Weekend Estimates by Kladastic Beasts
Fifteen years ago, this very weekend, Warner Bros unleashed Harry Potter to cast his spell upon us. A $90 million 3-day opening which led to a $318 million domestic gross and $975 million worldwide.
Five years ago, the Harry Potter saga ended. And now Fantastic Beasts and How To Find Them is here… and it didn’t open as well as any Potter film’s 3-day, which is even more disappointing considering that the the last five Potter films all opened on a Wednesday, to take advantage of the demand, but also reducing the demand for the 3-day weekend.
That said, WB went back to the original Potter strategy and came up a little softer on the launch. But this is a successful opening and a big enough sampling by real people that it is now on the movie, not the marketing, to see what heights this franchise-to-be will scale.
But if anyone is telling you this is a massive success and “hooray,” they are full of it. And if anyone is telling you this is a problem opening, they are also full of it. This is right down the middle. This opening suggests a mid-200s domestic gross and a $600m+ worldwide gross. WB would have preferred $800 million worldwide. They would have been in despair at under $500m worldwide. No one can create an instant franchise from scratch. This franchise is, for now, much like Hunger Games (except that THG was much cheaper) or Twilight. Will the audience for this film be loyal? Will the audience grow? Will it dip a bit and stabilize at a lower number? Only time will tell.
The two other newcomers, both wide-ish (over 1,500 screens, under 2,000), opened soft and will hope for redemption over the Thanksgiving weekend. Although they are next to each other on the list of weekend numbers, The Edge of Seventeen doubled the gross of Bleed For This.
The strongest hold in the Top 10 is Hacksaw Ridge, which I suspect could see a significant bump over the holiday.
Jack Reacher and The Accountant are a tale of two movies that are around $137 million worldwide right now. The former is finding most of its money overseas and the latter domestically. Unless there is more money overseas to find, Reacher is now over as a series. The Affleck will be profitable, as it was a cheaper film.
In less-wide release, two strong starts. Manchester by the Sea does $59,350 per on four, which is strong, if not overwhelming. And Nocturnal Animals, which is more of a commercial play, does $13,189 per on 37… which confuses me utterly. But the movie is a tough sell. It’s kind of a women’s movie… kind of a thriller… kind of hard-R… kind of stylish. I say, sell the hard-R and get some money rolling in. But this seems like a play at a wider berth, awards included. I fear for the long-term results of that.
Loving expands solidly to 137 screens, maintaining $6,300 per-screen. This is probably a film that will not have a successful widening until Oscar… which is a long hold from now.
Elle expanded and did okay… but not as well as it would if people really knew what was in the movie. Very hard to sell, especially while hiding the French language. But wow, what a movie! A lot of powerful emotions out there in theaters this award season… but no film would have more intense discussions afterwards at dinner than Elle.
And Moonlight, now on 650 screens, is killing it. $6.7 million is a big number for this film, pre-awards. Everyone involved should be very proud. If it gets the Oscar nominations that are expected, it will be in the teens, at least… which is a huge success for a film that embodies the spirit of everything so deeply valued by artists everywhere.
I’m completely shocked at the average for Nocturnal Animals. I was expecting $25K to $30K per screen. $13000 is just $1000 over the average for Boo! A Madea Halloween opening weekend!!! And I expected Manchester to be higher as well.
I would argue that the Moonlight expansion was pretty soft. I have to imagine A24 wanted more than $2500 per screen.
America’s love affair with Miles Teller continues.
Wait, were people actually expecting a Harry Potter movie without Harry Potter to do Harry Potter numbers? That’s the only context through which this opening can be considered even slightly disappointing.
LOL @ dinovelvet. I’ve thought that every time I saw a Bleed For This promo. He’s not a star. He may be a decent actor but he can’t open squat.
A24 never expected to expand a gay-African American-urban-coming of age story into 650 theatres in the first place.
But, EtGuild2, they made the decision to do so–which indicates they thought the buzz on it was such that it could justify that level of expansion.
I don’t get why they didn’t mention Harry Potter in the name somehow. “A Harry Potter tale” or some kinda shit. Fantastic Beasts could just as easily be a nature documentary.
