Weekend Estimates by Quiet Klady Blocker One
A Quiet Place delivers more than double the tracking estimates and gives Paramount its first true hit in a long while, greenlit by Team Grey before he left the studio. More in line with its tracking, Blockers opens to “the 20” and will look at word-of-mouth to define the degree of its success. Opening also-rans are Chappaquiddick and The Miracle Season. In limited, WB scores with Pandas on 33 IMAX screens, while Amazon, in just its second solo release, gets $43k per on three with You Were Never Really Here.
Tracking is an important and valuable resource. As much as it got the A Quiet Place opening wrong, it also gave Paramount the tools to market the movie to get it to this number.
The two times you ever hear wide discussion of tracking is when writers bring up “expectations.” You should read that word as “I have been told this by someone with a vested interest and they are trying to spin the story before, during or after the actual event.” But tracking is one of those things that isn’t meant to be discussed in public. It was not created or implemented widely for the purpose of setting a betting line.
Like political surveying, tracking is an art as much as a craft. We, the public, are offered hard numbers and few even linger on the “+/-3 pts” that is offered as the public mea culpa to the realities of surveying a percentage of people to get a result reflective of the mass. Tracking is meant to tell distributors, first, whether people are aware of the movie that is coming; then, how to decipher who the audience is (and who the audience might become), how strong the passion is for the movie, and where pockets of strength and weakness are around the demos and the nation.
When you see a political survey, you should be conscious of the soup that the surveyor created to come up with that result. Trump’s approval numbers from Rassmussen are not lies, as such. But they are manipulated to be higher than anyone else’s numbers by adding more areas and people who are Trump supporters. That manipulation can be as subtle as gerrymandering is complex. The work of Nate Silver, on the other hand, seems to swim through the moat of surveys and their variables to tell us what result seems the most true. But all the public seems to be capable of processing is the broadest ideas about numbers. People berate the polls about the 2016 presidential election, which Hillary Clinton won by 2.1%. But she lost the Electoral College race by 13.8%.
How is that possible? How does that make sense? Well, you have to dig deep into the numbers… and still guess. I can give you a dozen legit reasons why Hillary Clinton lost on the numbers side alone. 70,000 votes out of 129 million total presidential votes (.05%) change sides and that flips three states and we have a different president. It was that close. But that 13.8% Electoral number looks so much larger. And Nate told us she was 80% certain to win!
Turnout in a political election is the great unknown. Who will show up and vote is much more challenging than “who will they vote for” in projecting wins and losses.
In movie tracking, knowing who will actually leave their house and buy a ticket and who is just really enthusiastic about a movie is, likewise, an impossible ingredient. Companies use history and intuition to make their highly educated guesses. But there is always that window of real people behaving in the quirky way that people will.
And that is fine.
An aside about Oscar prognosticating, even more steeped in guessing, as there are so many fewer data points available. The fact that the awards season gets managed down to a very small group of titles and potential nominees, with so many accurate assessments is shocking on some level and a tribute to the lazy vulnerability of most people, even very smart and experienced people, as well as a reminder that there are standards that changes slightly, but are shockingly consistent and keep us from more revolutionary change.
This is true of tracking, too. It’s not just “we took a survey, here are the numbers.” The numbers are cooked in a stew of traditional stats work and movie industry history with a fair amount of intuition from people who have proven they have that gift. And they are cooked with the goal of finding the facts that will help the distributors’ marketing departments do their jobs. It’s not nefarious. But that bottom line of “what’s the number going to be?” is too bright and shiny for people to see past. And it’s not just civilians who can’t see past it… it’s many execs as well, who are misusing tracking.
No one loses when tracking is low. Jobs are lost when tracking is high.
