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[bigtroyjon]

I think the point is that with rising ticket prices, most box office records are destined to be broken.

Prices aren't going to rise forever, at some point it's just not going to be worth it for people to go to the theater and price increases won't be able to make up for attendance decreases.

Personally I don't think we are that far away from hitting the inflection point where attendance just drops off a cliff. (in the US of course, international should continue to see great growth.)

 

[kswiston]

I think the point is that with rising ticket prices, most box office records are destined to be broken.



Here's the inflation adjusted top 10 highest grossing domestic releases:

1 Gone with the Wind $1,600,193,400
2 Star Wars $1,410,707,200
3 The Sound of Music $1,127,929,800
4 E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial $1,123,486,300
5 Titanic $1,073,955,900
6 The Ten Commandments $1,037,520,000
7 Jaws $1,014,384,200
8 Doctor Zhivago $983,152,800
9 The Exorcist $875,945,400
10 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs $863,280,000


http://www.boxofficemojo.com/alltime/adjusted.htm

An interesting discussion could be had about this list, but it's not really relevant to the discussion about weekend box office numbers. As I said above, new records are going to be constantly broken. That's always going to be the case so long as Hollywood releases dollar figures and not ticket sales.

A couple of years ago someone on the old BOM forums made a very detailed and sound argument on how those inflation adjusted box office figure for a lot of the older films were BS. Studios lumped together BO receipts from multiple releases and BOM historical ticket averages don't reflect the reality of the market at the time.

Also, it's not really relevant to compare modern films to films that returned year after year to cinemas for decades before the advent/popularization of television, and later home video.

 

[jett]

I think the point is that with rising ticket prices, most box office records are destined to be broken.



Here's the inflation adjusted top 10 highest grossing domestic releases:

1 Gone with the Wind $1,600,193,400
2 Star Wars $1,410,707,200
3 The Sound of Music $1,127,929,800
4 E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial $1,123,486,300
5 Titanic $1,073,955,900
6 The Ten Commandments $1,037,520,000
7 Jaws $1,014,384,200
8 Doctor Zhivago $983,152,800
9 The Exorcist $875,945,400
10 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs $863,280,000


http://www.boxofficemojo.com/alltime/adjusted.htm

An interesting discussion could be had about this list, but it's not really relevant to the discussion about weekend box office numbers. As I said above, new records are going to be constantly broken. That's always going to be the case so long as Hollywood releases dollar figures and not ticket sales.

The numbers for a lot of old movies are suspicious, but especially Gone With the Wind, which BOM marks as having grossed $190m. How is that possible when Jaws is largely recognized as the first movie to break $100m domestically?

 

[Diprosalic]

That doesn't seem that crazy. Depp and Burton are worldwide box office gold. If I were a movie exec I'd greenlight that in a heartbeat.

this is said a lot but only Alice was really a smash hit.

 

[DarkMehm]

There could be an interesting discussion about that list, if it wasn't completely inaccurate. BOM Forums had a big thread about that list, but the forum is nuked. Gone with the Wind didn't make 189 million in 1939, there were many rerelases over the next 20 years and the average ticket price of this movie was much higher than the overall average. People paid 0.75 - 1.00$ for a show in 1939 and BOM estimates the ticket price as 0.23 cent.

The very same problem applies to almost all of the Top 10, except for Titanic.

 

[G-Fex]

MIB3 could still flop (relative to expectations) and beat Avengers during Memorial Day weekend. It will be the Avengers' fourth weekend. Even Avatar only made $50M on its fourth weekend.

Rush Hour 3 and The Mummy 3 were both years late threequels that no one asked for and even they made $49 and $40M opening weekend. Will Smith + a Holiday weekend will push MIB3 above Rush Hour 3 regardless of how disappointing the movie is.

MIB3 will beat it.

Not really, gen pop audiences will want to see something new. Silly to discount MiB3.

And Snow White looks amaze, show some goddamn respect.

