Weekend Estimates by Mr. Credible
Fourth time there have been 3 $150 million openings in a year. (150 is the new 100.)
About to be a record-breaking 4 $150m openings in a year… and all before July 1.
I don’t actually expect a 5th, given the poor opening of Solo and the lack of a Star Wars film over Christmas. However, we will tie the record for $100 million openings before July 1 with 5 next weekend. And I see 4 potential additions to that during the rest of the summer and 4 more in the fall/winter. Obviously, not even half of those 8 will make the mark. But the annual record is 8 and that is well within reach.
Theatrical is dying. Kids don’t go to the movies. Etc, etc, etc… blah, blah, blah…
I can’t say this enough times – and you won’t hear me say it many more times in public – the future is coming… subscription access to virtually everything is coming… and theatrical window will, above all, be the way success is defined in the future of movies. Streaming services, of which you will subscribe to a group, not unlike the cable bundle, will tout their successes and numbers only to keep subscribers from churning. Someone will try to charge a premium for early access in 2021 and the experiment will fail. There will be no YouTube Red in the future, but people will pay for subscriptions to get YouTube access overall… and life will go on. If you want it, you will pay for it in some manner.
And the only way to pay for Avengers movies and Pixar movies, etc, as we know them now, will be theatrical. Eyeballs will be cheap. Dollars will be – as they really are now, though people are all in a tizzy – the way things are measured. And the difference between a movie that premieres on Disney Family Streaming and a Pixar movie will be the billion dollars that the Pixar movie adds to Disney’s coffers. And don’t think that money is minor. Figure 100 million households in America paying $10 a month for Disney Family… that’s $12 billion a year. One movie improving revenues by 8.5% is major. And if you think Comcast is leaving behind the $370 million for Fifty Shades Freed‘s spin-off stepchild, you are wrong.
We are all too distracted by the shiniest, most expensive objects. The giant movies are great and highly profitable in all windows. But the middle business is business too. And when the film/tv business gets capped – nearly permanently – by what is currently being touted as the disruption of streaming, it will matter even more. For a lot of companies, a $24 billion cap on annual revenues across 200 million paying households worldwide is a step up. But when there is nowhere to go from there, they will all chafe.
The Incredibles 2 not only broke the record for an animation opening… it smashed it by $45 million.
Decent hold for Ocean’s 8, following a decent opening. A successful movie, even though it is not very good. As I have said a thousand times, succeeding with mediocrity is the real test of growing opportunity in Hollywood for women and POC. (By the way, I expect “POC” will be seen as a glib diminutive sometime in the next couple years.)
Tag is not It. But it felt somehow appropriate that a mediocre movie that is so Toby Emmerich, sold with such mediocrity, opened on WarnerMedia’s opening weekend to such a mediocre number. I know that the people employed by Warner Bros are capable of better on every level. But if you look hard at the last couple of years, there have been some very beautiful weeds, but the garden is pretty lame. How much will change how quickly at the studio that seems on a collision course with a Best Picture win and a surprise smash with Crazy Rich Asians to compliment a run of mediocrity or outright flops. (I so want to believe in The Meg.)
And Gotti goes into the potty. Though, I have to say, $1.7 million for what looks like an endless disaster is a tribute to Travolta working the movie. And some loonies will attribute it to MoviePass’ involvement… which will be deeply misguided.
(More to come…)
“…the studio that seems on a collision course with a Best Picture win.”
Dave- Are you referring to “A Star is Born,” or….?
“About to be a record-breaking 4 $150m openings in a year… and all before July 1.
I don’t actually expect a 5th, “
Are we really expecting Jurassic Kingdom to fall so far after opening to $208m? Honest question. It’s not like it has negative audience reactions from the first one to overcome. And while I’m not expecting it to equal that opening, I just think that $160+ seems like the ballpark opening for me.
JW dropped 49% against a $90m of Inside Out, which was a phenomenal hold for such a big opening, and was actually a better hold than Infinity Wars which faced a $14m Overboard opening. So facing the 2nd weekend of Incredibles which may do around $90m if it drops by 50%, I see no reason why Kingdom can’t do boffo numbers.