And remember, even on a $50 million opening, the subject group is about 5 million total. Out of 250 million in the United States. Out of 26 million frequent moviegoers and 125 occasional moviegoers (between two and eleven theater visits a year). We can argue at a bar over whether Movie X is going to appeal more to the frequent or infrequent… or whether it will draw people who go to only one or two films a year. But when your job is to make that call and to estimate an opening gross based on that guess and to get it within 10% of the actual opening because someone in power who really doesn’t understand the number is going to be breathing down your neck… well…
You know what is important? For the stats companies to figure out who is most likely to see A Quiet Place on opening weekend, which is allows Paramount to tailor their message towards that group and to shore up other groups with more closely targeted ads that will appeal to their peculiar resistance.
But if media didn’t make it all about the guessing game and the horserace on Sunday, they would have nothing to “report” and nothing to draw clicks. And to be fair, if media was at all seriously interested in the details, the studios wouldn’t offer them up openly because the threat of extra detailed judgments then occurs and who wants to be watching your back all the time instead of doing your job?
So… Great opening. This is the biggest opening for Paramount since Star Trek Beyond and it is a bigger opening than Interstellar and you have to go all the way back to War of the Worlds (2005) to find a bigger non-franchise opening at the studio. It’s hard to categorize the film, but it would be the #3 Supernatural Horror opening of all-time (as per Mojo) and #2 behind only It as the first of a series.
Blockers had a nice opening. The number is identical to The 40-Year-Old Virgin, which Judd Apatow not only produced, but directed. Only Amy Schumer stands between a month of strong holds and Melissa McCarthy.
Black Panther hits 666 this weekend… millions domestic, that is. Third place all-time domestically, passing Titanic. Domestic #2 Avatar is a box office bridge too far. But wow.
$1.3 billion worldwide for Black Panther worldwide, which shows that international audiences are not unwilling to see Marvel do Black, but it would be wrong not to note that Black Panther is the lowest percentage performer internationally of the $1.3 billion and over club. It is also the weakest international performer in that high echelon of Marvel movies by a couple hundred million, while it is easily their highest domestic performer. History is often wrongheaded, but much less often wrong factually.
Question: Does BLACK PANTHER have $34 million left in the tank in order to get to $700 million? Or, can Marvel pull off a miracle and get the meaningless stat before AVENGERS opens?
If Black Panther manages 25% drops over the next two weekends that’s only $10 million before Infinity War sweeps into town. I can’t fathom it getting to $34 million, or Marvel having any incentive to pad its stats if it’s potentially at the risk of its flagship. They’ll be plenty thrilled with $680 million without playing box office tricks to sneak past Titanic.
I think $690 is the threshold. Avengers with a $7m 8th weekend gross had $25m left in the tank. That extra $10m will be difficult but BP has blown past every expectation thus far. Could you imagine if Marvel decided to do a Black Panther/Infinity War double feature at the end of summer?
Hell of an opening for Quiet Place. Will it have the legs to outgross Get Out? Not that it needs to however.
RFP is doing gangbusters overseas and while doing well in the US I can’t help but think that in a few weeks it will be the 10th anniversary of the premiere of the Marvel cinematic universe with the release of Iron Man in 2008, and so much has changed including a Steven Spielberg sfx extravaganza opening outside of summer because it isn’t the biggest game in town, though August seems completely bereft of a big hit unless I’m missing something.
Also, is there a slow roll out international strategy for A Wrinkle in Time, or is just bombing? Disney’s brand is usually good for decent gross. Even Tomorrowland did more overseas than in the US.
Looking at that per screen average for Blockers, looks like they could have used a few more locations.
According to box office mojo black panther passed titanic domestic today, is that wrong or is $700 million about something else?
multiple releases, Dw
Gotta say I’m surprised “Chappaquiddick” opened as relatively well as it did. (B.O. projections were for a $2.5-million opening weekend.)
For a movie about a tragedy (and true-life personages) few Millennials have even heard of, a $3,900 PSA on 1,560 screens is…decent, especially in this day and age.
I’m wondering how many tickets were bought by Deplorables hoping their most scathing Kennedy fantasies would somehow be vindicated. If so, I’m guessing WOM will be lousy since the film is refreshingly nuanced and decidedly non-exploitative.
