Weekend Estimates by Benghazi Along 2 Klady
The best story today for a movie is not the #1 film of the weekend, but the #2, The Revenant, which had a great 26% drop after a bear-load of Oscar nominations. This film is likely to be Leonardo DiCaprio’s #3 box office movie of his career, behind only Inception and Titanic, passing up The Wolf of Wall Street before the end of next weekend. Fox has done a great job of selling this as an action movie.
(Corrected: left out Titanic… dumb. 1:30p)
Ironically, the movie that is paying the price for The Revenant‘s success in the macho action demographic is 13 Hours: Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, which locked onto the Lone Survivor/ American Sniper slot, and by that standard is underperforming badly (less so in real dollars alone). Even more shocking… Michael Bay is getting some of the best reviews of his career for this one.
Ride Along 2 easily wins the weekend, but is about 17% off of the original.
Daddy’s Home is a big success for both Farrell and Wahlberg. Mark Wahlberg is a reliable box office star, but only his Transformers, Ted, and Planet of the Apes will top the domestic gross of this comedy. And Daddy’s Home is in range to pass Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, which would leave only Elf on Ferrell’s list of live-action leads with higher domestic grosses.
Speaking of Talladega, the director of that film, Adam McKay, is now an Oscar nominee for The Big Short, which is holding well as it passes the $50 million marker.
Here are the grosses on the Best Picture nominees as of today…
It won’t be noticed, but TFA passed TITANIC worldwide this weekend if you don’t count the 3D re-release.
Wasn’t Leonardo DiCaprio in that little movie called TITANIC? 😉
THE REVENANT will be Leonardo DiCaprio’s #3 box office movie of his career, behind TITANIC and INCEPTION.
And I think we can officially say that THE GOOD DINOSAUR is Pixar’s first bomb.
13 HOURS did not get good reviews.
Ivan, haha.
Nux, sadly – even with bad reviews – 13 hours is the second best scoring Michael Bay directed movie on Rotten Tomatoes. Only The Rock got marginally better reviews…
1. The Island
2. Transformers
3. The Rock
4. who cares
1. Bad Boys II
2. The Rock
3. Bad Boys
4. ????
5. BAYSPLOSION!!!
I used to call Bay the anti-Christ of film directors, but I’ve come around (a bit) in recent years.
Remember liking the first half of “Bad Boys” in ’95.
And “The Island” and “Pain and Gain” are legitimately good films.
Also enjoyed the third and fourth “Transformers” movies: less for narrative (haha) than as sight-and-sound abstractions.
IMDB user ratings for 13 hours are currently Bay’s highest, but it will probably end up around 5th place after the typical post-release drop.
Still, looking forward to seeing it. Hopefully it’s as good as Black Hawk Down.
“Hopefully it’s as good as Black Hawk Down.”
It’s not.
Reviving a topic from an earlier thread, it looks like Star Wars Episode VIII is moving to December 2017. Any thoughts on whether Rogue One shifts to Summer 2017?
Episode VIII had to move, because they obviously did not get the resonance these new characters would have with audiences, and now have to beef up their roles in episode VIII. Why they thought this shit was a key strategy in the first place, is fucking beyond me. Good to know though, that Disney wants AVATAR FUCKING DEAD AS WELL! Sorry, Jim. All your records will belong to something, that actually matters.
Also, Star Wars won MLK day. This fucking film still has some cash in it.
Disney has three monsters already scheduled for that summer, it makes more sense keeping it around christmas, making this an annual occurance.
And lets not forget who is running this franchise now, whatever revenue they loose (and I cant imagine it is much, is anyone suggesting they left money on the table?) by dropping this in winter rather than summer is more than made up with the merchandise under the tree. After the hoopla this year, dont you think Disney is going to make the grand unveiling of the Star Wars toys an annual thing?
As for the cash it still has in it $910 is where it will end up, not a billion but I can imagine it holding that for a decade or so.
And while I don’t hold JS’s hatred for Avatar, it will be interesting to see if it blinks and moves to Thanksgiving to get a jump on the season. I don’t think they will make a decision until they see how Rogue One lands, if that does half the business (which would still be huge) they might see Awakens gross as a result of pent up demand and decide to just take on the next star wars head to head.
Hcat, Avatar is a non-entity, and Cameron should do something better with this time. People moved on from that movie really quickly, and it has had zero imprint on our culture. Cameron, has already made classics, but he sees this as his magnum opus, which is silly. That’s Aliens, and he did that relatively young! Everything else has just been gravy, but changing action films forever isn’t enough for him. Very few people want to go back to Pandora, and it’s so few. FOX should move Avatar 2 til 2018… oh wait… that’s another Star Wars movie slot. How about 2019? Nope, that’s the end of the most successful three film series ever. How about 2020? Nope. Boba Fett movie.