 

[kswiston]

There could be an interesting discussion about that list, if it wasn't completely inaccurate. BOM Forums had a big thread about that list, but the forum is nuked. Gone with the Wind didn't make 189 million in 1939, there were many rerelases over the next 20 years and the average ticket price of this movie was much higher than the overall average. People paid 0.75 - 1.00$ for a show in 1939 and BOM estimates the ticket price as 0.23 cent.

The very same problem applies to almost all of the Top 10, except for Titanic.

Ya, that is the thread I was talking about a couple posts up. Basically, movie tickets weren't as standardized as they are today. Crappy films might play for a dime in smaller theatres, while the event films like Gone with the Wind played in fancier venues for more money.

Gone with the Wind still made an obscene amount of money for that time, but the adjusted total would not be near $1.6B if we had admissions instead of lifetime dollar earnings.

 

[Slayven]

You guys make Sales Age in Gaming Forum look good.

You make G-flex look sane.

 

[G-Fex]

I'm sane. Predicting Avengers being on top for a good while isn't the least bit Cray

 

[JdFoX187]

I must say I'm sort of glad Dark Shadows is underperforming. This seemed like the type of movie that would be right in Burton and Depp's wheelhouse, but they turn it into some gothic Brady Bunch meets the Adams Family. Not impressed.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

Not bad numbers for the Marvel C-team, imagine the draw they could get with some proper superheroes.

 

[JdFoX187]

C-Team? Proper superheroes? Aside from the lack of Ant-Man and Wasp and the addition of Captain America, isn't this the original Avengers group?

 

[Hot Coldman]

Not bad numbers for the Marvel C-team, imagine the draw they could get with some proper superheroes.

Hey look another "HERP DERP WERE'S SPIDERMAN AND WOLFERINE" post

 

[Caspel]

C-Team? Proper superheroes? Aside from the lack of Ant-Man and Wasp and the addition of Captain America, isn't this the original Avengers group?

He's fishing. Ignore him.

 

[ZeroGravity]

Hey look another "HERP DERP WERE'S SPIDERMAN AND WOLFERINE" post

What's funny is that, in addition to really contributing very little more to what was already a record-setting gross, adding Spider-Man or Wolverine would have probably just detracted from the overall product since they'd just overshadow everyone else. I don't think The Avengers would have been nearly as good with them in it. The dynamic they had with the characters featured was near perfect.

 

[HK-47]

You guys make Sales Age in Gaming Forum look good.

Sales Age is always good. NPD isnt sales age, its fanwankery age.

 

[Hero_of_the_Day]

Joss Whedon has one of the biggest movies of all time.

I still can't wrap my brain around that thought.

 

[kame-sennin]

Prices aren't going to rise forever, at some point it's just not going to be worth it for people to go to the theater and price increases won't be able to make up for attendance decreases.

Personally I don't think we are that far away from hitting the inflection point where attendance just drops off a cliff. (in the US of course, international should continue to see great growth.)

I agree, but it's impossible to predict when that inflection point is going to hit. For now, I think it's safe to say that some film in the future is likely to open bigger than 200m.

A couple of years ago someone on the old BOM forums made a very detailed and sound argument on how those inflation adjusted box office figure for a lot of the older films were BS. Studios lumped together BO receipts from multiple releases and BOM historical ticket averages don't reflect the reality of the market at the time.

Did not know that. I imagine the data for films like Star Wars and ET is still pretty good though.

Also, it's not really relevant to compare modern films to films that returned year after year to cinemas for decades before the advent/popularization of television, and later home video.

If you look at the post that I was responding to, you'll see that that was the point I was making.

 

[JdFoX187]

Joss Whedon has one of the biggest movies of all time.

I still can't wrap my brain around that thought.

The same could be said of Christopher Nolan. Before Batman, he had three very good movies that had absolutely no mass media appeal. Some times all you need is to put the right director with the right property and their success flourishes.

Hopefully this allows Whedon to push some of his more personal projects through. I still say whoever decided to release Cabin in the Woods in the middle of April weeks before The Avengers instead of holding it off until October was insane.

 

[kswiston]

Did not know that. I imagine the data for films like Star Wars and ET is still pretty good though.

