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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Weekend Estimates by Force Choke Klady

Weekend Estimates 2015-12-27 at 9.27.45 AM

Is there anything new to say about Star Wars? Not since yesterday.

Daddy’s Home lost a little heat over the weekend and won’t come close to Will Ferrell’s Talladega Nights opening, but still, solid. It’s a few million more (3.3) than The Other Guys, which was the first Ferrell/Wahlberg team-up. Given the Christmas box office trajectory, it could be closing in on $100 million by the end of next weekend, pretty surely over over $80 million.

Jennifer Lawrence delivers her best non-action opening weekend and her third best non-action weekend overall for Joy, behind the first two expansion weekends of American Hustle. But the difference is less than $2 million, even though Hustle was loaded with a bunch of other name actors. Even with mixed reviews, Lawrence is a powerhouse and she is the clear center of the movie, which is really the first time David O. Russell has made a film with such a singular lead since Spank The Monkey, 21 years ago… and even then, it really was a (forgive the term) a 2-hander.

The question really is… do we have a real domestic box office-opening movie star who is not named Jennifer Lawrence?

Having given up his crown, Will Smith opened Concussion to $10.9 million, which is about half what one would have expected from him eight years ago.

Point Break closes out Warner Bros’ nightmare year. Twenty-two films, two $100 million domestic grossers, six openings under $10.3 million, four films grossing over $76m domestic, thirteen films grossing under $50 million domestic. It was a hard year. There are people who think I have it out for Warners, but that is completely false. I root for Warner Bros.

The failure of 2015 for Warner Bros is the nightmare template for stupid trend following that argues against originals and mid-priced movies. Fourteen of their twenty-two films were originals. None of the sequels/remakes were mega-movies by design, though the ultimate budgets on Mad Max: Fury Road and Pan put them in that price category. But the reboots of Point Break, Rocky (Creed), and Vacation had their own voices and aspirations (some for better, some for worse). Creed is the only hit of the trio, on its way to over $100 million. The only cynical Hollywood thinking you really see in their 2015 line-up is Entourage. Lots of not-very-good films, but not just trying to cash in.

Twenty-two films on the WB dance card for 2016 at this point. Four aspiring mega-franchise films in the hopper, two DCs, a Potter spin-off, and the already reportedly troubled Tarzan. There are some interesting titles in the mix. Some talent working against type. Ambitions in the fall. But it looks like the year is going to hang heavy on the big titles. And if one or two goes down before they get to Fantastic Beasts next December, there could be massive turnover at the studio, if not a sale/spin-off of the entire enterprise by Time-Warner. Anything under $800 million worldwide for Batman vs Superman and things get desperate fast. Anything over $1.1 billion and people start strutting in Burbank again, at least for a while. I am not a Zack Snyder fan, but I would love to see things go well for that film and get the studio rolling again.

The Big Short expands to 1585 screens and does solid, but not sensational business. The 1585 screen choice is smart, but is big enough that the studio is hitting the markets where they think the film will play strong, leaving the weak regions to benefit from awards glow in a couple weeks, they hope. But it’s not like 3000 screens would have doubled the gross (though it may have pushed the film into the Top 5). $35 million – $40 million domestic total is the viable ambition for the rest of the holiday.

The limited release battle is skewed. The Hateful Eight is (allegedly) on 100 screens. The film is running at 3:05, though The Revenant‘s 2:36 running time ain’t nothin’. The Revenant is only on 4 screens… which is a little silly, bur does make the numbers jump… especially since every one of those screens is really 2 or 3 screens at the 4 theaters while Hateful is on 1 screen at a time because of the 70mm play. There were/are, in actuality, 3 Revenant showtimes for every 1 Hateful this weekend on screens where both played.

It’s hard to find fair ways of comparing a 100-screen, 4-a-day run to a 4-screen, 15-a-day run. Personally, I don’t really think either was a good choice. If the to films don’t get serious Oscar nomination love, they are both going to be in trouble financially.

The entire history of $50k-per-screen exclusive openings on Christmas weekend is 5 films deep. American Sniper, The Revenant, There Will Be Blood, Evita, and The Thin Red Line. Only Sniper – given that Revenant just opened – grossed over $51 million domestic.

Nice opening for IFC on 45 Years.

awards aspirants 2015-12-27 at 12.04.48 PM

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13 Responses to “Weekend Estimates by Force Choke Klady”

  1. movieman says:

    At this rate, “The Good Dinosaur” has zero chance of beating–or even matching–“A Bug’s Life”‘s $163-million domestic cume.
    Ironic that in the year of “Jurassic World” a dino-centric Pixar ‘toon would be the company’s lowest grossing film to date.

  2. EtGuild2 says:

    Yeah the AVATAR worldwide looks out of reach. With China to come, though, 2 billion is a good bet. Not sure what to make of the fact Paul Walker’s final ride looks like the top overseas movie of 2015.

    Without delving too much into Daves favorite metric…tickets sold…it looks like EPVII will outsell all of the previous movies domestically in their first run aside from the original.

  3. Sky says:

    Why no love for Legend on the award aspirations chart? If Mr. Holmes gets a spot surely Legend deserves one too. It has picked up a couple of critic awards and Uni has been placing FYC ads.

  4. Mary says:

    Warner Bros don’t have any financial exposure on “Point Break”; Warner Bros release the film only because of their rent-a-system distribution deal with Alcon.

  5. Bob Burns says:

    Warner fan here. They work their system, distribute a lot of films. Compare them with SONY/Columbia. Strange year for them. They don’t do a lot of what people call Oscar-bait, but when they have a potential contender they go all out.

  6. Geoff says:

    Etguild, yeah I have looked at those charts too – it will just need to bust through $800 million domestic to even sell more tickets than Empire, so it looks like it will end up being just being behind A New Hope (which had the help of a few re-releases) which is DAMN impressive. But I have to ask: do those inflation-adjusted charts take IMAX and 3D price bumps into account as well? Because TFA is selling a TON of IMAX tickets, which has to help….

  7. amblinman says:

    I follow Dave on Twitter. Normally good stuff. Lately it just comes across as refusing to forgive SW for wrecking his predictions.

  8. Bulldog68 says:

    I’m an unapologetic box office nerd so here goes. Star Wars sits at $629m as of Dec 30th, where it made $28m. It is $23m shy of beating Jurassic World to be the true calendar box office champ for 2015. Looks likely to do that. It will be it’s 14th day of release.

    It’s such a mind boggling run. After 13 days, JW had $216m left in the tank. It made $9m or 1/3 of what Star Wars made. I’m normally a conservative when it comes to box office predictions, but is $1B domestic in play here?

    By Sunday it should be flirting with the $750m mark. I could see Disney keeping this in play as long as possible if that number is even on the radar, and by end of January, it should be. Wow.

  9. Hallick says:

    It’s good to be the seventh movie in a franchise this year.

  10. Hmmm says:

    This is Poland’s Vietnam.

  11. Js Partisan says:

    No. Poland’s nam is Inception. He truly heartbreak ridged that one.

  12. David Poland says:

    What does that even mean?

  13. Js Partisan says:

    Oh come now, David. How can anyone forget the summer of Inception? That was some fun shit.

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