The Growing Importance Of Opening Weekend

by Furious
May 22nd, 2009

Since starting this site, I’ve had a growing fascination with metrics by which movies are measured. Being mathematically inclined, I guess it was a nice fit. Plus it’s more interesting to look into the numbers behind some of these movies than it is to watch them.

My history delving into movie numbers only goes back to last September, so I don’t have a long history of knowledge to draw from, but it seems to me that even since just last year, there’s been a noticeable increase in the importance of a movie having a big opening weekend. Sure, having a big opening weekend should always be the goal of a movie, but it takes several weeks for most movies to get near breaking even, that’s generally not even close after one weekend. It follows that of course the first …

Popularity: 43% [?]

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Weekend Report: Angels Keep Star Trek At Bay

by Furious
May 19th, 2009

It was a contentious battle for first place at the box office this weekend. The Hollywood big shots faced off against the scifi spectacle, with millions of dollars hanging in the balance.

Angels & Demons managed to hold off Star Trek and claim first place, pulling in $46,204,168. My prediction was only about $18 million high, but I’m not upset- it’s always good to get knocked down a peg after a string of successes. It was a little hard to know exactly what A&D was going to do because 1) The Da Vinci Code had a huge opening weekend and 2) it was the first big non-scifi movie in a couple weeks. Both of those factors made me think it could be a big weekend, but a lack of buzz and controversy hinted at an average weekend. Before I had adjusted my prediction, the calculated total was $42,741,461. Sometimes it’s best …

Popularity: 46% [?]

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Weekend Report: Star Trek Got Beamed Up

by Furious
May 11th, 2009

I’m not sure what to make of it, but I’ve been getting pretty close on my predictions lately. Is it just luck or is it my secret blend of 11 herbs and spices I call Adjustments? Logic tells me it’s the former. My ego insists it’s the latter. I’ll go with my ego. Who better to trust than the voices in my head?

A week after X-Men Origins: Wolverine saw the biggest opening of 2009, Star Trek sidles right up behind it in second place. It hauled in $75,204,289 for the weekend, my prediction off a minuscule $5 million, easily becoming the biggest opening in the franchise and will probably become the overall highest-grossing next weekend. But what does that really mean? It’s not like this Star Trek has a lot to do with anything that has come before. If it weren’t for the names of people, places, and things, you …

Popularity: 54% [?]

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Weekend Report: Wolverine Defeats The Pirates

by Furious
May 4th, 2009

The big question going into the weekend was how much the leaked copy of X-Men Origins: Wolverine would impact the box office of the movie. With movie studios launching up sob stories about how all these illegal copies of movies are stealing their profits, a nearly finished copy of a blockbuster hitting the Interweb a month before the release was their worse nightmare.

And…

Wolverine became the biggest movie of 2009, taking in $85,805,003. It was just $3.75 million short of my prediction- a veritable bullseye. Not only did it dominate every other movie in terms of total box office, but also in per theater average. That big fat number also made it the 19th biggest opening in the history of cinema, only $500,000 behind X2. Obtaining an illegal copy of a movie is wrong, but it’s hard to take all the studio whining seriously when the first real test …

Popularity: 26% [?]

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Weekend Report: And You Thought You Were Obsessed

by Furious
April 28th, 2009

Take from this what you will, but currently on Rotten Tomatoes, The Soloist has a 60% rating, Fighting has 36%, and Obsessed has 20%. A rational person might conclude that the money earned by the movies would follow a similar pattern, with the most favorably reviewed movie earning more money. But no, the inverse is true: the lower the rating, the more money the movie made. And then you’ll notice that Crank: High Voltage has a 62% rating and probably ask yourself if those ratings really mean anything at all.

Obsessed, in spite of generally poor reviews, came out big this weekend, to the tune of $28,612,730, $9 million more than my prediction. Now, I’m wondering whether the bigger draw was Beyonce Knowles or the promise of a huge catfight. I’m thinking it may have been a little of …

Popularity: 26% [?]

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Weekend Report: 17 Is Sweeter The Umpteenth Time Around

by Furious
April 21st, 2009

If it’s a weekend, then by default it’s a good weekend for Hollywood. But it’s much more rare for my predictions to have a good weekend. For a change, this weekend I was close on all three.

To no one’s surprise, 17 Again came out on top this weekend to the tune of $23,722,310. I predicted $26,270,805. $2.5 million- that’s darn near a bullseye for as close as I’ve been lately. People, I should say women, as in 75% of the audience was female, weren’t turned off by the rehashed old man in a kid’s body story. They were actually probably turned on seeing Zac Efron headline his first movie. For real, three-quarters of the audience was female and it didn’t star a bunch of women and wasn’t a romantic comedy. Whatever IT is, that dude has it.

State of …

Popularity: 31% [?]

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Weekend Report: Hannah Montana Not As Popular As Jesus

by Furious
April 14th, 2009

With this past Sunday being Easter, it finally provided the ultimate showdown we’ve all been waiting for: Hannah Montana versus Jesus. You’d think that if The Beatles were more popular than Jesus, well Hannah Montana was a shoe-in. As it turns out, God’s kid is still more popular than Disney’s.

Hannah Montana the Movie got off to a relatively big $17.5 million Friday, but by Sunday had dropped to a scant $4.5 million, a drop so precipitous that it takes the record for the most front-loaded opening weekend away from Twilight. I’m not exactly sure what comment this makes about the world or movies, but having the two most front-loaded movies in history occur this year has to mean something. My take is this illustrates the extent to which Hollywood is going to cater to niche audiences. Hannah …

Popularity: 24% [?]

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Weekend Report: The Fastest, Most Furious April Weekend Ever

by Furious
April 7th, 2009

Who knew that dropping those pesky definite articles would be such a good idea? Fast & Furious made every other movie that has ever come out in the month of April look like an idiot, finishing the weekend with $70,950,500. Needless to say, it also made me look like an idiot for predicting $40,297,220. The previous king of April was Anger Management, nearly $30 million below the new mark set by Fast & Furious.

I thought The Fast and The Furious was a one-off movie with an idea abused for a couple who-gives-a-shit sequels, an idea- people race cars, oh and they’re criminals- that has been fairly well played out. I mean, they just ripped off Point Break and changed the surfboards to cars. They even went to the trouble to cast Paul Walker, an actor as inexpressive and disinterested as …

Popularity: 35% [?]

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Weekend Report: More Big 3D Profits

by Furious
March 31st, 2009

To the surprise of no one, Monsters vs. Aliens handily crushed the competition at the box office with $59,321,095, $3 million north of my prediction. The interesting bit is that the 3D screens accounted for around 55% of the total gross. Fandango reports that the premium for a 3D showing of MvA at a local theater is $3.50. If that represents the average bump for 3D, then the average 3D ticket would be about $10.70. So if 3D accounted for $32.9 million, that would be about 3.07 million tickets. That leaves about $26.4 million for the 2D tickets, about 3.66 million of them. Even though 2D sold 20% more tickets, 3D represented 10% more in the gross. If there were no 3D, the gross would have been around $48.5 million, assuming a $7.20 average ticket price, almost 20% less than what it made.

Per Wikipedia, the cost of …

Popularity: 38% [?]

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