I also think there i no wish fulfillment element for kids to latch onto.
Hey David I know this is old but a rehash of this story by the New Yorker with a year’s worth of numbers would be interesting.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/01/11/the-mogul-of-the-middle
Reading this I’m shocked they thought a movie about a slave rebellion would play in this country. Black people don’t want to watch any movies about slavery, at all. White people don’t want to watch karma kicking their ancestors in the ass.
It seems like there’s only one way to do studio movies and everyone does it that way.
@TrackerBracker, what gives you the idea that this result didn’t? They rolled ROOM into 849 theatres in January and exhibs were happy enough with a $1,500 PTA to keep it between 300-900 theatres for the following six weeks. This isn’t a bad number for a straight indie expansion in the 2016 marketplace, and is actually above par for A24 compared to their most successful platform releases. It’s also on par with CAROL and above DANISH GIRL…the guys at A24 would have to be complete fools to think this much more niche release would be blowing those movies out of the water at the 400+ theater level.
Saw Fantastic Beasts with my wife and kids who are huge Potter fans and thought it was extremely weak, it seemed to back away from the wonder so they could spend forever establishing the plotlines for the future movies which I will now avoid. I rarely agree with JS but his rant yesterday of wasting two hours plus on a bunch of prologue was on the nose. Do they not know how to write tentpoles anymore? I just finished ID42 and it had the same problems, no narrative focus, just a bunch of stuff happening. I’m not a huge fan of ID4 but that at least had a structure and story beats other than just a lot of stuff happening in a row with the cast and audience playing catchup.
I havent seen all that much this year but geez everything that cost any real money has been downright garbage. From Dory doing nothing but flipping from pond to puddle “are they here? No, Are they Here? No.” To whatever Batman v Superman was….does that even count as a movie in the way it was presented? It was a 150 minute montage, you could have cut all the dialogue out and played the training song from Rocky IV on a loop through the whole duration and gotten the same feel from the film.
We are nearly at the end of the year and I am reluctant to even see any more studio films. It would be odd finishing the year thinking the Nice Guys and Eddie the Eagle are the best the majors have to offer.
I don’t get why people in this forum dismisses ‘Captain America: Civil War.’ It had structure and also great action scenes, like the fight in the airport sequence. And it was a studio film. The same could be said of ‘Deadpool’ and ‘The Jungle Book.’ And I still have hope for ‘Rogue One.’
Arrival was the first movie I saw this year at the movie theatre… and I was blown away. Slow burn in my brain today, much like Interstellar. Kudos to Paramount for releasing it.
Blown away by Arrival?!? You should really see more movies.
I can totally see how “Arrival” could be great if you’ve never seen “Contact” or any Terrence Malick film before.
“I don’t get why people in this forum dismisses ‘Captain America: Civil War.’ It had structure and also great action scenes, like the fight in the airport sequence. And it was a studio film. The same could be said of ‘Deadpool’ and ‘The Jungle Book.’ And I still have hope for ‘Rogue One.’”
Structure really??? It was basically a series of barely connected scenes that diverged wildly in tone – the airport scene was fun but literally had nothing to do with the rest of the movie. And these scenes featuring Peter Parker/Spider-man felt like they were out of a COMPLETELY different movie from the scenes with Zemo. And I can never remember another recent big budget tent-pole whose directors called MORE attention to the fact that it was cramming in too many locations, scene changes, and sub-plots with those absurdly large ALL CAPS LOCATION headers between scenes….”BUCHAREST…..next scene…..CLEVELAND…..next scene…….VIENNA” – granted BVS was even more of a mess but at least Snyder didn’t call as much attention to it. 😉
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZ3VQkK6Upo
And the worst part of these are they all feel like they have a tune in next week feel to the resolutions. I want the damn movie to end before the lights go up. You want to pick up the narrative again great, but end the first film and then reestablish the characters at the beginning of the next, and dont have the Flash popping up out of nowhere to deliver some prophecy that serves no purpose to the movie, What the hell was that? you want to sow the seeds just drop a no there is another line like in Empire, something small and mysterious, do not interrupt the story.