Star Wars' inflation adjusted total isn't right either. If you look at the weekend chart on Box office Mojo you will see that the movie made about $215M in its first year. Then they skip to what is clearly a re-release in July 1978, and another re-release in Aug 1979 and call them weeks 43 and 44 of the initial run. There is also the problem that they list Star Wars' initial run at $307M, when it is pretty clear that the money was earned over 5 years (with several undocumented re-releases) before the official re-issue in 1982.

E.T.'s numbers are better, but it got a significant re-release in 1985, and then the 20th anniversary release in 2002.

Movies don't get re-released dozens of times anymore. They just go to home video.

As much as people tried to use adjusted box office totals to deride the success of Titanic in 1997, that film actually had the highest grossing first run of any film in history.

 

[Hero_of_the_Day]

The same could be said of Christopher Nolan. Before Batman, he had three very good movies that had absolutely no mass media appeal. Some times all you need is to put the right director with the right property and their success flourishes.

Hopefully this allows Whedon to push some of his more personal projects through. I still say whoever decided to release Cabin in the Woods in the middle of April weeks before The Avengers instead of holding it off until October was insane.

Whedon is more shocking to me just because he has always had so many haters who wrote him off as a hack TV for teens writer.

After Memento, it seems like most people still didn't know Nolan, but those that did thought he was pretty awesome. Nolan has haters now because he's so popular and some people like to bash on what's popular (the more popular something I don't like is, the more I hate it).

People have always hated Whedon.

I hope he spends his new fortunes to make sure that Buffy reboot never happens.

 

[Dram]

What's funny is that, in addition to really contributing very little more to what was already a record-setting gross, adding Spider-Man or Wolverine would have probably just detracted from the overall product since they'd just overshadow everyone else. I don't think The Avengers would have been nearly as good with them in it. The dynamic they had with the characters featured was near perfect.

If Marvel had the film rights to Spider-Man and the X-Men I doubt we would have ever had any movies with the Avengers. They wouldn't have needed to develop their lesser known characters.

 

[Hot Coldman]

I hope he spends his new fortunes to make sure that Buffy reboot never happens.

It's already dead, pretty much.

Also, there's already one crap Buffy film, another couldn't hurt.

 

[kame-sennin]

Star Wars' inflation adjusted total isn't right either. If you look at the weekend chart on Box office Mojo you will see that the movie made about $215M in its first year. Then they skip to what is clearly a re-release in July 1978, and another re-release in Aug 1979 and call them weeks 43 and 44 of the initial run. There is also the problem that they list Star Wars' initial run at $307M, when it is pretty clear that the money was earned over 5 years (with several undocumented re-releases) before the official re-issue in 1982.

E.T.'s numbers are better, but it got a significant re-release in 1985, and then the 20th anniversary release in 2002.

I forgot about the older Star Wars re-releases.

Movies don't get re-released dozens of times anymore. They just go to home video.

That's my point though, older movies have an advantage in terms of ticket sales because of the lack of a home video market and less entertainment competition in general. Newer movies have the advantage of playing to a higher population, but they don't get the theatrical run times to take advantage of it. If we're discussing box office returns, there's no point in saying:

Sigh, not a fair comparison.

Doesn't take 3d tax, inflation, etc into account.

Even if we're talking about more recent movies, the market is constantly changing and we will never be able to make an apples to apples comparison.

 

[kswiston]

Never noticed the Whedon hate outside the internet.

On the other hand I have met several people obsessed with his stuff in real life. Many of them female. I think the real issue was that, outside of his die-hard buffy/firefly/comic fans, no one knew or cared who he was. That will probably change with Avengers though.

 

[Good Job Bob]

Nolan's worst works are as good as Whedon's best works.

The guy has made some truly putrid stuff and I can totally understand why people don't like his particular style of writing.

 

[kame-sennin]

If Marvel had the film rights to Spider-Man and the X-Men I doubt we would have ever had any movies with the Avengers. They wouldn't have needed to develop their lesser known characters.

I don't think this is true. Disney bought Marvel because they wanted to 'leverage' Marvel's entire line of characters across multiple businesses (movies, games, tv, merchandise, ect.). The stripmine culture of modern entertainment companies suggests that an Avengers movie would have happened eventually.