My SRO opening day matinee was populated almost entirely by seniors.
“Chappaquiddick” was big in Boston, not so big elsewhere. Credit the “True Story” promo tag that functions as the kiss of death for modern-day movie marketing.
Plus the film’s target audience is waiting for “Isle of Dogs” which goes national next weekend.
I live in NE Ohio, not Boston, Chucky, and my Friday matinee was packed.
Not entirely sure whether the “Isle of Dogs” demo (hipsters, cineastes, animation buffs) is “Chappaquiddick”‘s target audience either.
I think Pandas or You Were Never Really Here chart is off. Pandas is at 11 times as many screens, yet both have mid 40s per screen?
The READY PLAYER ONE drop is almost as shocking as A QUIET PLACE’s opening given I still have yet to encounter anyone older than 10 who really enjoyed it. Def wasn’t expecting a -40% drop off…$150 million is doable after all.
“bet dollars to donuts that its second weekend won’t outgross Lincoln‘s second weekend in wide release ($25.7m on half as many screens).”
DP was correct, but READY PLAYER ONE still came pretty damn close, an achievement in its own right.
You’ve encountered one now Etguild…in my 40’s and have seen it 3 times.
Doug… IMAX.
Et, is it really hard to believe people in their 40s would like READY given that it was designed to appeal specifically to people in their late 30s and 40s who grew up with those pop culture references?
Why would anyone in his 40’s see a movie 3 times in a theater? Fanboys with mommy’s plastic are a dying breed.
@movieman: All those senior citizen tickets actually hurt the overall box office. Every theater operator knows that.
Count me as another fan of the movie Ready Player One. I’m 36.
Maybe I’m becoming cynical, but it seems obvious that Paramount was looking to get “surprise hit” headlines out of A Quiet Place, yet it had a spot on the Super Bowl? That tells me they knew they had a hit on their hands.
The marketing push was strong with lots of trailers and tv spots, on every commercial break on Viacom channels for days. Yes, my coworkers like The Jersey Shore, so while watching it, I saw a tv spot during every commercial break. I’m not buying that the $19m tracking for it was legit, sorry. It seemed to be purposely downplayed. This one looked like a quality film, with recognizable faces if not names, with ads that told you nothing about the movie but were very intriguing. Intriguing an audience is easier said than done, but to me this opening was no accident, despite what the tracking wanted us to think. And like I mentioned in the Friday section, I’m shocked it was only tracking at $19m give how the build up to the release date has been as perfect as all be.
Just my two cents. Not bragging, as I don’t see myself as a box office prophet by any means, but I smelled it being a hit a mile away, and Paramount knew it had one on its hands but were understandably paranoid that they’d screw it up.
I’m 47 and I loved Ready Player One (and I did not make it through the book). It hit all my sweet spots and I had a lot of fun. I still play video games, too. And read comics.
Chucky: i saw THE WITCH 3 times in the theater. Never did that before or since. the only other movies I remember seeing twice in a theater are Gremlins 2, Total Recall, Silence Of The Lambs, Alien 3, Terminator 2, The Avengers and Avatar. I don’t do it often, obviously, but I see no problem with it.
Oh, Chuck.
Amazed that the gang that can’t shoot straight hit a bulls eye with Quiet Place. Paramount practically doubled their yearly take this weekend. They opened it perfectly aaaand given that the demographics skewed a little older if the WOM hits the younger crowd this PG-13 film should have legs all the way to summer. I can easily see this passing Ready Player One in the next few weeks.
It’s odd, for all the chaos over at Paramount, they can’t produce a full slate, overspend on nearly everything, distribution only deals for cheap crap (Gnomes, and I think they may have poached a Medea away from Lionsgate) when they do put something out they seem to at least be trying for greatness. Annihilation, Quiet Place, Mother, Downsizing, Silence etc… their heart seems to be in the right place.