Its funny that I now look back at things I thought were laughable 20 years ago and consider well done compared to now. Armageddon, absurd film, but wham opening narration, giant setpiece, establish the threat, meet the good guys, training, set backs etc etc. If that were an Avengers film it would take 45 minutes until they announce the meteor.
I attribute some of this to grumpy old man syndrome, but come on there are basic story beats you hit and then resolve. I should not get to the end of a star wars movie and not know who the hell Ren is!
Greg you really got me there!
I know we have gone over this but wow that final number for Inferno. I didnt think it would rebound from the second installment but thought it would at least do Bad Grandpa money. Currently its still behind the Ouija sequel.
Actually Hcat, we know who Ren is. Its Rey that is the mystery.
Sorry. I couldn’t resist.
Ha! thats how much of an impact it had on me, I cant even get the leads name right.
Yet at five I could remember who Wedge was after the first viewing
Saw Moonlight last night and thought it was as terrific as advertised – just a really strong character piece, and that last 30 minutes is sensational. But am I the only one who didn’t love Naomie Harris in it? I know she’s getting a lot of awards consideration, but it seemed like a really show-y performance in a movie that doesn’t lend itself to big-A “Acting.” Not a movie-killer, just felt a little less nuanced and out-of-sync with the rest of the movie for me.
Yes. Geoff lives in a world, where 70’s era title cards, ARE JUST EVIL! EVIL! Civil War is a wonderful fucking movie, it was the best movie of an entire shit Summer, but there just aren’t Marvel fans around here. It is what it is, but THERE ARE NOT TOO MANY LOCATIONS IN FUCKING CIVIL WAR! They are just locations, and a villain needs to go do what a villain has to do.
Thanks, HC, but you know what’s really infuriating about Fantastic Beast? NATE ISN’T GOING TO BE THE FOCUS ON THE OTHER MOVIES! How in the hell do you make a movie, with Eddie fucking Redmayne, and decide, “Well. We will just make this a fucking Johnny Depp movie.” It makes absolutely no fucking sense, and it’s fucking worse than the Hobbit films. Which, jesus H. christ, are so fucking stretched out, that the last one is really, “CGI BATTLE – THE MOVIE!” I actually like the damn Hobbit films, but their runtime inflation is just so damn obvious.
2016, for all of it’s fucking downs, has to be one of the weirdest years in the history in cinema, because we have multiple studios, making multiple movies, that are nothing but prologue, for the studios need for that MCU money! It is asinine, on such a high fucking level, that studios want to waste so much time and money on films, that may not even set up the future films.
One last thing, Geoff. George left the Han Solo movie, so that one is good.
^ “Civil War is a wonderful fucking movie, it was the best movie of an entire shit Summer…”
Actually Warcraft was the best movie of the summer. Too bad nobody went and saw it.
Warcraft was a totally inside baseball mess of a movie. Talk about convoluted. Yikes. As far as the best movie of the summer, I liked Civil War, but in what ended up being a very blah summer, The BFG would be it for me.
Never saw The BFG, so I can’t comment.
I went into Warcraft knowing absolutely nothing about subject matter and loved it.
Civil War is entertaining, but there are the plot holes that giant-sized Ant-Man could walk through.
“Yes. Geoff lives in a world, where 70’s era title cards, ARE JUST EVIL! EVIL! Civil War is a wonderful fucking movie, it was the best movie of an entire shit Summer, but there just aren’t Marvel fans around here. It is what it is, but THERE ARE NOT TOO MANY LOCATIONS IN FUCKING CIVIL WAR! They are just locations, and a villain needs to go do what a villain has to do.”
How did I know that might get a reaction out of you JS? 🙂 Even though that honestly wasn’t my intention – come on man, the movie’s a bit of a mess and comparisons to BVS while certainly pointing out how it’s a lighter movie ALSO demonstrate the Russo Brothers bit off more than they could chew JUST like Snyder. And wow if you are going to dust off that old “it’s just like ’70’s political thrillers” bullshit that EVERYBODY was jizzing all over themselves to praise ‘Winter Solider with, just give it up!
