Box Office Thread

So at this point 2017 is going to have at least three billion dollar films (since Last Jedi has 99.99999% chance). Do you reckon there will be more and if so, which films will make it?

I won't say they're all guarantees, but Guardians, Pirates, Transformers & Spider-Man all have a shot.

Id' say Despicable Me 3 as well

Making a billion isn't rare anymore, not for big blockbusters.

F8 will definitely make more globally than BATB - it's very close already, despite BATB having been out for a lot longer.

I would be surprised if gotg doesn't pass that mark. It had already raked its first 100 million before the weekend (the actual numbers aren't there yet, I guess because of the holiday yesterday). And it hasn't even opened at the big markets yet.

Could 2017 end up with even more billion-dollar films than 2015?

Yes. And 2018 will most likely have even more. The billion dollar mark has become more and more meaningless, due to inflation, higher ticket prices and larger markets.

F8 has passed the $1 billion mark. It's also about to become the 6th movie to have an international (non-US/Canada) gross over $1 biilion. It's alread made $373 million in China, which appears to make it the all-time 4th-highest-grossing movie in China (Furious 7 is 2nd with $390 million, which F8 may still pass).

BATB is currently the 13th-highest grossing movie (worldwide) of all time, and the 9th-highest (soon to be 8th-highest) domestically. It's still not clear if it will squeak past the $500 mil mark domestically, but given that few films ever had, nothing but Star Wars VIII is likely to beat it domestically.

The list of films with $500+ mil domestic is (not in order) Star Wars VII; Rogue One; Avatar; Jurassic World; The Avengers; The Dark Knight; Titanic.

There's only 10 films with more than $1.2 billion worldwide, so that's going to be my new benchmark for whether a film is doing ridiculously well. $1.5 billion could also work, as only 6 movies have passed that threshold yet: Avatar, Titanic, Star Wars VII, Jurassic World, Avengers, and Furious 7.

edited 4th May '17 5:39:26 PM by Galadriel

Beauty & the Beast & Fate of the Furious have both passed Civil War.

edited 7th May '17 8:52:48 AM by Spinosegnosaurus77

Something I've been wondering about: how is Box Office Mojo able to put up reasonably accurate weekend estimates by later morning/early afternoon on Sunday? While some people who go to the theater on Sunday will have bought their tickets in advance, I don't see how they can predict how many people will buy tickets at the theater throughout Sunday afternoon and night.

I figure they must be extrapolating based on Friday and Saturday, but they're surprisingly accurate despite sometimes being off by a few million.

Edit: Oops, this was supposed to go in the MCU thread.

edited 7th May '17 1:45:31 PM by Galadriel

Statistics. But statistics don't account for particularly good or particularly bad Wo M.

I think they do factor in word of mouth based on early reviews. If they know something is getting bad buzz it is reasonable to assume the word of mouth might not be as good and vice versa.

Of course there are outliers to this (Bayformers).

But even Bayformers gets positive word of mouth from the patriotic moviegoers who want to see death and destruction and all that bullshit.

It's really all just math. Friday and Saturday are the biggest movie watching days. Sunday is close behind, and they can extrapolate potential box office from there. Word of mouth doesn't usually factor in until the second or third week, if at all.

That's what I was saying though. That you can't really apply it to them because this is a case where the opinion of the general audience seems to be completely at odds with what the critics think.

They don't base their assessment of word-of-mouth on reviews. In addition to using the Friday and Saturday box office, they also factor in Cinemascore, which is a poll of people who see the movie on opening night to determine how many of them liked it. For box-office predictions, it makes sense that it works better to go with popular opinion rather than reviews.

edited 7th May '17 6:41:42 PM by Galadriel

Why is it that when studios put "Legend" in the title of their movies, it's asking for a financial failure? First there was The Legend of Hercules, then there was The Legend of Tarzan, and now we have the turkey of a release with King Arthur: The Legend of the Sword only grossing less than $15 million domestically at a budget of $175 million.

According to Box Office Flops, this could rival 47 Ronin.

I wonder more why the studios keep insisting movies about those old properties which have been redone so many times that the audience has become pretty much tired of it? And why do they think that the audience wants to see realism in those kind of stories?

I really don't get it...I could come up easily with a number of properties which are not only totally untapped but also fit into the current Zeitgeist.

It's got to be sheer laziness, I think.

I went to see F8, and now I get why they're such big earners internationally. Over-the top action (it's like James Bond if Bond had family values and everything (rather than just some things) he did involved car racing), no complex plot ideas to be mucked up in translation, diverse cast.

I choose to believe the movies occur in a world where the CIA has been dissolved and merged with NASCAR, because that's the only way I can make the premise work.

edited 14th May '17 6:10:39 PM by Galadriel

Isn't the Fast and Furious universe one where the CIA is allowed to actively work on US soil rather than that being something that's kept black?

So those people whose box office bomb senses were tingling about King Arthur: Legend of the Sword were right. Ouch.

CIA's worked on US soil frequently, they just don't publicly acknowledge/advertise it. Everything from MKULTRA to the Kennedy Administration considering using them for a false flag terrorist attack on US soil so they could blame the Cubans.

It's enough to make one believe conspiracy theories.

The CIA cannot conduct operations or directly gather intelligence on USA native soil-they can still collate data, conduct interrogations, perform research, and the like. Stuff like MKULTRA and the like are within their mandate, which is not the same as sanctioned/ethical/legal, and they have gotten in trouble a few times for overstepping their purview. But full blown Intel/Operations? No-they need special dispensation for that, which means POTUS executive authority or a bunch of difficult hoops, and is decidedly not as simple or easy as movie makers love to imagine. The NSA on the other hand...

edited 15th May '17 3:41:11 PM by ViperMagnum357