 

[Ninja Scooter]

this is said a lot but only Alice was really a smash hit.

It did a billion. That's more than a "Smash hit". Also Charlie and the Chocolate factory did like $500 million worldwide. Depp also has the cache of the Pirates movies. $150 million investment in a movie that is guaranteed to at least double that worldwide, and pretty certainly will exceed that, is not that outlandish.

 

[kswiston]

That's my point though, older movies have an advantage in terms of ticket sales because of the lack of a home video market and less entertainment competition in general. Newer movies have the advantage of playing to a higher population, but they don't get the theatrical run times to take advantage of it.

True. Reminds me of IMAX films before they started playing big budget fare. T-Rex: Back to the Cretaceous made over $50M despite never making more than $500k or so in a weekend. When you play a film for years and years, even meager ticket sales add up.

That said, it's still fun to see records fall, even if the circumstances are different.

 

[JdFoX187]

Nolan's worst works are as good as Whedon's best works.

The guy has made some truly putrid stuff and I can totally understand why people don't like his particular style of writing.

Nolan's work is fairly consistent. He doesn't have the dramatic ups and downs that a lot of other directors have. Perhaps that's because he's still fairly new in Hollywood, relatively speaking. Wheedon has been around a lot longer, and has some good and some pretty bad. I think a lot of the hate directed at Whedon stems from how much he's talked about by his fans. He has a very vocal base, perhaps contradictory to the quality of his work, depending on who you ask.

Whedon is more shocking to me just because he has always had so many haters who wrote him off as a hack TV for teens writer.

After Memento, it seems like most people still didn't know Nolan, but those that did thought he was pretty awesome. Nolan has haters now because he's so popular and some people like to bash on what's popular (the more popular something I don't like is, the more I hate it).

People have always hated Whedon.

I hope he spends his new fortunes to make sure that Buffy reboot never happens.

Doing a little bit of research, Insomnia was actually fairly successful at the worldwide box office. I never realized it made that much money. I remember seeing it at the theaters and didn't know that Nolan was the one who directed Memento, which I saw one late night on television. I just remember it for an extremely creepy performance from Robin Williams.

Nolan didn't become a household name until after Batman Begins, as you say. Anecdotally, I remember a lot of backlash to an "unknown" "ruining" Batman. People on some boards I used to post on and some friends in real life trashed the Tumbler, the bat suit, the "realistic" take on the property, etc. So he had his fair share of haters until 'Begins came out and silenced them. The same goes for Whedon.

If Marvel had the film rights to Spider-Man and the X-Men I doubt we would have ever had any movies with the Avengers. They wouldn't have needed to develop their lesser known characters.

This is actually a good point. Iron Man is now one of the most prolific comic book characters now due to Marvel taking a chance on a movie for him. Thor and Captain America, to a lesser extent each, are also pretty big names now. Who's to say how well a Marvel Studios Spider-Man or X-Men film would turn out, but I think we actually got the best of all worlds with the X-Men franchise sans The Last Stand and Origins and the Spider-Man franchise sans 3.

 

[Escape Goat]

You make G-flex look sane.

I hate so much about the things you choose to be.

 

[Chris R]

Theater was ~95% full at my 11:10 showing of Avengers (2d), where as Hunger Games on a early bird Saturday (granted, it was week 3) was ~40% full. Parking lot was also much fuller than I've ever seen for so early in the day.

 

[See You Next Wednesday]

I think the point is that with rising ticket prices, most box office records are destined to be broken.



Here's the inflation adjusted top 10 highest grossing domestic releases:

1 Gone with the Wind $1,600,193,400
2 Star Wars $1,410,707,200
3 The Sound of Music $1,127,929,800
4 E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial $1,123,486,300
5 Titanic $1,073,955,900
6 The Ten Commandments $1,037,520,000
7 Jaws $1,014,384,200
8 Doctor Zhivago $983,152,800
9 The Exorcist $875,945,400
10 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs $863,280,000


http://www.boxofficemojo.com/alltime/adjusted.htm

An interesting discussion could be had about this list, but it's not really relevant to the discussion about weekend box office numbers. As I said above, new records are going to be constantly broken. That's always going to be the case so long as Hollywood releases dollar figures and not ticket sales.

