The OtherArena

[Bob Morris]

Notable upcoming releases:

Memorial Day: Sex and the City 2 and Prince of Persia.

June 11: A-Team, Karate Kid.

June 18: Toy Story 3.

July has Airbender and the next Twilight movie coming out the July 4 weekend.

I don't really see a phenom in any of these movies. SATC's first movie did very well, but it's not going to threaten any Memorial Day records. I don't know if Persia can threaten them.

At this point, I wonder if there's any movie out there that will have a chance of catching Iron Man 2 for the summer box office crown. Shrek 4's underwhelming opening means it's out of the running.

[jdw]

I think Iron Man 2 might b caught. I don't see it staying on pace for $350M, especially with a glut of movies coming out *unless* we seem bomb city from a few. My guess is in the range of $325-335M. At this same point, Iron Man 1 had right around $90M left in the tank, and Iron Man 2 has been behind the daily take of Iron Man 1 for most of the past week. It was $5.5M off last weekend, and that was more a sign of Iron Man 1's good legs than Iron Man 2 falling apart.

$90M would take IM2 up to $345M. I don't think it gets there. When you start shaving off $5M a weekend, you fall off pace reasonably fast.

So who left can make $325M to $335M?

Twilight 2 made just under $300M with a November release. It didn't have the advantage of of Summer Weekday box office, though it did get some holiday action. If there's some buzz and if the fanbase is there at the same level of Twilight 2, I could see it going past $325M simply due to bigger weekday numbers.

Up did $293M last year and I think that surprised a lot of is. Only one Pixar ever did more: Nemo. The thing is... I think we all forget about just how huge the first two Toy Storys were in the context of their time. Toy Story was the #1 movie of it' year. TS2 was #3, but that's because:

* first Star Wars since 1983
* The Sixth Sense was a phenom

It's possible that things have changes since 1999 and there won't be a buzz for Toy Story: a movie concept whose time has passes. But it's a far easier sell than Up was last year. I think Up ended up make so much $$$ because it was such a great Pixar movie rather than simply being a Pixar movie. TS3... it has the change if it's a great movie (lik 1 & 2 were) of being a monster and challenging Nemo's company record. That would put it over $340M, which would challenge the range where IM2 will likely top out.

I think those are the two movies to keep an eye on. They don't really even need to be phenoms to do it. Twilight just needs to build a bit on #2. And Toy Story needs to have more buzz than Up. Big things to keep an eye on:

Opening Weekends
$142,839,137 Twlight
$68,108,790 Up

Up's was pretty par for the course for a Pixar movie. If TS pulls in closer to $100M than $70M, it could be a monster. Pixar movies almost always have good legs.

Twlight opens on a Wed, so we won't get a true Weekend-to-Weekend comp. But if that first Sunday of Tw-3 is *way* ahead of Tw-3 (as in around that $200M that Transformers 2 did in its first 5 days), then it's going to make a ton of money.

John

[jdw]

$43.3M Shrek-4
$32.1M Sex In the City 2
$30.2M Prince of Persia

Terrible Memorial Day weekend. Mojo has it projected to be the worst in $$$ in 9 years, and worst in attendance in at least 15 years.

Shrek 2nd Weekends
$72,170,363 Shrek-2
$53,039,992 Shrek-3
$43,345,000 Shrek-4
$42,481,425 Shrek-1

Shrek-4 is $70M behind Shrek-3's pace, and bled $10M this weekend which will grow on Monday. Shrek-3 had just under $120M left in the tank. Shrek-4 doesn't have that much left given the bleed rate, so it's not getting to $250M. It's a bit lucky that Sex and Persia are bombing as that probably will help it hold theaters longer. But it's looking like it will be closer to $200M than $250M.

Iron Man 2 bled about $4M off Iron Man, which should be $5M after Monday. Not a bad drop: -39%. Still the too date:

To date:

$274,612,000 Iron Man 2
$252,614,669 Iron Man

It was about $28M at the end of last weekend, and now $22M (and closing in on $20M after Monday). IM had $65.8M left in the tank at this point. That would take IM2 up to $340M, which is what I was talking about last week: when you bleed at $5M a weekend, you fall off the pace fast. I tossed out $325M to $335M earlier, and I still think that's the high end range. The slowing drop this weekend helped, but IM had those good legs so IM2 is going to continue to bleed.

