Weekend Estimates by Chanukah Klaudy
Merry Christmas to you and yours.
Not a lot to add from yesterday. Weird weekend.
There are a good number of legit successes this month… but not a single one that is a home run. Rogue One is the most obvious example, but Sing also fits… Moana… Arrival… Trolls… Fantastic Beasts. You have to go back to Doctor Strange to find a big movie that feels like it overperformed. Moonlight and now, Manchester By The Sea, are in that category among indies, with La La Land as it expands.
Some are waiting, desperately, on international: Passengers. Assassin’s Creed. Even Collateral Beauty has some hope of an international savior.
Silence and Patriots Day are starting okay. Can’t read the La La Land Christmas Day expansion from today’s estimates. Apparently, Fox isn’t offering an estimate on Hidden Figures for today (sanely). Fences could have box-office-bottomed its way out of a Best Picture nomination.
Here’s your Best Picture race as of today’s estimates…
Any explanation on why the awful number for Fences? Was it the marketing, the content, the release date? 1.3 on 2200 seems insane to me.
Yea, I thought it may have been a typo at first. That’s kinda shocking.It’s playing in my town –I live outside of Chicago– but I don’t remember seeing much in the way of TV ads at all.
I believe that’s a one-day estimate on FENCES (and kind of on LA LALA which only jumped semi-wide today), so up that to $4.5 million for a traditional weekend that isn’t a 1-day holiday with big football/basketball. Still not great….
Again wait for the supposed $36-42 million Monday before declaring anything on ROGUE ONE. Is $500 million domestic for a no-name cast spin-off not overperforming here??? Not being snarky, it’s a legitimate question.
I have no idea where that FENCES estimate comes from, as it just opened wide today. It’ll be more like $4.5-5.0 million today, based on what I’ve seen.
“I believe that’s a one-day estimate on FENCES (and kind of on LA LALA which only jumped semi-wide today), so up that to $4.5 million for a traditional weekend that isn’t a 1-day holiday with big football/basketball. ”
That’s not how it works. That’s not how any of this works.You can’t just invent nonexistent days to make a number look better. A flop is a flop. I’m sure Passengers would also be a hit too if it wasn’t a terrible movie but it’s still a flop.
How can there even be a Sunday estimate for a movie that opened on a Sunday? Sounds made up (though I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the single day gross).
I’m surprised by the Fences number too.
Saw it yesterday at an early matinee and it was in my multiplexes second largest theater and I’d say 90% full (I had to sit in the third row).
And the audience was into it.
Admittedly, I saw it in a theater that draws mostly black audiences (San Leandro, CA) so I guess it isn’t playing in other communities. A shame, because it was so damn good.
“That’s not how it works. That’s not how any of this works.You can’t just invent nonexistent days to make a number look better. A flop is a flop. I’m sure Passengers would also be a hit too if it wasn’t a terrible movie but it’s still a flop.”
A little too much Christmas mead? The number above is what’s an invented “weekend estimate,” as it’s $1.3 million for one day on 2,200 theatres, and two days on four screens. If they’d done this with ROGUE ONE it’d have a $50 million “opening weekend,” and I guess you’d be calling it a flop and holding it as evidence that Americans hate Star Wars.
Same thing happened in 2011 with Klady. TINTIN had a “7.5 million weekend,” (SING isn’t such a freak after all DP) for one day.
Looks like the early numbers I was looking at for FENCES were low, too. Deadline is saying $6.6 for yesterday.
No idea where the $1.3 million came from in that case. FENCES would have had to pull a $300,000 PTA average for it to come from the four theatres…lol. I was wrong on remembering it as TINTIN above, it was WAR HORSE, the other Spielberg movie, that rolled on Christmas for a “7.5 million opening weekend.” Either way, good for FENCES.
“Any explanation on why the awful number for Fences?”
My theory – that shot of Viola Davis in the trailer with Snot of Rage streaming from her nostrils as she screams at Denzel put audiences off.
The ROGUE ONE number today is a bit lower than expected, but it could change (or not). Regardless, it’s surged enough, as things stand, to suddenly be on the 6th-fastest pace in history, and will overtake ULTRON (and possibly, and likely temporarily, TDK) as the week progresses. Seems like it’ll end around $475, but who knows with this scheduling.
FENCES may outgross PASSENGERS, ASSASSIN’S CREED and WHY HIM? (unforgivable release date on the latter) when things are said and done, but will definitely come close. BOW to Denzel.
MANCHESTER becomes Roadside’s top all-time grosser today or tomorrow, overtaking MUD.
Disney needs just $114 million between December 27th-31st to get to $3 billion domestic in 2016. Staggering.
So my big takeaway is that it’s really hard to derive meaning from weekend numbers in years that Christmas is on a weekend.