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[Abounder]

Inevitable franchise fatigue but it's still a great number. It happens to basically all box office juggernauts like Spider-man, Tolkien, Transformers, etc.

I saw and loved the first Avengers in the theaters, but Ultron's clips and Phase 2 have done nothing to get me back in the theaters for AoU...it just seems like a middling installment.

 

[Cheebo]

Should finish somewhere around 480-490 mil domestically I suspect. Nothing to sneeze at.

 

[PhoncipleBone]

Did I call it a bomba?

After seeing the fanatics going wild with 220 or 230+ predictions, it is back to reality.

Did I say you called it a bomba? I just merely pointed out it will still slot in at number 2 most likely, which is still impressive.

As for the 220m numbers, some of the tracking was showing that yesterday, some wasn't.

 

[Obliterator]

Should finish somewhere around 480-490 mil domestically I suspect. Nothing to sneeze at.

Not at all but thats still a decline of over 100 million domestic if that happens. Gigantic drop

 

[jett]

Ultron not getting the record is quite pleasing.

It would be more pleasing if these genericfests would stop grossing so much money.

 

[wachie]

Did I say you called it a bomba? I just merely pointed out it will still slot in at number 2 most likely, which is still impressive.

As for the 220m numbers, some of the tracking was showing that yesterday, some wasn't.

Not sure why the pre-emptive defense was for then?

Not getting a record = pleasing (for me) but movie still making bank. These are not mutually exclusive.

It would be more pleasing if these genericfests would stop grossing so much money.

There's always going to be an audience for those - the Fast sequels, the Transformers etc.

 

[Bobby Roberts]

Not at all but thats still a decline of over 100 million domestic if that happens. Gigantic drop

It could still hit 200-205. And I don't think Pacquiao/Mayweather is going to make a dent anymore than the Kentucky Derby is going to.

 

[Discotheque]

It would be more pleasing if these genericfests would stop grossing so much money.

These villains starting to feel like they have as much substance and menace as a saturday morning cartoon

Truly believe Eisenberg, isaac and leto will get us out of the comic book villain ghetto

2016 year of the bad guys

 

[PhoncipleBone]

It could still hit 200-205. And I don't think Pacquiao/Mayweather is going to make a dent anymore than the Kentucky Derby is going to.

And next weekend doesn't show much competition coming in either, unless Hot Pursuit and Maggie are considered competition.

Now the next weekend to watch is May 15th. Pitch Perfect 2 and Mad Max vying for #1 spot.

 

[wachie]

These villains starting to feel like they have as much substance and menace as a saturday morning cartoon

Truly believe Eisenberg, isaac and leto will get us out of the comic book villain ghetto

2016 year of the bad guys

 

[jett]

There's always going to be an audience for those - the Fast sequels, the Transformers etc.

Yes but it seems like these days we've hit the idiocracy cinematic critical mass. People will go in droves to watch whatever crap marketing tells them they must watch.

These villains starting to feel like they have as much substance and menace as a saturday morning cartoon

Truly believe Eisenberg, isaac and leto will get us out of the comic book villain ghetto

2016 year of the bad guys

Lol... We'll see. I have little faith in this entire genre. Marvel's "villains" are really the absolute worst though.

 

[Obliterator]

These villains starting to feel like they have as much substance and menace as a saturday morning cartoon

Truly believe Eisenberg, isaac and leto will get us out of the comic book villain ghetto

2016 year of the bad guys

Actually looking at these numbers is really making me wonder if DC is late to the party. Yes its DC and not Marvel but its still superhero stuff. Also Batman vs Superman trailer didn't track all that well for views.

 

[3N16MA]

Some people predicting under 200M. It could do 15M less than Avengers from Fri-Sun (without previews) and it would still hit 200M.

Kids will turn out in droves starting this afternoon.

We will see if this holds up.

 

[Cheebo]

And next weekend doesn't show much competition coming in either, unless Hot Pursuit and Maggie are considered competition.

Now the next weekend to watch is May 15th. Pitch Perfect 2 and Mad Max vying for #1 spot.

Tracking isn't even close. Pitch Perfect is going to destroy Mad Max.

 

[PhoncipleBone]

Lol... We'll see. I have little faith in this entire genre. Marvel's "villains" are really the absolute worst though.

It's a damn shame too. Ultron did deserve better. Now I am nervous they are going to fuck up Baron Zemo in Civil War next year.

Tracking isn't even close. Pitch Perfect is going to destroy Mad Max.

I hadn't seen tracking for that weekend yet, but I always thought Pitch Perfect was going to be pretty big after how popular the first one got over the last couple of years.

 

[Discotheque]

Tracking isn't even close. Pitch Perfect is going to destroy Mad Max.