How low it drops below $325M may tell whether Toy Story 3 or Twilight 3 takes the Summer Box Office Crown.

John

[matt farmer]

Think about, this weekend there were no movies for guys! No big action flicks (cept Persia, which looks horrible). That may have had something to do with the lackluster weekend.

[jdw]

It's been a really strange start to the Summer Box Office. I wonder if Robin Hood would have done better opening this weekend. Obviously they weren't going to push Sex In The City off the day, and they probably thought that might bleed some of their tickets (Robin-Marrion paying to women). And it seems everyone just gave Bruckheimer the weekend for Prince of Persia. But...

Maybe POP does better following up on Iron Man's big opening. And Maybe Sex in the City does better later in the summer. Studios don't work on this stuff together, instead tending to avoid certain competition, and big dogs (like Iron Man 2 and Shrek) getting to select where they want to drop in.

John

[jdw]

[jdw]

Not bad for Shrek-4 in terms of drop: -41.6% vs -47.2% on the same weekend as Shrek-3. Still bled close to $3M to Shrek-3's same weekend. Shrek-3 has $67M left in the tank, which would take Shrek-4 to right below $250M. It's show more legs than one would have thought with the opening, and it's coming up on getting some summer weekdays after a run at #1. Hasn't bled any theaters yet. A-Team and Karate Kid this weekend should knock it off #1, while Toy Story 3 the weekend after that should finally eat into its niche.

I'm thinking this is going to be higher than the $225M range I thought it would drop below, unless it takes a big drop next week. Shrek-3 pulled in $15M on its 4th weekend, so that's the one to watch. If it continues to slow decline and isin that range, it will get past $225M with some ease. Disappointing compared to the $300M and $400M the past two did, but better than could have been hoped for after the poor opening.

IM2 was down to $7.8M, dropping -52.7% with a big theater hit. Close to $6M bleed from IM1, putting it almost inline with Weekend 6 for IM1 rather than the Weekend 5 that it's on. It still has a big $15M lead on the pace of IM and is just $27M behind the final take of IM. I'm thinking it's going to be at the low end of that $325M-$335M range I was projecting. It should top the $318M of IM, but another big drop next weekend could pull that down. Don't think so, though.

Alice is currently #1 for releases this year at $333M. Of course Avatar has made the most money this year: $465.6M. But it's possible that Alice will stay the #1 release of the year unless Toy Story or Twilight take it down.

John

[eron]

It surprises me that Alice took in so much.

The next Twilight movie will of course take the cake.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpT8l94CKcs

[Steve Yohe]

Alice made $1,013,900 world wide. From now on every movie is going to be in 3D, at least until people get sick of it.--Yohe

[jdw]

Good start for Karate Kid, but nothing that makes it look like a challenger for the Summer Crown.

IM-2 is about $10.5M ahead of the pace of IM, but it's bleeding about $4M a week to it and as pointed out above if losing theaters quicker. IM's $318M might be the high end of what it can put up.

Shrek-4 looks like it might have slowed its drops to the point that $250M is a possibility. This looks like it might be the first weekend it tops Shrek-3's box office, and its beat Shrek-3 five out of the last six weekdays.

The numbers to watch over the coming two weekends:

$68,108,790 Up's 1st weekend
$44,138,266 Up's 2nd weekend

Up has terrific legs: it made an amazing $155M+ *after* its first two weekends. But all Pixar movies have good legs after their opening two weekends:

$155,793,463 Up
$127,027,699 Cars
$96,914,056 Ratatouille
$96,612,136 Wall-E

If Toy Story opens larger than the usual $60M-70M Pixar start, it will be big. If it's up over $100M, it will be a monster.

John

[Bob Morris]

$109,000,000 opening for TS3. Now we'll see what its legs are like.

But it looks like we're going to have a new top contender for the summer box office crown. At the very least, it's going to be in the top three.

There are several summer movies that are going to lose money on their budgets alone. Robin Hood, Prince of Persia and A-Team all had #100 million-plus budgets and they are all likely to fall short of breaking even.

Karate Kid won't fight for the box office crown, but it looks like that movie will be the surprise of the summer... it's already past $100 million and looks like it could get to $150 million. That's quite good for a flick with a budget of just $40 million.