Ironically, the original JP has the lowest opening weekend of the series, and if this were to open above $200m then each franchise, including Star Wars, and The Avengers would have two such blockbuster openings in this rarified air. Three for Marvel if you count Panther.
Who does Disney think they’re fooling with those Wrinkle in Time numbers? Did it get a re-release in first run theaters? Has a higher per screen than Ocean’s 8 and Deadpool, etc? I know they want it to get to $100 million but …
JW2 will be the 4th, Bulldog.
@Big G: I agree with you that the numbers for A Wrinkle in Time can’t be right. The weekend gross and per-screen averages look to be about 10 times higher than would be plausible for this film’s 15th weekend.
I think we can attribute A WRINKLE IN TIME’s bump to what I call the Brie Larson effect. Clearly, critics had nothing to do with it. It ws all the work of one white lady.
Not sure whether I buy the drive-in theory re: “Wrinkle”‘s exaggerated PSA average.
The few drive-ins around here always pick another first-run movie (almost always from the same distributer) to accompany new releases.
Hence, “Solo” was the drive-in co-feature w/ “Incredibles 2” around here. (And, incredibly enough, “Ocean’s 8” was the back-up movie for “Tag” at the same double-screen drive-in.)
The commercial viability of “Wrinkle” post its June 5th home video release–excepting maybe at a handful of discounted second-run theaters–seems moot.
Found Ava DuVernay’s claim that “Wrinkle” received negative reviews from “white male critics” because they didn’t “get” it to be disingenuous at best.
Don’t recall DuVernay complaining when those same “white male critics” helped “Selma” earn a 98% favorable RT rating.
I gave “Wrinkle” a negative review because it failed as a kid-lit adaptation/fantasy film. Really don’t think the color of my skin (or my genitalia) had anything to do with it.
I loved the book Wrinkle In Time and was prepared to love the movie. It felt a little too TV movie for my liking.
Movieman, I don’t think Ava said that. It was Larson. I think Ava is a good filmmaker but fun popcorn is not her forte. Serious drama is what she can do.
OK now Deadline, a few other sites and Ava DuVernay herself are touting this $100 million for A Wrinkle in Time as a “win”!? WTF? Is this a marketing thing for the bluray? They fudged the numbers to get it there and overall it’s a huuuuuuge bomb for Disney. This game is just bizarre now.
Why is Ava getting remedial points on her final exam? I don’t think this should put her in director’s jail (hell if one flop were enough, Guy Ritchie should be long over) but why are we all having to pretend this was a success? It wasn’t. Tough. Move on. This all feels very disingenuous.
Totally agree about indie-scaled dramas being Ava DuVernay’s forte, Owl.
Which makes me fear DuVernay’s upcoming DC franchise movie.
The best way for a director (regardless of gender or race) to sabotage their career is to pick projects they’re temperamentally/artistically unsuited for.
As great as it is for an African-American (female!) director to shepherd major studio megabucks productions, it just feels like she’s setting herself up for failure.
And to play the race card when critics don’t bite (e.g., the deserved meh critical reaction to “Wrinkle”) does nobody any favors.
Guess I should’ve checked Dave. Sorry.
the massive over-representation of white male critics in assessing and pontificating on movies, shaping ‘opinion’ and culture card needs to be played often and loudly because it’s freakin’ ridiculous
Deadline says Wrinkle was re-released. As much as some people didn’t like it, the movie has its fans and so probably will have life as a cult movie.
The whole critic thing is a bit of a problem. While any critic should be able to review everything with equal validity, some use language that lets the reader know the critic is being dismissive based on reasons not contained in the film (Richard Brody hating on the MCU comes to mind). I don’t know that people pay attention to any one review that is biased against a single film, but people will pay attention to reviews in the aggregate on RT and Metacritic. So if a large number of reviewers are being unfair to a film based on those biases, you do end up impacting the life of those films for better or worse.