Ah Jesus Christ. The blockbuster I've been asking for years ago: practical stunts, nice cinematography, r rating, grimy punk aesthetic and its gonna underperform

 

[PhoncipleBone]

Ah Jesus Christ. The blockbuster I've been asking for years ago: practical stunts, nice cinematography, r rating, grimy punk aesthetic and its gonna underperform

This year's Speed Racer or Dredd?

I am kidding. It won't underperform that badly. But let's hope it is as awesome as those movies. Which I think it will be.

 

[Cheebo]

Ah Jesus Christ. The blockbuster I've been asking for years ago: practical stunts, nice cinematography, r rating, grimy punk aesthetic and its gonna underperform

Last I saw Mad Max is tracking high 20s, Pitch Perfect 50 mil. Pitch Perfects opening could double what Mad Max does.

Pitch Perfect is going to be massive. Young girls are like Avengers level hyped for that.

 

[Ridley327]

This year's Speed Racer or Dredd?

I am kidding. It won't underperform that badly. But let's hope it is as awesome as those movies. Which I think it will be.

In terms of quality, it's hopefully closer to the latter than the former!

 

[Obliterator]

Last I saw Mad Max is tracking high 20s, Pitch Perfect 50 mil. Pitch Perfects opening could double what Mad Max does.

Pitch Perfect is going to be massive. Young girls are like Avengers level hyped for that.

Yep every woman I know who is under 30 is acting like that movie is the second coming of God. Its gonna do big business

 

[PhoncipleBone]

In terms of quality, it's hopefully closer to the latter than the former!

Shhh. Jett is in here. Don't let him hear an unkind word about Speed Racer.

I was LTTP on that one, but did wind up loving it once I saw it. Same with Dredd.

 

[JdFoX187]

Actually looking at these numbers is really making me wonder if DC is late to the party. Yes its DC and not Marvel but its still superhero stuff. Also Batman vs Superman trailer didn't track all that well for views.

The trailer did insane views. It's like you're Chicken Little, here. The sky is falling! ...simply because a movie didn't set a record.

 

[Matt_]

Slightly disappointing Ultron numbers but still nothing to scoff at, record might still be attainable and getting the second highest day is quite the achievement

Will be interesting to see how its legs go. I still think 500M is a lock but given the slightly more negative reception the film has been getting 600M would seem to be out of reach

is the fight really expected to hit it that much? a $90 charge (not even for hd) is insane

 

[Bobby Roberts]

And next weekend doesn't show much competition coming in either, unless Hot Pursuit and Maggie are considered competition.

Now the next weekend to watch is May 15th. Pitch Perfect 2 and Mad Max vying for #1 spot.

Avengers:
Day 1: 80 mil Day 2: 70 mil Day 3: 57 mil

Fast 7:
Day 1: 67 mil Day 2: 47 mil Day 3: 33 mil

Guardians:
Day 1: 38 mil Day 2: 30 mil Day 3: 25 mil

Winter Soldier:
Day 1: 37 mil Day 2: 34 mil Day 3: 23 mil

Granted, that's a pretty small sample size of somewhat related box-office hit, but I don't know if it's entirely out of bounds to say Age of Ultron might go:

Day 1: 85 mil Day 2: 70 mil Day 3: 60 mil

Which would put it at 215 mil. Even if you drop Day 2 to 65 and Day 3 to 50, you still get 200 mil.

 

[PhoncipleBone]

Avengers:
Day 1: 80 mil Day 2: 70 mil Day 3: 57 mil

Fast 7:
Day 1: 67 mil Day 2: 47 mil Day 3: 33 mil

Guardians:
Day 1: 38 mil Day 2: 30 mil Day 3: 25 mil

Winter Soldier:
Day 1: 37 mil Day 2: 34 mil Day 3: 23 mil

Granted, that's a pretty small sample size of somewhat related box-office hit, but I don't know if it's entirely out of bounds to say Age of Ultron might go:

Day 1: 85 mil Day 2: 70 mil Day 3: 60 mil

Which would put it at 215 mil. Even if you drop Day 2 to 65 and Day 3 to 50, you still get 200 mil.

I appreciate the breakdown. I just don't know what it has to do with the second weekend competition.

Of course, my initial response didn't have much to do with a comment about the boxing match or Kentucky Derby affecting this weekend either did it? My bad.

 

[Obliterator]

The trailer did insane views. It's like you're Chicken Little, here. The sky is falling! ...simply because a movie didn't set a record.

Eh not really I'm talking in relation to other major movies. It had less views than Ultrons first trailer and got wrecked by Star Wars numbers. It did a lot of views but nothing shocking huge

 

[Cheebo]

Avengers:
Day 1: 80 mil Day 2: 70 mil Day 3: 57 mil

Fast 7:
Day 1: 67 mil Day 2: 47 mil Day 3: 33 mil

Guardians:
Day 1: 38 mil Day 2: 30 mil Day 3: 25 mil

Winter Soldier:
Day 1: 37 mil Day 2: 34 mil Day 3: 23 mil

Granted, that's a pretty small sample size of somewhat related box-office hit, but I don't know if it's entirely out of bounds to say Age of Ultron might go:

Day 1: 85 mil Day 2: 70 mil Day 3: 60 mil

Which would put it at 215 mil. Even if you drop Day 2 to 65 and Day 3 to 50, you still get 200 mil.

