Box Office Thread

Not sure if posted but Avengers infinity war breaks fandango Sales record in just six hours.

Businesswire also breaks down sales over 72 hours for this film compared to previous films:

Advance ticket sales after 72 hours:

257.6 percent ahead of BLACK PANTHER

715.5 percent ahead of CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR

1106.5 percent ahead of AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON

Superhero fatigue? Lol◊.

edited 21st Mar '18 7:49:19 AM by Demongodofchaos2

It's the sales record for Superhero movies.

But yeah, the business has predicted the end of the Superhero movie era pretty much since The Dark Knight was released...and that was the year in which the genre actually just started through.

People say that every time a superhero movie underperforms, but shockingly, it's usually superhero movies considered to be shitty that underperform for some reason...

People say that every time full stop. Honestly, I am just waiting for the articles "will Avengers 4 mark the end of the MCU winning streak".

I'm more concerned that Solo might be the ending of Star Wars' winning streak at this point.

So did anyone else here also catch this article in Forbes? I'm not sure if this was already posted in this thread. It was posted in the Black Panther thread.

Box Office: 'Black Panther' Should Terrify Every Hollywood Studio

Apparently Black Panther is doing too well in the box office and may hurt the industry as a result.

And yeah, Superhero movies aren't going away any time soon.

edited 24th Mar '18 3:39:39 AM by M84

I think that guys is missing the part where none of the so called "tent poles" that came out were nearly as good as BP. Heck, they aren't even good movies in the first place.

Pacific rim had a niche audience at best from the get go. Same for wrinkle in time which could have easily gotten higher number than BP but with those kind of reviews..also has ready player one been released already?

It comes out on Thursday (but it’s expected to bomb anyway).

A bunch of people called out the article for being stupid, because it ignores that a lot of the blockbusters that got crushed by Black Panther weren't very well reviewed to begin with.

I mean, take Black Panther out of the equation, and does anyone think Red Sparrow would've been a smash hit?

My impression of the article went beyond the writer just being an idiot.

edited 24th Mar '18 10:29:48 AM by M84

A number of people seem to believe the article is racist reactionary "This complaint would never happen with a white-lead movie" but the article barely even acknowledges that part of Black Panther, it in fact says that Black Panther has TOO much universal appeal.

The idea is that one massive tentpole movie in the Dump Months can smother all the other films. Red Sparrow or Tomb Raider were not designed to compete with a BP-level blockbuster, few films are. Last year they had a number of modest tentpoles like Kong: Skull Island, Beauty and the Beast, Power Rangers, Logan and Lego Batman, which had differing levels of critical/commercial success. If you're going to spread out these franchise films two-a-month like it has been happening the assumption is that modestly successful movies can co-exist. The Dump Months exist partially so that movies like Get Out! have a chance.

February has been a mini-blockbuster season for three years now anyway. And the enormous social media response surrounding Black Panther for two years was plenty of warning that this film would have legs, ever since #BlackPantherSoLit started trending. The onus is not on Black Panther for being good. It’s on studios for underestimating it. There are better ways to word that.

edited 24th Mar '18 12:44:53 PM by Tuckerscreator

I agree with Tucker. Somebody went back through this guy’s archives and couldn’t find any similar articles for other unexpected blockbusters or major blockbusters. So it’s just Black Panther that’s apparently the problem...

There are no other off-season movies that have done anywhere near as well as Black Panther. Deadpool isn't even close.

Also, this guy's been writing 2-3 positive articles oer week celebrating how well BP is doing, ever since it was first released, so that doesn't give the impression he's against it - just that he's trying to vary his articles by looking at how the spread of franchise mega-blockbusters into the off season could affect small releases.

Regardless, I din't find it surprising or concerning that a good mega-blockbuster would crush midsize releases with middling-to-bad reviews.

I do find it a bit concerning that two movies from not only the same studio but the same franchise will dominate at least the first six months of this year. That's edging closer to a monopoly than I would like.

edited 24th Mar '18 5:44:31 PM by Galadriel

Then hopefully this inspires the other studios to step up their games. Because other than Annihilation (which had limited appeal anyway; hard sci-fi does not have a good box office track record), most of the movies Black Panther crushed weren't anything to write home about.

