Seeing as how we all love to talk about box office so much, I thought we might as well create a thread that's all about box office. We can use this thread to post weekend numbers, predictions, questions, et cetera.

Feel free to make some suggestions for other ways to use this thread. Feel free to make bawdy, Jakester-like suggestions, too, if that's your bag.

More to come.

Projections for this weekend? Eh? Eh?

Iron Man I'm guessing will continue to fall at about the same rate: I'll figure it for about $27 mil.

Prince Caspian is a bit harder to figure out for me, and of course opening weekend projections tend to be a bit wilder. TLtWatW grossed nearly $300 million domestic, and opened to about $65 million (opening in December). Summer openings tend to be bigger, and this is a sequel, so it's got name recognition and pretty decent marketing. I'll guess about $75 million. Maybe that's a little low, but that's what I'm going with. Eat it, bitches.

Jack's Sorrow wrote:Projections for this weekend? Eh? Eh?

Iron Man I'm guessing will continue to fall at about the same rate: I'll figure it for about $27 mil.

Prince Caspian is a bit harder to figure out for me, and of course opening weekend projections tend to be a bit wilder. TLtWatW grossed nearly $300 million domestic, and opened to about $65 million (opening in December). Summer openings tend to be bigger, and this is a sequel, so it's got name recognition and pretty decent marketing. I'll guess about $75 million. Maybe that's a little low, but that's what I'm going with. Eat it, bitches.

I'm with you on this one. $75-$90M on the high side. The Christians love this one and may be out in force, but we'll see. Still, I think this was a horrible release date for this movie. Indy will kill it next week, and Iron Man will also hurt the BO. I think it will be the official death of a wanna-be franchise. Total Domestic BO $200-$225M unless it just suprises everyone.

Who wants to see a sequel with no Goat-boy?

Indy certainly won't help Narnia 2's box office.

Back in 2002, Spider-Man was released two weekends before Attack of the Clones was released, and Attack of the Clones hardly put a dint in its third weekend haul.

This, however, is a matter of just a week, and Narnia 2 isn't Spider-Man.

I'll move this little countdown over to this thread as it is Box Office related. Then Snoop can more easily watch, with terrified eyes, as the outstanding Box Office melts away.

Countdown to Snoop's GLOWING AOTC Review:

Goal: 300.0 Mil

BO (thru 5/12): 181.7 Mil

Outstanding: 118.3 Mil

Oh, how quickly will that number in the "Outstanding" column dwindle down! Snoop had best rush to the econo-mart and purchase some extra loobey lube, for he will need it. Watching Snoop put on a bold facade of callous bravado, whilst inside he shivers with icy fear will replace my stores of pornography for the month.

Not going to make it...

That is at least 4-6 weeks needed, we'll see if it stays in that long...

Snoop, the more you struggle, the sweeter it is. By all means, keep prolonging your public humiliaiton, and I will keep enjoying it.

Silly Snoop!!

Countdown to Snoop's GLOWING AOTC Review:

Goal: 300.0 Mil

BO (thru 5/13): 185.0 Mil

Outstanding: 115.0 Mil

Amusing box office shenanigans:

Showbizdata wrote:Warner Bros. on Monday was being accused of cooking the books Monday after it turned out that their box-office estimate for the opening weekend of Speed Racer was way off the mark. The studio had predicted that the film would wind up with $20.2 million in ticket sales, putting it in second place. "It's far from the first time a studio with an underperforming pic has overestimated its Sunday gross and avoided an embarrassing third-place finish in Monday morning box office stories," Daily Variety commented today (Tuesday). The estimated figure, not the final one, is the one that receives the most play in the press -- if for no other reason than that Sunday is ordinarily a light news day. Few analysts had believed the studio's estimate, given the movie's weak showing on Friday and Saturday. (Weekend estimates include actual figures for Friday and Saturday and estimated sales for Sunday.) As things turned out, the movie debuted with just $18.6 million -- a figure that will no doubt cause heads eventually to fall at the studio, which reportedly spent $250-300 million to produce and market it. Taking over second place was the debuting romantic comedy What Happens in Vegas from 20th Century Fox, which wound up with $20.2 million, the same amount that had been forecast for Speed Racer. Meanwhile, the second weekend of Iron Man earned $51.2 million, more than the debuts of Vegas and Racer put together, keeping it in first place.

Iron Man's box office should be at just a shade over or under 190 million by midnight, tonight. Then it should make between 25-30 million this weekend, which would put it at 215-220 million by the end of its eighteenth day. Let's be conservative and say it will come in at the low end and say that it is likely it will make at least 215 million. It will probably be a solid-on-a-smaller-scale performer for at least another month, and may pull in as much as 15-20 million per week for that month (this is an average per week of all four months; obviously, it would be more earlier and less later). It could be pretty close (within 15-25 million being pretty close) to 300 million by the time Incredible Hulk rolls around.