That aside, it’s making a billion dollars. They will re-release the fucking thing to make it happen, but it’s making a billion dollars domestic. Disney wants the untouchable, and that’s pretty much it. Unless Episode VIII is some next lever shit, then that 1bn record will go down the tubes.
How do you know people have moved on from Avatar? Did you conduct a poll? Why is Disney spending so much on it then and adding it to one of their theme parks? Why isn’t it OK for people to like Avatar and Star Wars? Can’t they coexist? I just don’t understand why you care about this so much. What does it matter if both are popular?
Ma way, JS. Don’t be a skown.
Boy, it’s the cinematic equivalent of “Tubthumbing,” and it has even fucking less of an impact of that super successful song. Anyone can like what they fucking want, but folks in this blog need to accept the cold hard facts about Avatar. It’s a blip on the radar, that just happens to be a super successful one. It’s legacy, is 3D, and the killing off of Sony as a super successful company. Outside of that, I will ask you this question again, Boy: Where the fuck is this film in our culture? Where is it?
I will ask this as well: Where the fuck do they put these THREE sequels to this super successful film, that fucking doesn’t seem to fucking matter? The comic book films, Bond, Pixar, and STAR WARS have those dates booked. Where is the room for AVATAR? Guess what? There is none, but keep on believing it still holds a place in the people’s hearts.
Disney moved Star Wars 8 to xmas 2017 because they don’t want to lose the top box-office movie title after only two years to Avatar 2. It feels like a pretty shitty strong-arm tactic. That time of the year is the sweet spot for record-breaking given the less competitive market compared to summer and given Titanic and Avatar’s previous records there. Disney used to do similar thing all the time to schedule re-releases of their animated classics against other studios who were trying to start up their own animated studios.
Avatar 2 will benefit from the same nostalgic love for the excitement people felt when first viewing it in a theater plus parents wanting their children to experience it for the first time. Especially since most people don’t have 3D televisions (though those that do would have gotten them to view the original Avatar), there’ll be a bigger incentive to view it in theater.
I have to say that I agree with JSP that to the extent that if Avatar 2 is just a continuation of the first one with little more to offer than a typical sequel and nothing new in the effects department, there’s not enough hindsight love for the original to propel it to further record breaking heights.
That said, I know next to nothing about what Cameron has in store, but based on his track record, I expect that he’ll be offering something new that will once again take technology to another level. If so, it will be another monster success. Either way, Star Wars VIII will still make a boatload of money and Disney wins twice because of its upcoming Avatar land at Animal Kingdom. However, someone has to blink (not enough IMAX screens and large auditoriums to go around). And of course, as soon as I post this I find reports that Avatar 2 won’t be released in December 2017 after all.
I never said Avatar holds a special place in people’s hearts. I don’t care one way or another. I don’t even like the movie. I just find your obsession with belittling it weird, as if people liking Avatar means they can’t also like Star Wars. I bet some people even like Avatar more than the new Star Wars movie. Who cares? Why do you need any validation? Like what you want.
Not seeing how Avatar killed Sony, they pretty much did that on their own (and after putting out not one but two smurfs movies had it coming).
Again I dont see them making a decision on this for another year, who knows if Cameron can even deliver the film by that date. As for the question of whether Star Wars or Avatar will hold the title of greatest science fiction series, the answer suprisingly is…….APES!!!!!
And as Lynch brings up above…in theory there is no place for anything anywhere since Disney has staked out every Easter, May and Christmas for the next decade with this Untitled nonsense, leading Warners to follow suit with their films to be named later but will not be totally sure that they are making until they see how BvS lands this spring. This planting of the flag and claiming of the weekend in the name of Disney or Sony four years of advance business is absurd.
“but folks in this blog need to accept the cold hard facts about Avatar. It’s a blip on the radar,”
I’m no great lover of Avatar beyond the fact that it was a technological marvel and the action pieces were extremely well done. But JS, you really do need to learn what a “fact” is. And your opinion is certainly not a fact.
To be the most successful movie on the planet is not a mere blip on the radar and no one gets this “lucky”. And while I do believe the emotional connection to Avatar is not very strong, I gotta echo Stella’s statement. Why do you need to tear down one movie to like another, or even not like another.
Avatar made $2B overseas six years ago. The first movie to make even half that only happened last year, and now we have three. TFA won’t even come close, it still short by about $1B. That’s some fucking blip.
Avatar made the 3D “fad” a real thing again, and a little over 6 years later it is still around. Except for a handful of “blockbuster” films, they all are released, for better or for worse, in 3D, because of Avatar.