These films are NOTHING like ’70’s political thrillers….not even close. Political thrillers in the ’70’s didn’t throw in cutesy codas near the end with quips from Stan Lee and voice-over telling you that despite what happened between the two main characters 10 minutes earlier, “everything is going to be ok…..Tony I’m still here for you” which I’m sure Kevin Feige made them put in there just to make sure nobody felt too bad at the end of the movie.
The Screen Junkies (Andy Signore, Dan Merle, etc.) folks said it best a few months ago with their commentary on ‘Civil War which they liked: Marvel/Disney should just own up to what this franchise really is and just ADMIT that it’s basically a big budget workplace comedy….and run with that since it seems what a lot of the audience wants anyway. There will be crazy hijinks and maybe even some tough fights between that Avengers gang every 4 to 5 months but at the end of each installment, everything will be just FINE like it was before. The MCU is just big screen TV at this point and films like Doctor Strange are just the occasional one-off “bottle episode” where you introduce something new but still retain the formula. And that’s fine, that’s what works….but let’s stop pretending that we are EVER going to see a Godfather Part II, Dark Knight, Aliens, T2, Wrath of Khan – ie a genre-defying MASTERPIECE that folks are still raving about decades later because that’s just not in the cards with hired hands like the Russo Brothers and Scott Derrickson.
The closest the MCU has come to something which could blow you out of the water like that is the original Iron Man (which I still maintain was actually a better film than The Dark Knight which came out that same summer) and The first Avengers – both films were pretty special and were not weighed down with tons of groundwork being layed towards selling the next several installments. ‘Civil War was basically 90 minutes of plot with an extra hour padded with new character introductions and Easter eggs….it was closest the MCU has come to a Michael Bay Transformers movie.
And no I don’t expect the DCEU to be much better if at all – not with guys like Snyder at the helm and even David Ayer who just CANNOT get past reveling in too many of their own fetishes to tell a more cohesive story. I expect that they will LOOK and SOUND better at least….feel like real MOVIES and hopefully with some one like a James Wan going full-on Cameron with mega-budget water battles like I’m expecting with Aquaman, some of them could end up being all-out blasts.
Does HELL OR HIGH WATER not count as a summer movie? In terms of tentpoles….CIVIL WAR by default.
Happy Thanksgiving Hot Bloggers! DP I came for your Thanksgiving column today! We need a pick me up this year!
In terms of this year overall, I am WAY behind. No ARRIVAL or MOONLIGHT yet as I transfer jobs (I’ve switched careers to write resumes), so my top 10 looks like this right now:
1. The Witch
2. The Wailing
3. Everybody Wants Some!
4. Take Me to The River
5. Krisha
6. Indignation
7. Kicks
8. The Invitation
9. Deadpool
10. Hell or High Water
ETGuild, The Witch tops my list too followed closely by Green room. But I’m way behind like you. I won’t see nearly everything by year’s end but hopefully I’ll get to Arrival (this weekend?), Moonlight and others. Nice to see The Wailing so high. It’s on my list too.
Caught up with Suicide Squad, though. It was junk but low expectations kept me awake. Biggest thing about it is that Jared Leto, for me, is the worst Joker ever. he made ZERO impression on me. He wasn’t sinister. He wasn’t funny. His costumes were dumb (and, btw the, the music cues all through the movie were cringe-inducing). He was terrible and he was under-written. I would have taken Mark Hamil’s disembodied voice over what he did. a lot of hype and zero delivery. I didn’t even care that he wasn’t in it that much.
Also caught Train To Busan. Typical zombie schtick but good set-pieces, above average characters and well-paced. Enjoyable. I was even a bit tear-jerked here and there.
“Marvel/Disney should just own up to what this franchise really is and just ADMIT that it’s basically a big budget workplace comedy….”
Anyone who hasn’t seen Bad Lip Reading’s “Redneck Avengers” might want to get over to YouTube and take a look. It’s The Avengers by way of a Discovery Channel type reality show. Priceless stuff.
I wrote resumes for three years. Hope you like it Ethan. Good luck.
