potential Oscar contenders (and Golden Globe nominees) continue to do well, though none of them have crossed over to become a mainstream hit yet. The Disaster Artist expanded to 840 theaters and finished 4th, and Lady Bird and Three Billboards... continue to hang out around the bottom of the Top 10, doing decent business. Still in limited release, The Shape of Water, Darkest Hour, and Call Me By Your Name have put up impressive per-screen averages. I, Tonya had a strong debut on four screens this weekend. Limited release flops include Wonder Wheel, which managed to be outgrossed by Tonya, playing on a tenth as many screens. Roman J. Israel, Esq. is looking certain to be Denzel Washington's lowest-grossing film since Mississippi Masala in 1992.
On the holdover chart, Wonder (all by itself, without a Woman or a Wheel) crossed the $100 million mark, and Daddy's Home 2 and Murder on the Orient Express should also cross that threshold in the next couple of weeks, though neither film is likely to go much further. Thor: Ragnarok passed the $300 million mark.
This weekend brings the much-anticipated release of Ferdinand, along with some sci-fi thing that's clearly meant to be a sacrificial lamb against the juggernaut that will be Ferdinand. How much will Ferdinand make? $100 million? $200 million? We'll find out in a few days.
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Post by MarkInTexas on Dec 21, 2017 14:37:01 GMT -5
A long time ago (last weekend) in a galaxy really, really close, the ever growing Empire released what will almost certainly end up being the highest grossing film of 2017, dethroneing the current highest grossing film of 2017, from the same Empire. We might as well face it, the entire planet is now Walt Disney World.
To no one's surprise, Star Wars: The Last Jedi utterly dominated the competition, grossing $220 million, the second-highest opening of all time, after The Force Awakens two years ago. That gross was roughly half a million more than Justice League had made during its entire run up to that point. That was enough for it to already be the 10th highest grossing film of 2017 by the end of Sunday night. It's now passed The Fate of the Furious and Logan, and is closing in on Despicable Me 3. By Christmas night, Jedi should have also passed Thor: Ragnarok, It, and Spider-Man: Homecoming. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and Wonder Woman should be toppled by New Year's Eve, and Beauty and the Beast will fall to #2 by early January.
What it won't do is challenge The Force Awakens for the biggest film of all time. That film's $936 million final domestic gross seems safe. Most likely, Avatar's $760 million will be enough to keep it in second. But Titanic, at $659 million, seems destined to sink to 4th.
Star Wars used to be released by Fox, which used to be an independent studio. The former has already been absorbed into Disney, and the latter, if the announced deal goes through, will be absorbed as well. The soon-to-be former studio decided to counterprogram Star Wars, their former property, with a former property of Disney's, Ferdinand, based on children's tale The Story of Ferdinand, which was adapted by Disney in 1938 into the Oscar-winning animated short Ferdinand the Bull. Unfortunately, the story of a gentle bull who has no desire to be a fighting animal proved to be no match for The Evil Empire, as it opened to $13.4 million. That's about on par with Smurfs: The Lost Village back in April, which topped out at $45 million. Ferdinand should make a bit more than that, but at this point, a gross above $60 million would be quite the accomplishment.
There wasn't too much else of note on the box office charts, other than the successful expansion of Oscar contender The Shape of Water, which took in $1.7 million.
After three wide releases so far in December (4, if you count the expansion of The Disaster Artist), this weekend will have a grand total of 6, spread out over three different days. Arriving yesterday was the 22-years-later sequel Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, along with the musical P.T. Barnum biopic The Greatest Showman. Opening tomorrow will be the raunchy comedy Father Figures, the consumer satire Downsizing, and another sequel, Pitch Perfect 3. On Monday, Ridley Scott's All The Money in the World, which attracted notoriety first by being the first Kevin Spacey film scheduled after his scandal broke, and then for Scott's decision to excise the actor from the film in favor of Christopher Plummer, even though the decision was made in early November and the film was scheduled for a Christmas week release. Will that, or any of the other newcomers, be able to put a dent into The Last Jedi's grosses? Probably not. It is the Evil Empire after all.
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