Fucking ey, Leah. I hate to break it to old white men, but the youth is coming for you, and I am going to have a hearty laugh when y’all get got. There are no where near enough non white voices discussing film, and that needs to change. Also, Ocean’s 8 is awesome, and tells a story we rarely ever get… Older women doing shit. Anne Hathaway’s character basically says as much, but you know… Cap Marvel is right.
And Dave, when you write about YouTube. Google first. YouTube Red no longer exists, and YouTube sucks at understanding it’s own platform. If you think they would ever put it behind a pay wall, then you really need to read and learn. They fail, because they do not understand what it is, and it’s TV. Just a futuristic take on it.
Also, this shit isn’t forever. How many times has Warners been sold? Paramount? Columbia? I can go on, but the future of all of this shit isn’t WATCHING EVERYTHING. If it was, then it already would have been viable. Movies aren’t music.
Is there any precedent for a re-release of a film which is near the end of its original theatrical release, and has already been released on home video, to experience the per-screen average jump that A Wrinkle in Time reported this week?
I don’t know what kind of money Disney could have poured into advertising/promotion for Wrinkle this past week that could have resulted in the per-screen average going from $648 in weekend 14 to $5,270 in weekend 15.
Jspartisan: “I hate to break it to old white men, but the youth is coming for you, and I am going to have a hearty laugh when y’all get got.”
I am too absolutely convinced that a young black man cares about the opinion of an old latino lady and follows her lead. Only the combo white+male+old get got.
The movie Parenthood in 1989 made it to $99 million and in 1994 Universal actually re-released it in a few hundred theaters just to make Ron Howard happy and get it over $100 million.
I know studios sometimes play math games to get a movie over the 100 or 200 million mark. But that per screen for Wrinkle is so blatantly numbers fudging. If they’re gonna do it, don’t be so obvious about it.
So what Larson & Co. are proposing is a utopian world where only African-American critics will be allowed to review movies w/ A-A themes; LGBT critics, LGBT movies; disabled critics, movies about disabled people; fanboy/girl critics, MCU/DC/cartoons/etc.; Millennial critics, all Millennial-themed films; teen critics, movies about high school/teenagers; ad nauseam?
Gotcha.
That is hyperbolic movieman. No one is proposing a utopia. They are responding to that recent story about 80% or so of movie critics being white males. That is ridiculous and should be called out. They are making completely legitimate points. You don’t have to agree with everything they say, but I can’t imagine anyone not taking issue with those statistics.
Looks like oceans will do just fine, probably enough to warrant a sequel. But my prediction earlier this summer that it would be the biggest grosser of the ocean movies was way off.
And I’m sure that STX was hoping that older audiences would trickle in and keep Adrift afloat through word of mouth, but with these drops is obviously not working. Maybe opening your older female skewing film right between Book Club and Oceans wasn’t the best plan.
Incredibles 2 was kind of a letdown to me for being… just a really good superhero movie. That first movie packs such an emotional punch and I never felt those same highs this time around. The action was fun but the opening sequence was the best and the rest of the movie never quite lives up to it.
I liked the first movie a lot but rediscovered it years later, after I had kids of my own, and found that it really pushes those parenting buttons hard. Having kids can really change how you experience some movies.
Thanks to Brie, we now know why so many critics are so very ignorant, and so very stupid.
SB- I was merely using hyperbole to make a point.
That said, I’d rather read Scott or Dargis on, say, “Eighth Grade” than a precocious middle schooler.
It’s one thing to fit into a box (LGBT; African-American; Millennial). It’s another for that box-filler to come to the party–or film festival–equipped with an authoritative “critical voice” that makes them worth reading.
OK but I don’t think it contributes anything constructive to the discussion since we all know that is not what they are saying. You can’t tell me there aren’t great critics of color and female critics out there who deserve a chance. They could be an “authoritative critical voice” given the opportunity. 80% of film critics being a white male is a joke and there are so many bad/boring ones (I was one). White males should be able to acknowledge that. Don’t be Ed Werder.