I liked just about every movie I saw this year, including Middle School and The Secret Life of Pets, more than Civil War. Just not my cup of tea. Bored me silly. To each their own. Really want to see The Wailing, Indignation, and Train to Busan. Top 10:
1. Moonlight
2. Hell or High Water
3. Arrival
4. Swiss Army Man
5. The Lobster
6. Under the Shadow
7. Weiner
8. The Invitation
9. The Witch
10. The Nice Guys
Okay, I’ll play along.
1. Arrival
2. Everybody Wants Some!!
3. Hell or High Water
4. Captain America Civil War
5. Hunt for the Wilderpeople
6. Zootopia
7. Sausage Party
8. 10 Cloverfield Lane
9. The Nice Guys
10. Jason Bourne
Geoff, no.
Agree Bill, and nice lists guys. I’m getting to “Under the Shadow” this week I hope.
That sounds like a cautionary warning Stella…
No not at all Ethan. I liked writing resumes, but about halfway through the three years I relocated with my wife for her job and went from being a full-time salaried employee in an office to a contract employee working from home. Didn’t like that.
For some reason the daughters and I took in a second run showing of Ouija: Origin of Evil last night. they really wanted to see it. It’s one of the first horror films I would ever call “charming.” I liked most everything about it even though it wasn’t really scary. Mike Flanagan is a smart, solid filmmaker, even though I though Hush was super meh.
My local theater is closing for 2 weeks for renovations after Sunday. I understand getting them in before Star Wars/Holiday releases but man, what bad timing. Going to try and and jam in Arrival and Dr. Strange at least over the next few days. Luckily there’s lots on VOD to watch.
Yes JS – we just need a good theme song for it.
Could “Rules Don’t Apply” be jonesing for one of the all-time worst opening weekends?
$132 per-screen on opening day?!? (Yeah, it was a Wednesday, but still.)
I knew that it faced an uphill battle at the box-office (Millennial: “What’s a ‘Warren Beatty’?”), but still.
Lovely movie, and I’m grateful that Beatty finally got the chance to make it.
Too bad nobody (literally NOBODY) is going to see it.
1. Manchester By the Sea
2. Hail, Caesar!
3. The Handmaiden
3. Elle
3. Graduation
3. Voyage of Time
3. The Nice Guys
3. The Lobster
3. Green Room
3. Swiss Army Man
Geoff, you know what pisses me off about DC films, and the way people respond to them? They seem to want the DC movies, to be like the Marvel films, and that really annoys the shit out of me. It’s just ridiculous.
“Geoff, you know what pisses me off about DC films, and the way people respond to them? They seem to want the DC movies, to be like the Marvel films, and that really annoys the shit out of me. It’s just ridiculous.”
That’s fair and I also don’t believe that Warners/DC should try to duplicate that – Warner Bros already has a fantastic big budget episodic saga which puts the MCU to shame and it’s called “Game of Thrones.” I just want good MOVIES and could really care less how much they feed into each other.
@PcConger et al, does GRADUATION have a release date yet??? I’d totally forgotten about it and thought you were referencing the Kanye West album in honor of his mental breakdown.
Really? Game of Thrones? I love Got, but it’s as uneven as fuck. There are only so many episodes left of that show, and they spent three fucking episodes last season, just dicking around before getting to the point.
Here’s a a question, Geoff. What comic book movies do you like?
And you not caring less about the connective tissues of these films, is weird criticism, because they aren’t always that connected.
WB should not have tried to make a cinematic universe out of DC just as Universal should have left the Monsters alone. There should be more of a creative drive behind a movie than we need one of these too.
And while I dont think DC should be more like the Marvel (which would be suggesting WB should be more like Disney which is absolute blasphemy) I do think the violence and creepiness is very off-putting. Was there another reason for Suicide Squad besides putting Robbie in that outfit? I loved Harley Quinn in the old Batman cartoon but not as um spank material and the fact that they embraced that aspect of the role when creating a fleshed out version of it justs seems very uncle pervy to me.
Not sure if “Graduation” has a US distributor yet, but it was easily the best film about guilt and paranoia since “Cache.” That being said, if there’s a film that “Silence” is going to knock out of my top ten, “Graduation” is the one to go.