ET…went to see Ready Player One last night for the second time..this time I paid extra for the 3DIMAX. Went with some friends who have seen the movie 2-3 times. Half of us are in our 40s and the other half are in our 20s. We all love the movie. It was packed with mostly adults and got a huge round of applause at the end.
Hey Chucky…because I like going to the movies. Movies I really enjoy a couple of times. I work hard for my money and can do whatever I want with it.
I’ve seen The Greatest Showman 5 times. I saw a couple of (bad to you but great to me) movies 10 times in the theatre.
I’m going to Ready Player One again tonight…so f*ck you.
Why do some Americans own three handguns? That’s a better question.
Hard to decipher why anyone who supposedly loves movies, contributes to a movie blog, would quibble about people seeing a movie multiple times in a theater. That’s a good thing. For the record I hated the Witch. I could barely sit through it once, so three times would be my personal version of hell, but good on ya Sideshow for keeping theater going alive, and that’s completely without sarcasm.
For the record, I think the movie I’ve seen the most in theaters oddly enough is the original Anaconda with Jennifer Lopez. Growing up in Trinidad, in the days of double features, Anaconda was a big hit with the local crowd, and they would keep having it as the 2nd attraction to new movies, because it just did gangbusters, and it ended up being one of my guilty pleasures to this day.
Brack… tracking was not playing a game. Promise.
Someone leaked “[Ed.: DELETED]”… this is why we can’t have nice things.
“Tracking is an important and valuable resource. As much as it got the A Quiet Place opening wrong, it also gave Paramount the tools to market the movie to get it to this number.“
Sounds like a game to me, David….
And explain how tracking missed the Super Bowl ad as if it never happened? I’ll tell you why, because whoever the big guy’s in tracking are don’t pay attention to TV anymore I guess.
I’m 53 and saw THe Last Jedi 6 times in the theater. Most for me was Batman (1989) with 8 times.
(I saw The Witch twice as it didn’t stay long.)
And for anyone who watches Legends: BEEBO!!! God, what a finale.
“And explain how tracking missed the Super Bowl ad as if it never happened? I’ll tell you why, because whoever the big guy’s in tracking are don’t pay attention to TV anymore I guess.”
What in the world are you even talking about? You seemed to be confused as to what tracking is and how it’s used by studios.
My bad, didn’t know protocol for that. Obviously in no way want to encourage people to see it that way. mea culpa
All cool.
@ Non-Revisionist – considering boxofficemojo looked at things like Fandango ticket sales that indicated a rather large opening, it seems you’re the confused party. I mentioned something like a Super Bowl ad because those things should matter, but you’re arguing that it made no difference of how a movie tracks? I thought tracking was all about how much a movie is on the radar of the moviegoing public, no? Otherwise, what’s the point of all the advertising upon release date? Just to dump a bunch of money on a measly $19m opening? No.
Honestly given the budget a $19 million opening would have still been seen as a win.
Tracking doesn’t measure how much is being spent on advertising, it is measuring how effective that advertising is on various demographics. There are cases where you can say the tracking is wrong but that would just be in instances where the core audience for a movie in underrepresented in the sampling. For Place I would think that the tracking wasn’t ‘wrong’ just that demand spiked right before and during the weekend.
You can have a Super Bowl ad and still be tracking low. Think back to Pan (though I know it didn’t have a SB ad). There was tons spent on advertising it, it was omnipresent. There was probably 80 percent awareness of it, just 2 percent interest in seeing it.
It’s pretty incredible that QUIET PLACE even got a Super Bowl ad, given that the cost of the ad was probably over a quarter of the movie’s budget. That’s incredible.
But I agree tracking isn’t about how a studio treats a film. It’s about how potential audiences are responding to it.
Today is Day 112 of JUMANJI 2’s release, and it very likely became Sony’s #1 domestic hit of all-time today. Clap Clap Clap.