[jdw]

Unless it's frontloaded like no Pixar movie before, it will take the #1 spot from Iron Man 2. The question is whether Twilight will chase it down. I suspect that Twilight will open even bigger, given how T-2 opened.

Next weekend will be really interesting to give us a cage on how high Toy Story goes. The opening is $40M more than Up.

John

[Steve Yohe]

Robin Hood made money world wide. It did OK. 287 million.--Yohe

[jdw]

Let's say this is the worst case for TS-3:

Wall-E had the worst weekend % drops for Pixar summer movies:

Box Office Mojo: Pixar Vs. Pixar (Summer Edition)

Weekend 2: -48.50%
Weekend 3: -42.20%
Weekend 4: -46.40%

Give TS-3 those same % drops:

Weekend 2: $56,135,000
Weekend 3: $32,446,030
Weekend 4: $17,391,072

Then give TS-3 the weekday numbers of Wall-E for Week 1-3:

Week 1 Weekdays: $24,963,645
Week 2 Weekdays: $19,453,008
Week 3 Weekdays: $15,350,266

Wall-E's first week of weekdays were pretty good, ahead of Up, Nemo an Cars though Ratatouille had the 4th to skew things a bit. After that, Wall-E's legs feel behind the others. It's not unreasonable to use that as a "worst case", because frankly I think we all believe TS-3 will do *better* than Wall-E's numbers because it's starting at such a higher level.

Anyway...

Those four weekends and those first three Weeks of Week days would take TS-3 to:

After 4th Weekend
$274,739,021 TS-3 (worst case)
$228,549,216 Nemo
$226,268,932 Up
$182,732,709 Wall-E
$182,591,139 Cars
$165,519,955 Rat

Left in the Tank
$111,165,762 Nemo
$66,735,232 Up
$61,491,843 Cars
$41,075,455 Wall-E
$40,925,699 Rat

Even the lesser hits Wall-E and Ratatouille had more than $40M left in the tank, which would take TS-3 up close to $315M.

I think it has *more* than that. Look at that weekend link again and the drops of the other movies. Say it has the drops of Cars instead of Wall-E:

Wall-E
Weekend 2: -48.50%
Weekend 3: -42.20%
Weekend 4: -46.40%

Cars
Weekend 2: -43.90%
Weekend 3: -31%
Weekend 4: -37.40%

Worst Case using Wall-E
Weekend 2: $56,135,000
Weekend 3: $32,446,030
Weekend 4: $17,391,072

Worst Case using Cars
Weekend 2: $61,149,000
Weekend 3: $42,192,810
Weekend 4: $26,412,699

Leave the weekdays the same, and that takes it to $298,521,428 after te 4th weekend rather than $274,739,021, and add in just $40M left in the tank (rather than the $61M that Cars had left), and we're up close to $340M.

These are kind of low balling the potential. If this has the legs of Up... we're probably talking abou a $400M movie.

Up had a 35% drop the second weekend, the best since Nemo. Perhaps that's too much to project for TS-3. My thought would be that there's a bit of frontloading for TS-3 because $109M is so much higher than the standard $70M that Pixar does: this is one that people really wanted to see opening weekend. Because of that, TS-3 probably won't have the low second week drops of Nemo and Up. But after that, I wouldn't be surprised if it slides into similar drops with Up after that.

If it does only drop by 38% next weekend, then it's going to chase $400M. Might not get there, but it will easily top Nemo.

John

[jdw]

First Monday
$15,606,086 TS-3
$8,913,286 Wall-E
$7,550,960 Rat
$6,945,560 Nemo
$6,407,907 Cars
$6,271,151 Up

While holding out some slight wait-and-see caution towards the coming weekend, I think we're rapidly reaching the point to say this is going to be a monster and whether it's a "phenom" might be what to look for in the coming weekend.

The doubling of Up's first Monday is amazing. Up did take a little while longer before it flashed it's great legs, and I still think was one of those tougher Pixar sells (which frankly has been the case with everything after Nemo). TS-3 is the easiest sell Pixar has had since Nemo, and probably since TS-2. So perhaps there's still some chance of a frontloaded quality to the film's box office, that people with kids who didn't rush out on the weekend to see it are going this Mon-Fri with kids all out of school. I don't think I'm quite buying that possiblity.

John