Predicting Box-Office - what will be the top moneymakers of 2006

[Franz Ferdinand]

Ouch. It sure did not.

[VanHelsing]

It's time to find out if Snakes On A Plane will live up to its massive internet hype or not...

[OscarGuy]

Memorial Day is a back weekend to use as a reference. The following weekend, school's not out, so it doesn't have the capability of sustaining an audience. Prisoner of Azkban is the ONLY film in that list besides maybe 8 Mile (which was a niche film and shouldn't count as a blockbuster) that you can consider NOT to have bad word of mouth.

Pirates dropping 54% isn't surprising to me at all. Can someone pull the figures ONLY for July weekends?

[OscarGuy]

I was thinking about the ones that went on to crack $300 million. Besides, many of the ones you sited had terribly worse word of mouth than Pirates.

[Franz Ferdinand]

- Since he was mentioned below, let's not forget that the "peerless auteur" Shyamalan's very own The Village collapsed nearly 68% off a $50M opening.
- The Matrix: Revolutions was poisoned by bad WOM, opened to nearly half of Reloaded ($48M), then stumbled 66%. And let's not forget that Reloaded itself fell 60% from its $91M weekend.
- Batman & Robin (deservedly) fell 63% off a $43M opening.
- 2 Fast 2 Furious opened to $50M and fell 63%.
- 8 Mile opened to $51M and fell 62%.
- Van Helsing also opened to $51M and fell 60%.
- Planet of the Apes shattered expectations with $68.5M. People realized it was a pile of crap, and it fell 60%.
- The Day After Tomorrow was helped by Memorial Day to $68.7M, but still fell 60% the next weekend.
Just some concrete evidence that blockbusters falling 60% and more after their opening weekends is very much in vogue in recent years.

[Franz Ferdinand]

No blockbuster has ever dropped that much. I predicted 56% on my own site and it fell 54%, so I hardly see how they are much use to anyone.

OG, what do you mean? Hulk fell 70% (still one of the most gratifying numbers I've seen at the box office), X3 fell 67%, Prisoner of Azkaban fell 63%, and those were openings north of $60M, certifiable blockbusters. Lower-middle range openings in the high teens sometimes fall even worse: Star Trek: Nemesis fell 76%, Doom fell 73%, and Elektra fell 69%. Pirates falling "only" 54% - being a sequel, and coming off the biggest opening weekend of all time - is a pretty good accomplishment in this day and age.

[OscarGuy]

So much for the much ballyhooed Box Office Prophets. I read their Monday dish on Pirates and they were predicting more than 60% drops and were amazed it didn't? Are they smoking crack? No blockbuster has ever dropped that much. I predicted 56% on my own site and it fell 54%, so I hardly see how they are much use to anyone.

[Sabin]

By the end of the weekend, 'Pirates 2' will become the highest grossing movie of the year. $350 easily.

[VanHelsing]

i don't think miami vice or lady in the water will pass the 200 million mark. in their places, i think eragon or night at the museum might make it. apocalypto as well, if it manages to surprise us like the passion of christ.

[Franz Ferdinand]

Cheer up rolo, maybe you can write witty columns for boxofficeprophets.com instead!

[rolotomasi99]

well, i guess i can kiss those dreams of working for boxofficemojo.com and being a professional predictor of a movie's potential box office grosses goodbye. i did not do well at all at foreseeing how the top ten would shape up.

this was my most recent predictions:

1 Pirates Of The Caribbean 2 -- $350
2 Superman Returns -- $275
3 Cars -- $250
4 X-men 3 -- $250
5 The Da Vinci Code -- $225
6 Ice Age 2 -- $200
7 Happy Feet -- $175
8 Miami Vice - $150
9 Mission Impossible 3 -- $135
10 Lady In The Water -- $125

and this is how the box office stands now:

1 X-Men: The Last Stand
$231,687,159

2 The Da Vinci Code
$213,800,519

3 Cars
$210,595,357

4 Ice Age: The Meltdown
$194,428,651

5 Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
$183,661,469

6 Over the Hedge
$150,187,615

7 Superman Returns
$149,580,601

8 Mission: Impossible III
$133,138,422

9 The Break-Up
$114,972,100

10 Click
$111,035,308

obviously, i got "pirates of the caribbean" right, but the rest are major disappointments. i do not even begin to understand the failure of "superman returns." it will pass $200 million, but just barely. "x-men" and "the da vinci code" will not make it to $250 and $225 respectively. "cars" will stall around $225. there really is nothing else left out there. "happy feet," "miami vice," "lady in the water," and maybe a few others, but nothing else that looks like it will pass $200 million.

[VanHelsing]

Finally, Spidey's record is broken! Thanks to the pirates.

[The Original BJ]

Yep, Pirates is going to be humongous.

Perhaps this belongs more in the review thread, but I'm puzzled by all the negative reviews for the film. Quite honestly, I feel EXACTLY the same way about each of the first two Pirates films as I felt about the first two Matrix films.

First film = fun, more entertaining and original than your average big budget fare, but incredibly overlong and rather astonishingly overrated.

