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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Posted Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009 - 9 Comments »
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Avatar Moving Along

For people who follow box office seriously – as opposed to comparing December openings to May openings and judging based on it – Avatar’s Tuesday number of $16.1 million is ever more spectacular than the Monday number, which felt like it was pushed a bit by weekend weather issues. It’s the best Tuesday ever in a December and 27% better than any December Tuesday that isn’t Christmas Day or the day after, which are the strongest moviegoing days in the month each year.
In 5 days, it’s $18.3m out ahead of I Am Legend and just $14.6 million behind LOTR: Return of the King‘s 5-day. King opened on a Wednesday, so their 5-day was an opening followed by a weekend, which should have put it out ahead for the December record.
Tomorrow, Avatar should fall to between $7.5m and $9 million, in the long-standing tradition of Christmas Eve. And then, on Friday, don’t be surprised if the film beats Meet The Focker‘s Christmas Day record of $19.54 million.
All three new titles – Alvin & The Chipmunks, Sherlock Holmes, and It’s Complicated – should open strong, though historically, the competitive Christmas weekend leads to opening 3-days of $30 million or less.
The outlier is Marley & Me, which did have a first 3 days of $41 million, opening on Christmas Day last year, though the weekend stats are skewed because it was a Thursday opening.
There were four wide releases that opened Christmas Day Last year…
Marley & Me – $14.4m – $41.1m 3-day
Benjamin Button – $11.9m – $31.4m 3-day
Bedtime Stories – $10.6m – $30.6m 3-day
Valkyrie – $8.5m – $24.1m 3-day
Things could look similar this year, though some heavier trickle up seems likely.
And we also have Nine and Up In the Air going out on 1400+ screens each.
Roughly, I think Avatar is looking at $50m or so, both Chipmunks and Sherlock should start around $40m, Complicated around $25m, and the Up In The Air expansion around $15m. Or something like that.

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9 Comments »

9 Responses to “Avatar Moving Along”

  1. Scott Mendelson says:
    December 23, 2009 at 4:09 pm

    The street-level excitement and the ‘wow, it really was that good’ word of mouth during this exact time of the year brings to mind 1997. It’s far too early to even think about that possibility, but this feels the same as I remember it. Anyway, Avatar also just crossed $300 million in global sales. It could very well be at or close to $450 million by the end of the weekend.

  2. Jeffrey Boam's Doctor says:
    December 23, 2009 at 4:10 pm

    That AVATAR tue number is impressive. If AVATAR has connected with the largely untapped hippy/ greenie / new ager base that hardly ever goes to movies, then the sky is the limit on this one. I was going to alter my estimate after seeing the Mon figure but it’s no fun if you do that right DP? So $325m it is.

  3. bulldog68 says:
    December 23, 2009 at 5:59 pm

    Throw my proverbial hat in the ring and say $350M+, with a possibility of challenging Tr2 for the Gold.

  4. Geoff says:
    December 23, 2009 at 9:47 pm

    That Tuesday number IS impressive, no matter how you slice it and I have friends and family on the East Coast who tell me how it’s still nasty out.
    This thing really seems to be chugging along, but I still wonder about Sherlock Holmes – I can confidentally say it’s had about the most aggressive marketing campaign of any film, this year, this side of Star Trek. And the reviews have been better than most for a tentpole picture. There’s no reason it should do less than $50 million and I have to wonder if there’s room for both films to make that much.

  5. David Poland says:
    December 23, 2009 at 10:22 pm

    I find it a little bizarre that you so blithely assume that two films will break records for Christmas weekend box office this week.
    Where are kids and over-40s for Sherlock? I don’t think the campaign concerned itself with them at all… as the movie does not.
    The movie should do well, but a $50m 3-day? Unlikely, regardless of what I think of the film. The films that seem likely to be in that atmosphere are films to which parents will bring their kids.
    But we shall see in a day or two.

  6. KamikazeCamelV2.0 says:
    December 24, 2009 at 12:17 am

    I’ve been seeing that Sherlock trailer at the cinema for over half a year. That doesn’t say anything about the potential for success, just a confirmation of Geoff’s aggressive marketing note.

  7. The Big Perm says:
    December 24, 2009 at 8:49 am

    More than 50 million.

  8. Chucky in Jersey says:
    December 24, 2009 at 11:41 am

    Don’t expect a record haul for “Avatar” over Xmas. Blizzard/ice storm from the Dakotas to Texas, plus a snowy/icy mess in the Northeast.

  9. christian says:
    December 24, 2009 at 6:29 pm

    I expect sleepless nights worrying over that.

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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