Did all of those films have similar sort of significant thursday previews? Have a hard time remembering what films had them and what didn't. Taking out the thursday preview numbers Ultron did 57 mil friday.

 

[PhoncipleBone]

Did all of those films have similar sort of significant thursday previews? Have a hard time remembering what films had them and what didn't. Taking out the thursday preview numbers Ultron did 57 mil friday.

Furious 7 did $15.8m in Thursday showings. Avengers 1 did $18m or so.

 

[ReturnOfTheRAT]

I'm quite happy my prediction of $230 mil is very wrong.

 

[Cheebo]

I don't get why people are "happy" about this? I am not the biggest MCU fan around (although I think I actually liked Ultron more than most of GAF!) but it seems petty.

 

[ReturnOfTheRAT]

I don't get why people are "happy" about this? I am not the biggest MCU fan around (although I think I actually liked Ultron more than most of GAF!) but it seems petty.

I'm not going to deny that it's petty.

I put my prediction out there as a joke and later did the calculation of how much it would have to average for the weekend. That's a redirculous amount of money to be making if it got that number.

I'd much rater other films such success. Again, I don't deny my opinion being a petty one.

 

[kswiston]

Did all of those films have similar sort of significant thursday previews? Have a hard time remembering what films had them and what didn't. Taking out the thursday preview numbers Ultron did 57 mil friday.

There's not a ton of evience that Thursday previews are any bigger than the old Friday Midnights. People just go to the cinema earlier and skip the 12am stuff.

That said, Age of Ultron was behind Avengers if you subtract preview/midnight shows. The actual Friday for Avengers was $62M.

I'm going to guess $190-200M for now, depending on the Saturday hold. Not the record breaking opening people wanted, but it obviously doesn't make a ton of sense to get bent out of shape over the second largest weekend of all time.

People talking about the likely domestic drop: Bigger grosses are going to have the opportunity for bigger drops. $480M domestic would be 23% drop from the first film's take. $500M would be a 20% drop. Slightly higher than the Dip from Harry Potter 1 to 2 or The Dark Knight to the Dark Knight Rises. Better than the drops for the Lost World or the Empire Strikes back.

 

[Bobby Roberts]

Of course, my initial response didn't have much to do with a comment about the boxing match or Kentucky Derby affecting this weekend either did it? My bad.

Heh. Usually I'm more selective/careful in the quoting so it's clear precisely which point I'm responding to. Apologies, man.

 

[PhoncipleBone]

Heh. Usually I'm more selective/careful in the quoting so it's clear precisely which point I'm responding to. Apologies, man.

Hey, like I said, my initial response didn't have much to do with what I was replying to. No worries at all.

I did like seeing the day to day breakdowns like that though.

 

[Can Crusher]

Movie needed to be better, a lot fucking better.

 

[Ridley327]

Movie needed to be better, a lot fucking better.

The reception from audiences in terms of their like of the film seems to be a bit more muted than I would have imagined. I guess the impact of the setup for The Avengers was so unprecedented that it simply can't be duplicated.

 

[Can Crusher]

The reception from audiences in terms of their like of the film seems to be a bit more muted than I would have imagined. I guess the impact of the setup for The Avengers was so unprecedented that it simply can't be duplicated.

It didn't need to duplicate, it only needed to make up for it by being a great movie. Which it isn't.

 

[Cheebo]

It didn't matter how good or bad the movie was, it wouldn't have changed the opening. WOM doesn't settle in that quickly.

 

[PhoncipleBone]

Deadline now saying $84.46m for the day, as per Disney's numbers.

 

[pestul]

Movie needed to be better, a lot fucking better.

I thought the trailers were pretty poor overall. The build up in the past week has been pretty tremendous with the talk shows though.

 

[Bobby Roberts]

It didn't need to duplicate, it only needed to make up for it by being a great movie. Which it isn't.

The quality of the film has almost NOTHING to do with its opening weekend. Whether the movie was a disappointment or not (I don't think it was at all, even if it wasn't as good as the first (or as good as five other Marvel movies) wouldn't even factor into the first day's box-office, as there's no real time for word of mouth to even develop, much less take hold.

Day one is all anticipation, hype, and marketing at work. So if the box-office for day one seems disappointing somehow (and I don't think it should) it's because for whatever reason the atmosphere wasn't 100% built before the box-office opened Thursday night.

 

[Cheebo]

Deadline now saying $84.46m for the day, as per Disney's numbers.

The biggest mystery to me is why Disney put out the "opening weekend record is in sight!" comment when the early estimates were 95-97 mil. They should have known better to hold off. Strangely amatuerish for a big studio. