Box Office Predix - What will be the blockbusters of 08?

[rolotomasi99]

amazing! PINEAPPLE EXPRESS put up a good fight, but just could not take down the caped crusader.

TROPIC THUNDER will definitely kick batman's butt though. i know a couple theatre's in my area are doing mid-night screenings. usually midnight screenings are reserved for huge franchises.
opening mid-week will deplete some its punch, but i still think it will have a $40 million opening weekend plus another $40 million from pre-weekend showings. it could easily cross $100 m before its second weekend, which is pretty impressive for a live action comedy.
it will probably stay number one for a couple weekends, since it faces almost no competition. it will most likely end up with $250 m by the end of its run.

the only other blockbusters of the year left are MADAGASCAR 2, QUANTUM OF SOLACE, and HALF-BLOOD PRINCE.

[Zahveed]

So it will be Tropic Thunder to take the crown this coming weekend.

[MovieWes]

It's also the first film since Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King in 2003-04 to sit atop the weekend box-office for four weekends straight! Amazing!

[Franz Ferdinand]

Four weekends in a row!

Box office estimates place The Dark Knight at number 1 yet again with $26M over the weekend, safely about Pineapple Express' $22.4. Even though it has been knocked out of top place over two separate days by new movies, it consistently rallies to take the weekend peak. It now stands at $441.6M - passing Shrek 2 as the top grossing movie of the decade, and only $21M away from nudging Star Wars out of the silver medal (sorry, I had to!). You can sense George Lucas is plotting some kind of special re-re-release for his baby in the near future to re-claim his runner-up spot.

Another record the Dark Knight could have had is biggest fourth weekend: it finishes just behind Titanic's $28.7M and Spider-Man's $28.5M.

I think Dark Knight will end up with $547M by the end of its run, and become one of the biggest DVD hits of all time when it comes out right before Christmas.



Edited By Franz Ferdinand on 1218390573

[barrybrooks8]

With everyone else weighing in on their guess for The Dark Knight, I must do so as well. I am predicting a total gross of $556,500,000, safely nestling it into the #2 spot (of all time).

[jack]

I doubt The Dark Knight will beat Titanic domestically, but by the end of its run it could topple it for Worldwide record. I can see The Dark Knight crossing the $2billion mark. Titanic fell just shot of that.

I'm going to see it again this week. As of this moment I'd call it a complicated masterpeice....

[Zahveed]

Lo siento hombres. I feel I should bring this topic up again.

The Dark Knight Reaches $400M in Record 18 Days
Source: Media by Numbers August 5, 2008


Warner Bros. Pictures' juggernaut The Dark Knight added yet another record on Monday as it passed up the $400 million in just 18 days. The previous record was held by Shrek 2, which needed 43 days to reach the mark, followed by Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, which took 45 days.

The Dark Knight earned $6.28 million in 4,266 theaters on Monday, pushing the Christopher Nolan-directed Batman Begins follow-up to $400,031,000. The movie has climbed up to the 8th spot on the all-time domestic blockbuster list and will surpass Spider-Man ($403.7 million) on Tuesday for the 7th spot.

Internationally, the film has already earned $202.5 million while it has yet to open in some major markets. The worldwide total so far is $602.5 million.

[OscarGuy]

While I'm not a fan of the Mummy franchise, I also expected it to win after Friday's grosses, but I think poor word of mouth and no repeat business killed its Saturday and Sunday takes. However, because it was in fewer theaters than Dark Knight, it actually managed to top Dark Knight on a per-screen basis which means its performance was a bit stronger in terms of overall potency in the marketplace.

[rolotomasi99]

not to cause any more (inexplicable) anger, but THE DARK KNIGHT's unexpected win of the weekend box office over THE MUMMY 3 is actually kind of interesting.

according to box office mojo, THE DARK KNIGHT's weekend take breaks down to:
friday -- $12.7 million
saturday -- $17.4 m
sunday -- $13.7

while THE MUMMY 3 breaks down to:
friday -- $15.3 m
saturday -- $14.7 m
sunday -- $12.3 m

on saturday, when i saw the friday grosses, i thought for sure THE MUMMY 3 was going to win the weekend. what i did not expect was THE MUMMY 3 would lose 4% of its gross from friday to saturday while THE DARK KNIGHT would gain 37% between those days. unless a friday has midnight screenings, most movies increase their take between then and saturday.

i am assuming from what i have read on various websites, the word-of-mouth for THE MUMMY 3 was so toxic it actually hurt its box office between friday and saturday. this most likely points to a 60% drop next weekend.

if THE DARK KNIGHT can achieve around a 40% drop next weekend, it could make close to $25 m in its fourth week. this could allow it to (barely) win the weekend again. PINEAPPLE EXPRESS will probably make between $20-25 m its first weekend, so the race will be tight. it will definitely fall to TROPIC THUNDER which i think will open with $50 m.

[rolotomasi99]

Cameron's screenwriting abilities are negligible, but he seems to have a knack for guiding actors, particularly female actors, to great things: Sigourney Weaver, Kate Winslet and Gloria Stuart all received Oscar nods under his direction, and Linda Hamilton and Jamie Lee Curtis both enjoyed career-high performances working with him.

james cameron is the hollywood director who creates the strongest female characters. sigourney weaver, linda hamilton, mary elizabeth mastrantonio, kate winslet, gloria stuart played great female characters who were all strong in different ways.
i found jamie lee curtis' character to be annoying. i cannot fault the actress, but i felt her character played too much to the damsel-in-distress stereotype. even rose in TITANIC and sarah connor in the first TERMINATOR had their strong moments. TRUE LIES is the only cameron film (well, along with PIRANHA 2) i do not like.

all that being said, given the quality of the rest of the performances, i am assuming these ladies were good enough actresses to direct themselves. maybe cameron just focuses all his energies on his female leads and the men are left to figure it out themselves. either way, i would not call james cameron good with actors; and anyone who goes to see AVATAR will not be there because of good acting or solid writing.



Edited By rolotomasi99 on 1217882873

[flipp525]

To each his own. Why again do we both live in the same exact neighborhood, yet have never met up for a drink?

I knew you'd ignore this, rolo.

[rolotomasi99]

As for The Hobbit, they aren't "splitting" the novel into two films. They're filming the novel and putting it into one film. The other film is going to attempt to bridge The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings films by depicting the events from a different point-of-view. The second film (from what I've read on various sites) will deal with the Gandalf and the White Council, the Necromancer (who is actually Sauron), Aragon/the Dunedain rangers, and Gollum's hunt for Bilbo and the Ring, all of which is dealt with in the Appendices of The Return of the King. So what we're getting is two stand-alone films, not two films adapted from one source.

that has to be the best movie news i have heard in awhile!

what i read is it would basically be the one book split into two movies, with THE HOBBIT 1 and then THE HOBBIT 2. however, if THE HOBBIT is going to be its own movie and then another movie will be made with a different title and story, than that is not the same as trying to risk a story's integrity just to make a few (million) more bucks.
thanks for clearing that up for me.

[OscarGuy]

I should have known I was going to be beat to the Hobbit punch by MW...we're both Tolkien fans, so it's no surprise both of us know the skinny on that.

Anyway, the problem with Avatar is if it doesn't play in regular cineplexes and they aren't all converted to 3-D-capable by that time, it will A) limit the revenue and B) tweak the revenue. First of all, the ticket prices are different. There's a reason why Hannah Montana did so well and it's not huge popularity...it was huge ticket prices. If that film had charged regular admissions, you would have seen a more modest take. But herein lies my gripe about the use of monetary value to determine success. Number of Tickets Sold is a much better way to determine the popularity of a film. It's why even if The Dark Knight ends up grossing $500 M, it will barely have cracked the all time top 30 when adjusted for inflation. That's not nearly as impressive as being the number 2 film with regard to overall money made.

So, if Avatar is a huge box office success, you will be able to thank ticket prices, not necessarily interest. I know that only a fraction of my friends who might find the concept interesting will actually fork out that much money to see it in 3-D. I know I wouldn't. It's just too costly for something so incredibly vain (James Cameron has invested a lot in 3-D technology and insists it is the wave of the future, so you can see where he's a little biased).

[OscarGuy]

One thing you must consider about The Hobbit is that I don't think the films will be called The Hobbit and The Hobbit 2. Most sources have pegged the details of the second film not to be wholesale developed from the book, but from extemporaneous material referenced in the book, but included briefly in other stories: namely the fight with the necromancer...now, they could combine both into the film and parallel the stories, but I'd bet they push the necromancer into the second film.

As for Deathly Hallows...the book's too long as it is and needs to be cut heavily anyway...I can't see it as two films when they crammed Order of the Phoenix and Goblet of Fire both into one film even though they had the compelling material for two. I think the book drags horribly in the middle, so that is prime real estate for simplification...

I'll give you WB greed on both films, but I think The Hobbit will do fine in two features...Deathly Hallows won't.

[MovieWes]

I think that the furthest The Dark Knight can possibly go (and this is as liberal as possible) is no more than $560 million, but honestly I believe that it won't make more than $510 million. Titanic is at least safe for now.

That said, there are two other films on the horizon that I think could pose a possible threat to Titanic. The first is next Christmas's big release Avatar, which just happens to be James Cameron's first feature since Titanic, and which is said to have the most photo-realistic visual effects ever committed to film (and it's also going to be in 3-D, so people are going to want to see it in the theater). If the script and acting are great, then I believe it could gross as much as $850 million.

The second is The Hobbit in December 2011, which I think will gross between $650-700 million. After all, The Phantom Menace grossed an inflation adjusted total of $600 million and The Hobbit is going to be every bit as anticipated as that film was.

???

"the most photo-realistic visual effects ever committed to film." where have i heard that compliment before. oh, right! the FINAL FANTASY film. considered one of the biggest bombs in box office history.
great f/x may help a film have a huge opening, but are not enough to keep a movie going. THE DARK KNIGHT has hardly any big f/x scenes, and yet it is beating the pants off of all the other f/x heavy films of this year.
the other sentence which i found odd was, "If the script and acting are great..." uh, i love james cameron as much as the next fanboy, but since when have his movies been known for great scripts or acting? despite all its nominations, the writers refused to recognize TITANIC for its screenplay.

i think the biggest stumbling block for AVATAR (in addition to its horrible title) is the fact that it is an unkown commodity. almost all the films in the box office top ten are either sequels or adapted from a popular comic book character. only the first STAR WARS, ET, and TITANIC where original films. ET was released at the apex of spielberg's popularity, so he was the known commodity. TITANIC was the "perfect" film, being able to attract every demographic of filmgoer, faced no competition, and received a huge boost from its oscar triumph. STAR WARS is the only film in the top ten to come out of nowhere to become a blockbuster. the STAR WARS films are also the only movies in the box office top twenty to take place in outer space, as AVATAR does.

sure, james cameron's name alone will get some people excited, but outside of fanboy and movie websites most people are not familiar with his name. the more than 10 year span since TITANIC has left james cameron without the cache to open a film on his celebrity alone. i think AVATAR will make $300 million at the most.

as for THE HOBBIT, since warner bros decided to split one perfectly good book into two movies, as well as THE DEATHLY HOLLOWS, i am praying to the movie gods to punish the greedy studio. just like THE PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN sequels and THE MATRIX sequels (also warner bros), the executives are taking one movie's worth of a story and stretching it out to two movies so they can rake in as much cash as possible. i know some believe THE HOBBIT should/could be adapted into three movies, but the story is one book for a reason. it is not epic like THE LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy. it reads more like a travelogue, with amusing side stories and fastidious descriptions of meals and such.

the same goes for THE DEATHLY HOLLOWS. it is not necessary to stretch that book into a five hour movie split in two.

i think audiences will pick up on the studio fucking with them just like they did with THE PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN and THE MATRIX sequels where the second sequel did far less than the first...or at least i hope so. warner bros deserves to be punished for its arrogance and greed. hopefully audiences agree. :p

Well, I was using the first Star Wars film and Titanic as the precendent for this statement. From everything I've read and heard about the film, it's going to be like nothing anyone has ever seen before, which one of the reasons why both of those films achieved such astronomical box-office receipts. And the fact that Avatar is going to be completely 3-D (there isn't going to be a traditional 2-D print for this film), it's not the type of film that people are going to want to wait to see on DVD. In fact, I've heard that it's not really the type of movie that would play well on any home theater system (or, at the very least, will lose much of its impact when it makes the jump to DVD).

The fact is, you can almost get the big-screen experience now with all the home theater technology that we have nowadays, which is why we aren't seeing huge grosses like Titanic and Star Wars anymore (both of those films would gross between $900 million and $1 billion at today's ticket prices). And Avatar is going to be one of those movies that is going to change the way movies are watched, much like the introduction of Cinemascope in the '50s (this alone will make the film almost impossible to pirate). That's why I think it's going to be huge.

As for The Hobbit, they aren't "splitting" the novel into two films. They're filming the novel and putting it into one film. The other film is going to attempt to bridge The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings films by depicting the events from a different point-of-view. The second film (from what I've read on various sites) will deal with the Gandalf and the White Council, the Necromancer (who is actually Sauron), Aragon/the Dunedain rangers, and Gollum's hunt for Bilbo and the Ring, all of which is dealt with in the Appendices of The Return of the King. So what we're getting is two stand-alone films, not two films adapted from one source.



Edited By MovieWes on 1217870726