This is why Hollywood is so afraid of the internet now, BTW. Putting out absolute shit and thinking people will go see it just because it has a big star like Tom Cruise or Jennifer Lawrence's name attached to it simply doesn't work in an era where word of mouth now spreads much quicker and wider than ever before.

edited 24th Mar '18 4:18:01 PM by comicwriter

That's essentially the same thing I was saying. Hollywood has acknowledged that movies can be successful in the dump months, but trying to expand the Summer Blockbuster year round is going to run into the very issue being discussed. The answer isn't "Make better movies" because THEY KNOW making good movies have better chances of success. The real question is, well, replace a mediocre movie like Red Sparrow with a better received film like John Wick Chapter 2, would it have been as successful if released in the shadow of Black Panther or would it be similarly smothered?

As of this weekend, Black Panther will be:

- The highest-grossing superhero movie domestically in non-inflation-adjusted terms

- The 4th-highest-grossing superhero movie domestically in inflation-adjusted terms. Soon it will be 3rd, passing Spider-Man's $635 million (2018 dollars); it has a chance of passing The Dark Knight's $681 million to be the 2nd-highest by the end of its run.

- The 3rd-highest grossing superhero movie worldwide (after Avengers and Age of Ultron), and the highest-grossing solo superhero movie worldwide

edited 24th Mar '18 6:38:15 PM by Galadriel

We've seen multiple films coming out in the same month be successful in the past. The Forbes article even mentioned how in December we had The Greatest Showman, The Last Jedi and Jumanji 2 all doing gangbusters business simultaneously. The differences is unlike something like Red Sparrow or Annihilation, Greatest Showman and Jumanji 2 had excellent word of mouth.

edited 24th Mar '18 6:39:13 PM by comicwriter

Showman and Jumaji also had good staying power. I can't remember the details with TLJ but I believe its gross was really front-loaded, thus it didn't compete with the other two after December passed by.

edited 24th Mar '18 6:59:14 PM by Karxrida

Paramount probably isn't sweating the low box office of Annihilation. They were smart and had Netflix buy the worldwide distribution rights eay before the movie came out. All the box office money is just extra gravy at this point

I'm surprised I have to remind anyone that there is such a thing as an Acclaimed Flop. Finding counter-examples of a Sleeper Hit or two doesn't negate the problem being discussed. There are plenty of movies with high audience reviews that were overwhelmed by a blockbuster. It can also happen in reverse, a decent opening weekend but shut out by the more accessible movie that came out the week after.

That's the key thing, this happens all the time in the Summer Blockbuster season, but expanding that year round is going to create headaches with scheduling. Both Jumanji and Greatest Showman may have had surprise success, but they were still released in the traditionally lucrative Christmas period (and it was already stated that Star Wars had accelerated diminishing returns). And again that is the question, could a more modest movie compete against something as big as Black Panther?

Most of the movies that fall under acclaimed flop tend to be ones that had very little chance of making money at the box office to begin with. There is a very specific, niche audience that tends to go for Award Bait films, and with few exceptions, those films tend to not be very profitable (at least in the initial theatrical run). That's why I said in the case of films like Annihilation, what time of year it got released was irrelevant. Even without Black Panther, that's not a film that was ever gonna attract a large audience.

In fact, there've been discussions of the increasing irrelevance of the Oscars and other award shows for that exact reason; most of the film that take home the big awards are now movies 99 percent of the audience has probably never heard of.

That is why the increasing prevalence of Netflix is likely going to be a game changer. We're going to start to see smaller prestige movies that probably couldn't survive at the box office switching to this format, where they're more easily able to target their specific audience. Mudbound was the test run, IMO.

edited 24th Mar '18 10:47:44 PM by comicwriter

Absolutely. Black Panther is not blocking everything, it's blocking spectacular action movies. If you release a decidedly different film, there should be few issues. A historical drama or a noir thriller would not get competition from Wakanda, for example.

It is just that the action is overwhelmingly dominant nowadays. The money has to go into spectacular CGI, where it could go into either real scenery, or into "quiet CGI", like Benjamin Button's.

The argument being made was that good movies with good word-of-mouth will save themselves regardless of what they are paired next to, and that's what I'm criticizing. Many examples in Acclaimed Flop are about movies that very well SHOULD have been big successes but had bad released dates or poor marketing, and often Vindicated by History once audiences actually have a chance to hear about it (a number of Oscar movies gained popularity AFTER getting the award, such as The Shawshank Redemption).

Tomb Raider very likely might have done better if it wasn't up against Black Panther, it simply didn't have the budget or franchise recognition to break its hold on the box office. It's the same thing I said about putting John Wick, a modest success, in the place of Red Sparrow and it likely wouldn't have done as well either. Of course, Black Panther's success was far above what anyone expected, hastag or not.

edited 25th Mar '18 1:19:36 AM by KJMackley