I don’t think anyone is advocating for just any woman/POC/LGBTQ person to review movies, although white boys have already set the bar pretty low in terms of qualifications to be a critic. Name-checking big-time critics whom are well respected in order to make your argument is just cherry picking, especially when 80% of critics are old white dudes. And let’s be real here, I don’t care how knowledgeable and savvy a critic is, if they’re a white dude, their views on Get Out or Barbershop or Superfly are going to be filtered through that lens, skewing their perceptions. It doesn’t invalidate their critique, but it does put a little 61* beside it. So why not open the floodgates to non-white male critics (and let’s be real again, it’s not like there are media with lots of openings for film critics)? Until that imbalance becomes a bit less imbalanced, let’s hear from as many people as possible. The good ones will inevitably shine through. The rest will be just like all the bad basement blogger critics we have now.
“Having kids can really change how you experience some movies.”
Never had I experienced this more than with rewatching Saturday Night Fever a few years ago. The Mom is a very small role, and when I was a kid I found her comical, praying for her son to call instead of calling him. But once I got older I saw how much pain there is in the character, and then when the brother announces he might leave the priesthood…..my first thought goes to how this will just kill her.
Breakfast Club is another one, when I was a kid and I heard the line “when you grow older something inside you just dies” it seemed spot on. Now that I’m older I know that’s not true and take a wee bit of offense.
Is it a shock that film criticism is mostly white?
But are these reviewers really keeping the voices of women or minorities quiet in the internet age? Maybe we need to redefine what is is to be a film critic. Anyone can be a film critic if they want to be. Whether or not they are being paid a living wage is another matter all together.
If it’s a matter of white males being paid well to critique and shutting out everyone else, I can get behind the study as being meaningful. At this time, I think there’s more to this and a single study shouldn’t lead to film criticism outrage just yet.
I don’t think the issue is with all online film criticism as, like you said, anyone can be a film critic nowadays. It’s with major print and digital publications. Seems entirely appropriate and necessary to call for more diversity in film criticism, single study or not.
From the study:
Nearly 80 per cent of film critics are male, according to a new study that analyzed the movie reviews to last year’s top box-office hits.
The research was conducted by the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, which released its findings Monday. Researchers studied the reviews of the 100 top-grossing films of 2017 that were posted on the aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes.
Of the 19,559 reviews studied, 77.8 per cent were by male critics and 22.2 per cent were by female critics. Stacy Smith, founder and director of the Inclusion Initiative, said film critics are “overwhelmingly white and male.”
Actually this isn’t the first study. There was a similar one two years ago.
“Across every type of publication, film criticism remains a business dominated by men. They accounted for 80% of reviewers writing at entertainment trade publications (Variety‘s two full-time movie critics are men), 76% of critics writing for general interest publications, 74% of individuals writing for movie and entertainment magazines and websites and 71% of those writing for the biggest U.S. newspapers.”
https://variety.com/2016/film/news/movie-critics-men-women-diversity-study-1201801555/
Let’s not strawman this whole argument. Asking for a wider variety of critics isn’t restrictive in the least, especially when what we have now is more restrictive by comparison. You can say 77-80% is a problem without demanding a draconian solution.
I’m fine for more diversity, but let’s also look at why there’s not more diversity in film criticism to begin with, which is more important to me than just having more diversity, which is not the same as saying we will have better film criticism. And it’s not like there’s some hidden agenda or belief that people will only read what white men have to say about movies. I mean, are people picking up the paper or reading Rotten Tomatoes and only looking for white-looking, male names to read, so therefore film criticism is mostly white males? Is there even a thing as a film criticism market? See what I’m getting at? It’s just not the same as the film industry as a whole.
And though it’s 80% of a specific number of reviews, of those reviews, what are the publications, what was the pay, etc.? If the only requirement is the ability to make it into that study is based on the criteria of “reviewer” on Rotten Tomatoes, that’s just not enough for me to care. There’s a wide variety of publications, ranging from prestigious ones to crap ones being on there, with I’d guess something like 10% being prestigious, and the other 90% being crap. And when does film criticism ultimately matter to film audiences? They’re not as influential as we pretend they are. The audience and critic scores rarely match up. They may go in the same direction a lot or even most of the time, but they rarely match. And what is the gender/race of the audience score? All these things need to be considered for this is make any difference.