Second film = went in expecting more of the same, got more of the same, thought the criticisms against it were perfectly valid, but was perplexed at how nobody seemed to notice the exact same problems in its beloved predecessor.

I hardly want to defend this franchise, but I just don't get how people can love The Curse of the Black Pearl but loathe Dead Man's Chest.

[Mister Tee]

It's a bit more than solid -- clearly it's goning to crack $100 million for the weekend, and has a good shot at the record barring horrific word of mouth.

But, in the end, who cares? I don't see why people get so hyped on money being made by sequels. When a fresh new movie makes money, it's gratifying -- like doing a good job and being well-paid. A sequel doing the same has all the drama of cashing a trust fund check.

[Franz Ferdinand]

Solid?? Those Friday figures out-earned Superman's entire weekend! Even with midnight screenings padding the gross (it is still a Friday gross, not Thursday), it's still a huge opening day, and Pirates is looking at possibly passing $100M in two days. I think this is as blockbuster as it gets. An interesting analysis of these numbers.

Friday Box Office Analysis
By David Mumpower
www.boxofficeprophets.com

In 2002, Disney began rolling out movies that were based on their theme park rides. At the time, it seemed like an exercise in folly and the first of these releases, The Country Bears, gave no reason to believe otherwise. Its final box office tally was just under $17 million. In November of 2003, The Haunted Mansion was released. It earned only $75.8 million against a reported budget of $90 million. But in the middle of those two films, redemption unexpectedly arrived in the form of a foppish, fey pirate - right during the height of the short-lived metrosexuality trend. That fad's time may have passed, but Captain Jack's popularity carries on. The last 36 hours of box office have proven this fact in emphatic fashion.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest shattered the single-day box office record on Friday, accumulating an unprecedented $54.8 million from 4,133 venues. This represents a single day per-venue average of $13,271. Over a three-day weekend, that would be the equivalent of just under $40,000 per location. We're through the looking glass here, people.

Pirates didn't just beat the one-day record of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. It exceeded that prior number of $50.0 million by almost 10%. It's somewhat difficult to put this type of performance into perspective, but BOP is going to try. On its own, a $54.8 million weekend would be the 42nd largest opening and 46th largest weekend total ever recorded. This one-day total surpasses the entire weekend performance of last frame's $209 million-budgeted Superman Returns by almost $2.5 million. It beats the initial three-day performance of Superman Returns ($48.4 million) by 13.2%...and this is the film with the 51st best weekend of all-time we are using for comparison. Also, to give you a little bit of perspective on Dead Man's Chest's mighty impact, its Friday intake of $54.8 million represents almost 72% of the top ten's combined $77.6 million in box office receipts. That's domination.

After a single day of reported box office, Dead Man's Chest is the fifth largest opening of 2006. It will surpass Cars ($60.1 million), Ice Age: The Meltdown ($68.0 million) and The Da Vinci Code ($77.0 million) for second place by the end of matinees today. Perhaps most impressively, Jack Sparrow's latest tale only needs $45 million in box office today (a 4.7% bump from Friday) in order to break the $100 million barrier in two days. When Spider-Man did this in three days, box office analysts were stunned. Two days to $100 million could be the box office equivalent of Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak. If that does get broken, it won't happen for at least a decade. And a $48 million Saturday (unlikely, we know) would mean that Pirates has matched X-Men: The Last Stand's box office performance in only two days. This is the fourth largest opening of all-time we are discussing yet Pirates has an outside chance of doing that in only two days.

X-Men: The Last Stand had a 2.28 internal multiplier after its sensational opening Friday of $45.1 million. Even if Dead Man's Chest were to be that supremely front-loaded, we are still talking about a $124.8 million opening. Such a performance would exceed Spider-Man's record by exactly $10 million and it would also slightly exceed the less publicized three-day record of Revenge of the Sith, $124.2 million. Pirates 2 needs only a 2.09 internal multiplier to break Spider-Man's record. This feat appears certain, and the surpassing of Episode III's Thursday-through-Saturday performance is also likely.

Having discussed worst-cast scenario about the potential front-loading of Pirates, we now move on to the bigger question of how strong a weekend should we realistically be expecting? A straight multiplier is not a good practice for a title with midnight sneaks. We need to break the tally down into the Thursday and the Friday totals. The midnight showings of Dead Man's Chest are estimated in the range of $12 million, which would be another record total, by the way. These numbers will not be reported until tomorrow at the earliest and may not be publicized at all, but it's the best guess available at the moment. That would mean that Pirates earned $43 million on Friday. With reports of sellouts across the country, a family-friendly theme, and an extended running time, all of the reasons supporting a strong multiplier exist. Since we are talking about a historically unprecedented number, though, it's important to keep expectations realistic. A multiplier of 2.8 is a good guideline and lower than that wouldn't even be surprising. A Saturday/Sunday holdover better than this would put us in "Look out!" territory. As it is, a 2.8 internal multiplier on a $43 million Friday with the Thursday $12 million added back into the equation would mean a $132.4 million weekend. Stating the obvious, Jack Sparrow just whipped Peter Parker's ass.