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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Plundering Monday

I was going to hold off on more Pirates 2 box office discussion for a while. The “final numbers’ bump yesterday was predicted here on the blog and by Klady on Sunday. No big surprise. But today… WOW!
Box Office Mojo just posted a Monday box office number of $18.1 million.
There are three higher numbers in history, but all of them are holiday Mondays (one on July 4 holiday, two on Memorial Day Monday). The next biggest number that is not on a holiday is Star Wars: Episode Three – Revenge of The Sith, on the Monday after its $108.4 3-day opening ($158m 4-day) the week before Memorial Day Weekend. $14.4 million.
Pirates beat it by $3.7 million

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32 Responses to “Plundering Monday”

  1. Sandy says:

    Wow is right. All the stars lined up for POTC2 to be this big. It is the one true four-quadrant movie. The original POTC brought good will (even if some of its fans were turned off by POTC2), the Depp factor, the very very large female fan base, and for this SFX fan, really exciting visuals and cool creepy sea creature villains.

  2. ManWithNoName says:

    This is not going to drop anywhere close to X3 levels next weekend. Like I said on another thread, Mondays after the opening weekend are great to see new flicks in my area. The theater is usually pretty empty. Last night, at a 9:25 pm showing, it wasn’t a sellout, but it was definitely crowded in there.
    I think Superman is just about dead. Pirates wins next weekend, followed by Little Man, with Dupree in trouble…

  3. JckNapier2 says:

    But Pirates 2’s 4-day total comes up about $5 million shy of Sith, so at least Sith gets to keep three records for now (biggest 4, 5, and 6 day totals). Yay for spreading the wealth. Pirates will probably get a 3 day break from setting records, until we see if it can crush the second-weekend numbers (highly probable, but we’ll see).
    I for one am shocked that Disney didn’t fudge the Saturday numbers a little more, so that Pirates could claim the biggest, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (it’s expectedly higher Sunday totals put it JUST past Shrek 2 for Sunday, but JUST below Shrek 2 for Saturday). Of course, another reason why I hate the stock market, Disney is still not being helped there because investors (who know nothing about the movie business) believe that Cars is ‘underperforming’ by closing out at a likely just US total of $235 million (remember how Dreamworks was crushed on Wal Street because Madagascar shockingly didn’t perform like Shrek 3, as if everything is a sequel to everything else).
    Scott Mendelson
    Scott Mendelson

  4. Hopscotch says:

    That is pretty amazing, but not surprising to anyone. Still haven’t seen this bad boy yet, I’m waiting for next weekend for the lines to be a little smaller.
    What’s the scary part? if this movie were to fall 70% (a pretty shocking figure), it’d still make $40M next weekend. I see Little Man maybe in the 20’s, but not the 30’s or the 40’s.
    Prada will really come out a winner by August. Granted, I wasn’t crazy about it, but the audience I saw it with sure liked it.

  5. Direwolf says:

    Hey Scott, I do this stock market thing for a living, specializing in media stocks. I’ve owned Disney for awhile and had hoped for a better pop so far this week on POTC. There are several analysts who have bumped numbers for 2007 as the profits on Cars and POTC largely flow in later windows.
    Remember that Disney stock is impacted by far more than the studio. Investors are probably nervous about conusmer spending as it relates to theme parks. So there could be a mitigating factor in Disney’s share price. Thereis also concern that grwoht will slow significantly in 2007 across the company.
    That said, I think the stock goes toward the mid $30s. ABC had a solid upfront, theme parks are still in decent shape, EPSN grwoth picks up due to accounting issues in the second half, and the Chicken Little/Narnia/Cars/POTC2 string sets the studio up well for the next year. Also, I have read that Cars merchandise has sold as well as any Disney film since Toy Story. That could boost the consumer products division.
    Disney shares have performed really well compared to every other media stock of note so lots of good news is already in the stock price. The stock’s valuation is at the high end of the group as it deserves to be given the great 3-4 year run in earnings. To go significantly higher, the company needs to beat estimates and raise guidance. I think that is possible, even likely so I am holding out for a few more dollars. Any expansion in media multiples would help but that is not in the cars I’m afraid.

  6. palmtree says:

    Prada is the perfect sleeper movie, a light funny fairy tale. It should have decent legs, and Streep will almost certainly get an Oscar nomination for it. My main concern with the movie is that it will date itself rather quickly.