The 2016 study has more information about the type of publications. You might not care but surely you understand why others do. That film critics aren’t as influential as they used to be doesn’t mean diversity in film criticism isn’t important. What palmtree said. And this morning this discussion is also playing out in the sportswriting community. I’ve seen 90% cited several times as the percentage of sportswriters that are male and of course some old white dudes are outraged that people are calling for more diversity in sportswriting.
Sports viewing audiences are mostly male though. So why there’s any outrage one way or the other is baffling. Why even care about diversity there when women don’t even watch other women play sports as much men do cracks me up, but whatever, diversity in sports writing will change that. Sure.
I don’t think adding diversity into film criticism will be the same hurdle as the film industry because it’s not a very lucrative one. If that’s me not caring, so be it, just trying to shed light on a subject that’s not even remotely the same as a multi-billion dollar industry.
Females comprise almost 50% of NFL viewers. Gee whiz women like sports! Who knew? https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidberri/2017/10/09/think-women-dont-know-sports-you-dont-know-as-much-as-you-think-about-sports/#3768b8974ed5
Maybe sit the next few plays out.
The only sport that exists is the NFL? Damn, you schooled me.
Merely one easy example that I thought was common knowledge. For years idiots have been claiming women don’t like sports and the number of female NFL viewers has been a frequent retort. Here’s another one for you: NBA = 40%. And yet another: MLB = 37%. I guess there are still people who need to be schooled. Sad.
There are studies on how people get chosen for jobs, and often the same resume will get less hired if the name on the resume indicates it is for a woman or person of color than if it’s for a white male. Is it hard to imagine the hiring process for film critics having the same problem?
What makes you believe I didn’t know that about the NFL? And it’s a lazy argument, and one where pretty much the closest you’re even going to get to making a point, and it’s a moot one at that, because you didn’t not refute anything. Men mostly watch sports is still very true. Women mostly watch other men play sports, and more men watch women play sports more than women will watch other women play sports. Why do you think there’s not more money in women’s sports? Because there’s no market for it. Plain and simple.
SB – Three sports, all just American mind you, are your examples? Sad indeed. And still, not one even close to 50%
You don’t seem to have much if any knowledge when it comes to women and sports, so it was a very safe assumption. That the WNBA isn’t popular is hardly evidence of women not liking sports nor is it evidence of the folly of calling for more diversity in sportswriting. You sound like a lot of dude bros I know.
I didn’t seem to have much knowledge based on what, the facts you have failed to refute even once? Keep on keeping on. You are insinuating that I said “women don’t watch any sports at all”, which isn’t remotely what I was arguing, so stop pretending I was, m’kay?
“That the WNBA isn’t popular is hardly evidence of women not liking sports”
Never wrote women don’t like sports. More men watch the WNBA than women do. Women seem to like watching men play sports moreso than women doing the same. So sportswriting should be more diverse based on the fact that women like to watch but not actually want to play or see other women play said sport? Interesting.
No it is not palmtree. Not at all.
palmtree – sure, but unlike most jobs, film criticism can be from ipostcrapreviews.com and be deemed as a publication by Rotten Tomatoes.
So c’mon, let’s get some dummy sites floating around with female or non-white names attached, for the love of god. It will change the film industry….we think.
A couple things, I doubt I will be able to drop them coherently;
Audience demographics shouldn’t matter, the industry should represent the demographics of the field. Why should women be kept out of writing for sports because the audience skews male? Men can’t read women writers?
By that argument, people that write about film should be a majority female, and a hell of a lot more Latino.
And I call bullshit on any good film not being for me. That’s an argument for the Sandler oeuvre. If Wrinkle in Time is a decent film I will enjoy it, if Book Club is a decent film I will enjoy it. I am far from fabulous yet I loved Shortbus. Were there reviews from woman of color that raved about Wrinkle?
I am all for diversity in how the industry is covered but certainly not if it only means woman will cover ‘woman’s’ movies and African Americans review Madea. The whole idea of diversity is to look at the same things with different perspectives and experiences, it does no good if a more diverse workplace is hired and still the same white guys review Avengers and First Man.