^ What’s more amazing is that it’s been out on BluRay for 2 weeks, and digital for even longer.
Is TJ Miller mentally ill or just stupid? I enjoyed the guy in Cloverfield and Deadpool. Always found him to have a good funny presence. But there is obviously something severely wrong with him. I hope he fixes it.
@Sidewshow: He is a drug addled, drunk, hurt person who should probably go get help or go to prison.
palmtree – that’s how confident Paramount was with this movie, by putting out a Super Bowl ad with a small budget film like this. I don’t believe it was out of desperation at all, but a thoughtful, well calculated release that people need to start doing more often than not. A 5 month marketing campaign for a low budget movie? There’s always risk, but I think Paramount knew they had a winning hand and just went all in, and it paid off.
Hcat – Pan is an apples to oranges comparison. Pan’s release got delayed, never a good sign, and IP that hadn’t been popular in years. Pan had really nothing going for it, and I wasn’t just talking about saturation of ads helping A Quiet Place. The ads for Pan were desperately everywhere, the studio knew it was a stinker, whereas A Quiet Place had nothing to lose and with a solid, slow-building marketing campaign since last November, it only was perceived as coming out of nowhere; that’s how good the marketing was, and reactions on social media, along with sales on Fandango being comparable to the biggest horror hits of the past couple of years, this opening should in no way be a surprise. But yes, let’s keep pretending like this opening was “unthinkable.” smh
Always thought TJ Miller is one of those guys who thinks he’s funnier than he actually is. Happened to catch him on Lip Sync Battle (don’t ask), and he didn’t even play along. Didn’t even try to Lip Sync. Thought he was an asshole really.
I wonder if GET OUT (and maybe also IT) has now primed people for this kind of film. Before I would never get this excited for horror, but after one good experience (and an Oscar win later), I’m definitely willing to give another one a chance, and QUIET seems cut from the same cloth of a smart high concept horror thriller, right down to also having its own actor-turned-writer/director. That would certainly explain Paramount’s willingness to go the extra mile.
A few years ago TJ Miller underwent surgery to correct a congenital condition that required the removal of a small portion of his brain, which he’s stated has since greatly interfered with his impulse control. As wild as the story sounds, it seems like a rather sad situation for all involved.
Yeah but Miller was accused of reprehensible behavior going back way more than a few years. So that’s not it. He’s just a dirtbag.
Lots of times horror movies are perceived as coming out of nowhere or not taken seriously. And then of course you get the “it’s not really even a horror movie” think pieces.
brack – I wasn’t trying to compare Pan to Place, just using Pan as an example of how tracking works and what function it plays.
I still didn’t see anywhere how the tracking worked when you talk about Pan. It was omnipresent with ads? To its target of kids? When did kids ever care?
Again, I mention tickets sales and events moments, and *crickets chirping* “that’s not tracking” yes, it is, or is part of it. There’s no single tracking company as far as I know. Some get it right, some get it wrong, it’s a funky science, up for scrutiny.
Does anyone know If DP liked Ready Player One or what his reaction was? I feel like he usually chimes in on a major film like that from a major filmmaker. Asked him what he thought once on here and twice on twitter and never got a response. Has he commented on it anywhere? DP? Last try.
Brack, there is advertising, marketing, and tracking. All are separate things. Having the tracking work doesn’t mean the film will be a hit, it means they would have an accurate picture of awareness of the film and intention to see it. Tracking is the tool you use to find out where you have to increase the marketing and advertising. But since it gives a little insight to opening weekend the trades use it as tea leaves to how a movie is going to do, just as they report presales for the same reason.
Can someone post some tracking reports…they might be useful for people on here to see. I used to work with a producer who received them every week…and I was amazed how how intricate it was.
That’d be more useful than “the tracking is the tracking” nonsense David posted in his other thread. And also, when was it still tracking $17m? Day of release? Like I stated earlier, boxofficemojo was giving a possible $40m prediction in it’s Thursday rundown, so it’s not like nobody saw this coming. Done with this brick wall discussion.