It's great to see legitimate GOOD films in the top & not the over inflated $20+ movie ticket tripe like Avatar & Avengers on there.

 

[Biggest-Geek-Ever]

This thread has more comments than any NPD thread since the February 2011 one.

That makes me feel real happy. ^_^

 

[Hot Coldman]

This thread has more comments than any NPD thread since the February 2011 one.

That makes me feel real happy. ^_^

Well, it's some pretty big fucking news. Also, it's really fun this week.

 

[G-Fex]

Arguing about silly video game companies isn't any fun at all.

Who cares?

 

[Good Job Bob]

This thread has more comments than any NPD thread since the February 2011 one.

That makes me feel real happy. ^_^

Can't wait until Box Office threads start taking down GAF.

 

[Kusagari]

Can't wait until Box Office threads start taking down GAF.

TDKR will crash GAF.

 

[Tobor]

If Marvel had the film rights to Spider-Man and the X-Men I doubt we would have ever had any movies with the Avengers. They wouldn't have needed to develop their lesser known characters.

They've done their duty. Now they can come home.

 

[planar1280]

I really don't see Avengers getting knocked off the top spot anytime soon. Number 1 for five weeks? More likely than you think.

Are you willing to bet your tag on this? I am 5 weeks you say..

 

[Good Job Bob]

I really don't see Avengers getting knocked off the top spot anytime soon. Number 1 for five weeks? More likely than you think.

That'd suck because it'd be stealing money from Prometheus.

 

[Dead]

It did a billion. That's more than a "Smash hit". Also Charlie and the Chocolate factory did like $500 million worldwide. Depp also has the cache of the Pirates movies. $150 million investment in a movie that is guaranteed to at least double that worldwide, and pretty certainly will exceed that, is not that outlandish.

Alice only made a Billion because of the timing of its release.

 

[Good Job Bob]

Alice only made a Billion because of the timing of its release.

Avengers only made a Billion because of the 5 film lead up.

 

[Kusagari]

There's no way in hell Avengers beats MiB3 in its fifth week. Even Battleship has a decent shot at dethroning it.

 

[kswiston]

That'd suck because it'd be stealing money from Prometheus.

Avengers will be heading into its sixth weekend when Prometheus comes out. By that point, it will be lucky if it is making $10-15M. It won't affect Prometheus.

There's no way in hell Avengers beats MiB3 in its fifth week. Even Battleship has a decent shot at dethroning it.

MIB3 is week 4, and I don't see Battleship beating it. If the Avengers hits $100M this weekend, next weekend should be in the $55M range.

 

[Ninja Scooter]

Alice only made a Billion because of the timing of its release.

Who cares? Its a fucking billion dollars. That buys Burton and Depp enough cache to get a $150 million budget in a world where Riggins from Friday Night lights is expected to carry TWO big budget blockbusters.

 

[Barack Lesnar]

Is this the biggest xao's weekly thread has ever been? 2000 posts in a minute

 

[Kusagari]

MIB3 is week 4, and I don't see Battleship beating it. If the Avengers hits $100M this weekend, next weekend should be in the $55M range.

Ughh, I misread Boxofficemojos release date list because Dictator is a Wednesday and assumed that was the only release next week.

Yeah, there's no way Battleship is beating it knowing that. But MIB3 will.

 

[kswiston]

Ughh, I misread Boxofficemojos release date list because Dictator is a Wednesday and assumed that was the only release next week.

Yeah, there's no way Battleship is beating it knowing that. But MIB3 will.

Agreed. I don't think MIB3 will make that big a splash at the box office ($150-175M total), but its opening weekend will definitely surpass the Avengers' fourth weekend.

 

[marrec]

I really don't see Avengers getting knocked off the top spot anytime soon. Number 1 for five weeks? More likely than you think.

MIB3 will beat it quite handily, its going to make at least 80m. As good as Avengers is its not 80m week 4 good.