If Incredible Hulk is received warmly by critics and audiences, it could pique a little "Marvel fever" for Iron Man. Iron Man is still playing on 4,000 screens. Once it is truly scaled back and on less than 1,000 screens, it probably won't be making much more than 5 million dollars. It's possible it could pull in as much as 10 million after it is scaled back, but it would be a real struggle for it to make much more than that. 15 million would probably be out of the question.

Narnia probably won't be doing much damage to Iron Man's third weekend take. True, it targets much of the same audience, but a lot of the college students just coming out of finals will want an event movie, and many of them will be looking at Iron Man as the "non-kiddie" alternative to Narnia 2. There may also be some spill over. Some people will come to the theater planning to see Narnia 2 but will be turned away due to sell outs. It is more likely that these people will opt for Iron Man than it is that they will opt for any other movie.

If it gets close enough to 300 million and it looks like it won't make it, expect a last minute marketing push to get it there. Marvel has a lot invested in this summer appearing to be financially lucrative. Their survival as independent makers of their own material is dependent on it. Incredible Hulk probably will not be making it into the 300 million club, so they are going to do everything in their power to get Iron Man there.

Does anyone remember LucasFox's desperate late August marketing push to get Attack of the Clones into the 300 Million Club? It worked. Go here. You see that big, seemingly inexplicable box office spike in the sixteenth week? That wasn't IMAX (which was still more than two months away). That was a huge, "See Attack of the Clones this summer on the big screen before it's too late!" thirty-second, network commercial blitz paid to make sure it cracked 300 million in its fourth, pre-school's-back-in-session month. And it did.

Expect the same from Marvel if it looks like Iron Man will be just shy of 300 million. (Should be comfy and safe, though.)

* * *

Notice I sneaked in mention of Attack of the Clones. This is what we in the business like to call "reforcerments."

"If Incredible Hulk is received warmly by critics and audiences..."


HAHAHAHA!!!!!


WHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHH!!H!H!H!jbn2qlb fcbn lngfxb;gmd

That movie's preview hurts my brain. Makes Iron Man look like Tolkien.

It probably will not be received warmly. In fact, it looks pretty terrible.

Sometimes previews do a horrible job of conveying the mood and scope of the movies they represent (Children of Men comes immediately to mind). Sometimes, they so perfectly convey these things they almost make it seem like there's no point to watching the movie. The latter is definitely more often the case than the former.

By all appearances, Incredible Hulk will suck. It has already suffered at the hands of its trailer, whatever the case.

Countdown to Snoop's GLOWING AOTC Review:

Goal: 300.0 Mil

BO (thru 5/14): 188.1 Mil

Outstanding: 111.9 Mil

BOP makes their weekend predictions: they're estimating about $68 million for Narnia, and $27 mil for Iron Man.

I can see the terror in Snoop's eyes!

Countdown to Snoop's GLOWING AOTC Review:

Goal: 300.0 Mil

BO (thru 5/15): 191.3 Mil

Outstanding: 108.7 Mil

Iron Man's box office take actually went slightly up on Thursday from Wednesday, for some reason. Having now seen the new Narnia film for myself, I'm fairly skeptical that it will damage IM's boxoffice much: I expect Narnia to fall fairly rapidly in the coming weeks.

Yeah, there's no way PC is duplicating Wardrobe's success. That movie is definitely not for kids, which just happens to be its core audience.

Uh oh, Snoop! Friday's estimates for Iron Man put it at $8.6 million! So much for your theory the bottom would drop out after week 2! It looks like we're seeing a sub-50% drop! Right now I'm going to guess its take will end up being around $27-$28 million once the weekend is done, putting the total around $220 million. And next weekend IM should get a nice little boost thanks to Labor Day. PC pulled in around $19.3 mil, so it's looking at something in the $60 millions range.

The early estimate is $31.2 million for the weekend for Iron Man, a mere 39.1% drop from last weekend. I don't suppose this is enough to get Snoop to concede to his certain defeat. So much for messageboard prognosticators.

TERROR-FILLED EYES!!!

Iron Man:

Giving hope to extremely mundane films everywhere! Hoo-ray.

Looks like it is less than a week away from being the highest-grossing non-Spider-Man Marvel property.

This pretty much locks Favreau in as the Avengers director. Bad news if you didn't like Iron Man, I suppose.

Looks like it's full steam ahead for the homogenization of superhero movies. The next radical change will only come when it is clear that the current formula is no longer lucrative.

So if the only superhero movie you actually like after all this time is Donner's Superman, Viewer X, you'd probably be better off cutting your losses and never watching another superhero movie.