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/news/?id=4385&p=.htm
On Twitter David said he didn’t like Ready Player One. He liked Rylance, but he always does. I can’t remember details about why he didn’t like it but I just vaguely remember him saying something to the effect that it just didn’t work.
Here is DP’s Twitter review of Ready Player One:
I wish Ready Player One was good. I love Spielberg. But his genius has simply not been present in any of his heavily digital work… because his genius is in presenting what is real. The first real sign of the Spielberg I know was in the last 10 minutes of Ready Player One. Too late. And I love almost everyone in the Ready Player One cast. The waste of The Great Mendelsohn opposite The Great Rylance is tragic (though both are funny in the scene). The one inspired set piece is from The Shining, but then takes that film where Kubrick would not. The biggest thing missing from Ready Player One is audience anticipation. It shoves fast food down our throat relentlessly, but rarely slows down enough to let us be a party to the story. Big emotions writ small (anti-Spielbergian) and story structure virtually non-existsant. And the irony of the story problems is that the overlay of the story is so very simplistic. Should have been easy to fill the buckets. Wasn’t. I mean, it’s not cringe-worthy. But it’s as instantly forgettable as anything you will see in a theater this year.
Kinda agree with DP, even if on the whole I still rather liked the movie. I’m more confused with why the review appears on Twitter but not the Hot Blog.
Glamourboy, tracking isn’t meant for public distribution, so I really hope no one posts the numbers here–and if they do, I hope David/MCN deletes them ASAP.
Was release dates for Tomb Raider, Ready Player One and Rampage moved about? I fail to see why Warner Bros would release these three movies within the space of 5 weeks. TR dropped March 16. Ready Player One March 29, and Rampage April 13. That’s a lot of wannabe blockbusters. I could understand if it was the competition clogging the schedule, but what’s the strategy here.
I keep looking at August and it seems no one wants to fill that Guardians of the Galaxy/Suicide Squad spot. Looks like The Meg may be the big dumb Jaws on steroids blockbuster we all didn’t know we needed.
Here’s a bit of a coincidence, The Rock’s next movie Skyscraper also drops on another Friday 13th, in July.
And speaking of Warner Bros, looks like they rereleased Dunkirk and it claimed second at the box office yesterday. Anyone know why. Is it an anniversary of something?
” tracking isn’t meant for public distribution”
why are they not meant for public distribution? Just because they aren’t? Is this just a matter of entrenched gate keeping? Or is there actually a purpose?
Highly expensive proprietary information.
Bulldog, that’s gotta be a mistake, right? First of all, it says 12/1 reissue. It’s April now. Awards season has ended. Also, there’s no theater count. Even if it is playing in some theaters, it can’t be in wide release without there being some marketing behind it. Right?
Spassky, as Ray Pride mentioned, tracking companies spend money to collect the data/interviews, and then sell it to studios/distributors. And as others in this thread have mentioned, the goal of tracking isn’t actually to predict box office: that’s just become a (somewhat ugly) by-product of the data.
It just doesn’t serve any constructive purpose on the part of studios or market research companies to have the data be available for public consumption.
Palmtree, both The Numbers and Mojo have it at #2 for yesterday. The Numbers has it playing in one theater and it grossed $1.695m. I don’t know what’s happening.
That’s a bummer that David is posting reviews to major films on twitter only. Love his thoughts on movies, but I haven’t been following people on twitter who rant about Trump 100 times a day, as David does. I loathe the creep too, but I just wanna read movie thoughts, I can’t wanna read that stuff all day. I do miss the days when David did proper reviews regularly. Thanks, Sideshow Bill and Stella’s Boy.
Bulldog, so that’s a per screen average of $1.6 million! That’s gotta be a new record! Either it’s a mistake or they managed to screen it at a packed football stadium.
My mini review: A Quiet Place, aka The Smartest and Dumbest Survivors of any Known Apocalypse.