Just a quick return to the Wrinkle in Time conversation, but the actuals has the film about $100k short of $100m. Let’s see if Disney tries some slight of hand again next weekend to get it past the plate as for the past 4 weekends prior to it’s unexpected breakout it did $160k, $231k, $137k and $101k respectively.
As of yet, has there been an explanation as to sudden uptick?
Putting aside the flimsy critics at RT, what about Metacritic, where the standard is higher for who gets to count as a critic?
Just looking at A Wrinkle in Time, I broke it down. Metacritic gave it a 53, which is mixed.
14 of the 50 top critics were women, 28 percent.
Of those 14 female critics, 6 were positive (43%), 8 were mixed (57%), and none were negative.
Of the 36 male critics, 11 were positive (31%), 22 were mixed (61%), and 3 were negative (8%).
So from this you can see the distribution of female critics was more positive than male ones. Does that mean you had to be a female critic in order to be positive? No of course not. Plenty of male critics were also positive. But in the aggregate, the skewing of who reviews movies can change how that film is perceived by the general public.
If you look at its weekend history Disney has been at this for weeks
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?page=weekend&id=ladisneyfairytale22018.htm
This is the fourth inexplicable change of course in the past two months. Can’t they just buy the tickets for each showing on Fandango this weekend, let it play to empty theaters and be done with it?
Disney passed 2 billion domestic yesterday. About 50 days after passing the first billion. So not even factoring in foreign revenue, they have averaged about 20 million dollars a day, every day since IW opened.
So just reading about Disney’s counter bid to the counter bid for Fox and it looks like it is getting out of hand. My modest proposal would be…….
Split it, spend 60 billion, more than the original asking price for Fox less than what an individual company would spend on it. The booze industry does this when one company goes down with the various brands being split up. Disney gets the television side and its catalog. That gives them at least half of all the highly addictive television of this century, and the Simpsons to exploit. Comcast gets the movie side, boosting their market share and home video catalog. Sports channels go to Comcast so not everything is under the ESPN banner, FX and Nat Geo to Disney. Foreign satellite and Hulu is split down the middle, perhaps a partnership like Paramount and Uni used to do with marketing foreign movies.
This would give Disney enough content to start their OTT (which is mostly driven by television content) without making them an instantly dominating force. The increased cable channels would help Disney when carriage negotiations come up with Comcast.
And to prevent the indignant banshee cries of a five million whimpering fanboys the Fox Marvel rights can revert back to Disney.
Fox without Marvel is significantly less valuable. If they do split Fox the way you suggest, I’d have to think Disney would need to pony up more.
Let’s not also forget that Fox has those Avatar sequels, which could help BOTH Comcast and Disney at their theme parks as well as at the box office.
So I’m not exactly sure Disney would be willing to let go of these many properties.
Here’s the thing. Disney sees the FF and X-Men movies as five.to ten billion dollars they can get back. Hell. A Secret Wars movie alone. Could make them 2,5 to 3 billion dollars.
I’ll also go back to another point that I’ve made. Disney, if they are going to spend 70 billion to get Fox. They have to think about making more movies than tent poles. They have to keep Fox, and keep them pumping out films. The sports and European properties will make money, but this is half of fucking Disney’s marketcap. You can’t just spend that money, then go, “Let’s shut down the damn studio forever. Who needs extra money?”
Justin Chang summed up my thoughts succinctly in his recent LA Times piece:
“Above all, “Who is this movie for?” rules out the possibility of sympathetic imagination, the ability to empathize with a perspective other than one’s own, as the chief impulse behind artistic depiction and appreciation. We negate the possibility of sympathetic imagination when we assume that someone’s particular affinity for a work of art will be dictated in advance by specifics of race, gender and age. It’s not that those specifics aren’t factors. It’s that some have a tendency to mistake factors for absolutes.
I know I’m going way, way off topic but I gotta get it out: THE ENDLESS is fucking fantastic. Along with ANNIHILATION and HEREDITARY it’s a great year for puzzle box movies. I love all of them. YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE kinda fits that category too.
I have almost half of my potential top ten figured out and it’s not even July. The art form still lives, man.