  7. JckNapier2 says:

    In relation to my stock comment, I was commenting on a Showbizdata report stating the Cars factor as the reason that Disney didn’t fly high, which I thought was silly. Maybe it was whomever they quoted who was misguided. I don’t have a clue if they knew what they were talking about anymore than I do (trust me, I don’t and didn’t mean to imply that did beyond the quoted explanation that I was commenting on), but the statement in of itself seemed absurd and similar to other related stories in the past year (ie – stuff like, ‘Pixar tumbled because Incredibles didn’t sell 40 million dvds’ or something to that extent, as if that is expected).
    It seems that people, not just analyists, seem to forget that every new product can’t break every record in the book (and, natch, studios need to stop spending to extents so that profitability depends that they do). Thanks for the more logical explanation.
    Scott Mendelson

  8. Direwolf says:

    Interesting feedback, Scott. Just remember stocks are all aobut expectations. Although you and I and DP and everyone onthis blog knows that Cars has shown great legs, it isn’t the runaway hit that many on Wall Street expected. And Wall Street will only remember that Cars didn’t open as big as expected. NO matter how well it does in terms of doemstic BO it is a disappointment. DIS might be able to change folks mind on that if the DVD sales are big and they can point to specific profits that some may be overlooking such as the consumer products I mentioned.
    One thing I like about tracking BO is that is a lot like tracking stocks — it is fun and the outcome often doesn’t make sense!

  9. Telemachos says:

    PIRATES has a very small chance at reclaiming the 5-day record, and a decent chance at grabbing the 6-day record (both currently held by SITH). It’ll all depend on how slowly it drops this week — that Monday number is a sign it might hold up reasonably well for a front-loaded blockbuster.

  10. jeffmcm says:

    Re: Prada dating itself, am I really out of touch or are the outfits seen in that movie considered to actually be in fashion right now? Most of the trendy women in the movie, with the exception of Streep, seemed to be dressed rather clownishly.

  11. JckNapier2 says:

    As the risk of this turning into a question and answer session between two posters, I’m curious… did the stock analyists truly believe that Cars was going to open and sustain Finding Nemo numbers?
    I ask because there was much discussion in the box office analysist geek crowd (ie – us) about that, due to the seeming lack of interest, comparatively less than stellar reviews, and subject matter. Obviously tracking makes its way into all circles, but I’m wondering what were the honest expectations of said crowd.
    Scott Mendelson

  12. David Poland says:

    Showbizdata got that silliness from Nikki Finke, who got it from some desperate analyst.
    Dire obviously knows of what he speaks. Movies don’t move stock price. Another 30 cent swing in gas prices would have more effect on Disney’s P&L and the stock price than Pirates or Cars or whatever.
    And specifically with Cars, the billions to buy Pixar will outdo gross revenues from all Pixar product for no less than five years. Why would one Pixar movie move the stock price?
    Flip side, why did Pixar sell earlier this year? Because as a movie-only business, Cars would really move the stock price down. It was never getting better.

  13. Arrow77 says:

    Releasing Superman so close before Pirates was a colossal, colossal mistake. It’s becoming pretty obvious that the people “missing” on opening week were just holding their money for Pirates (most people don’t go to movies every week). Releasing the film two weeks AFTER Pirates would have given much better results since the reviews were so much better. It would’ve been hyped as the best film of the summer

  14. Direwolf says:

    Good point, David. Had Pixar remained independent, the Cars box office opening and gross to date would have knocked the stock down badly. I’d venture to say it would be at least 10% lower than the pre-Cars release peak.
    As for expectations, I think The Incredibles was where Wall Street was coming from. That film opened at $70 and headed to $261. While analysts will often assume less in public, my impression was this was what they really thought and what was required to see Cars as a success in terms of Disney stock price. I do recall from a sometimes shaky memeory seeing estimates as high as $300 million for Cars as well. So by Wall Street standards it is a disappointment.
    One other thing is that the DVD market has slowed dramatically since Incredibles. This hurts the perception toward Cars profitability since its box office is going to be less than Incredibles. Analysts use a rduimentary ratio of box office to DVD revenue. Now you have attach rates and wholesale pricing falling in the DVD market.
    Finally, being the first film since the Pixar acquisition there was more focus on Cars. I suspect some folks figured that Disney was extremely confident they had a runaway winner in Cars so that is why the deal came ahead of the movie.
    Sorry to write so much on this topic but I have long looked for a spot where I could discuss the intersection of box office and stock prices.

  15. palmtree says:

    I don’t think moving the Superman release would have helped all that much. Its July 4th weekend is a great time to open a movie. Releasing it after Pirates would get rid of the long weekend and it would also be squarely in a period of summer fatigue.
    What I attribute Superman’s performance to is simply the marketing. They didn’t make it seem fun but solemn (I don’t know why they couldn’t show the bullet hitting the eye but that was the funnest image for me). The marketing kept saying find out what happened to Superman even though no one knew he was gone to begin with. And by playing up the nostalgia, I don’t think kids were as well served by it. I think it is a classic case of King Kong, making a story that doesn’t resonate today with a reverence for the source material that doesn’t help update it.

  16. JckNapier2 says:

    Hmm… who would have thought one of my few possibly shortsighted comments (not that everything I say is smart, but usually my dumb comments are thought out too) would open up this avenue. Stocks and investments are the one thing (besides geography I suppose), where I’m sorely lacking in understanding. So, feel free to rant to your heart’s content.
    Scott Mendelson

  17. Direwolf says:

    Scott, I rarely self-promote but click my link and check out my website. If you want full access so you can educate yourself on investments just email me from the address you find there. I have lots of friends and clients with access to the site. I keep most stuff behind passwords to create exclusivity for my clients and becuase much of what I write appears on a website owned by theStreet.com.

  18. David Poland says:

    We should keep in mind that Bryan Singer had approvals on all the marketing for Superman Returns, so there was a cause that did not start in the WB marketing dept.

  19. Nadsat says:

    Question for Direwolf: Since DVD sales tend to be the black hole of film business information, and hard numbers are a rarity, I’m curious about the ratio you mention above that analysts use to estimate box office to DVD revenue. Is there a generally accepted rule of thumb?

  20. RoyBatty says:

    PIRATES sails past SUPERMAN in four days – holy fucking cow.
    Arrow77 – you have the right idea, but the wrong direction. I said this repeatedly online and to friends last month.
    Warner Bros had a make or break moment back on June 4th when the X-MEN 3 second weekend numbers come in making it clear it was going to steeply drop off. The writing was on the wall that POTC had become THE movie everyone wanted to see and it was going to crush their Man of Steel.
    It was a game of chicken that Alan Horn decided to risk instead of blinking and moving up his release date by two weeks. Everyone could see that June was pretty much wide open as far as big tent pole popcorn films. There was no way Disney, as risk-averse as they are, would move up PIRATES if SR was no longer in the coveted 4th of July slot. They wanted a full month between CARS and POTC or risk chewing through some of the former’s box office.
    But they just blinked and let the moment escape out of what I am guessing was pure, simple pride. They had claimed July 4th for SR way back when and didn’t want to look like pussies jumping ship. I am fully convinced that it was a missed chance that cost them upwards $60M. And some would say that with the widely known tracking around the industry, they had known this for months.
    They could have owned the “summer blockbuster” business for almost 3 weeks. Nothing was out there between X-3 and SR.
    If you need me, I’ll be over here in the “I told you so” Section.

  21. Sultry says:

    RoyBatty, as a woman, I have to admit that it bothers me when you say they “didn’t want to look like pussies” as though pussies are bad things. In reality, they are not only good, but good looking as well.

  22. Sandy says:

    I went to see POTC last night, a Tuesday 6pm show…not sold out but full. Everyone had a great time and lots of laughs. This puppy will keep running for quite awhile in the theaters.

  23. KamikazeCamelV2.0 says:

    I’m going to see Superman tomorrow night. I anticipate empty cinema 😛
    You’ve gotta hand it to Disney, really. Pirates is just huge.
    Does anyone know what movie trailers appeared before Pirates because that’s some damn fine exposure right there!
    I’m still sad for Cars. I absolutely loved that nostalgic little gem. My favourite film of the year so far (albiet, not many of the “good” movies have been released here yet). Shame when $240mil is considered a disappointment, especially for a movie about talking cars.

  24. AgentArc says:

    Trailers for Pirates?
    Accepted, Deja Vu, Night at the Mueseum, Rocky Balboa, and The Guardian have all been attached to good number of prints.

  25. Sandy says:

    I don’t remember all of the trailers from last night but they included The Guardian, Accepted, Jet Li’s Fearless, Transformers and that Mark Walhberg movie about the Philly Eagles.

  26. Telemachos says:

    RoyBatty, another possible reason might be that prints weren’t ready. I’m not sure if it was the case with SUPERMAN, but with digital intermediates these days, filmmakers are tweaking films and visual effects until the last possible minute. It’s certainly possible that there wasn’t time in the post schedule to move up the release date by a couple of weeks.

  27. palmtree says:

    Don’t forget the World Cup. I know Americans don’t care about it, but pirated copies would almost certainly eat away international profits if the movie were released earlier.

  28. Blackcloud says:

    Trailers I saw before Pirates included that stupid-looking college movie, Flushed Away, Guardian, Fearless, Invincible (the Mark Wahlberg movie), Night at the Museum, the horrible Lady in the Water trailer, and Deja Vu (Denzel playing a cop for the bazillionth time). It was a lot of trailers.

  29. Sandy says:

    Showbizdata has reported that POTC has broken the Tuesday box office record….goodbye Omen!

  30. Arrow77 says:

    RoyBatty, I agree that releasing it earlier would have worked too, maybe even better, but I believe a move of the release date in either direction would have been positive. The three-day week-end means nothing if you’re too close to the movie everyone wants to see. Like I said, most people don’t see movie every week.
    We could name dozens of reasons why Superman disappointed but the truth is it probably was just a question of a detail or two to make the film really succeed. This is nowhere near a ‘The Island’ disaster so just changing the date could’ve had a huge effect.

  31. Blackcloud says:

    Oh, and also the new Will Ferrell movie had a trailer before Pirates.

  32. KamikazeCamelV2.0 says:

    Jesus, that IS a lot of trailers.

Quote Unquotesee all »

It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon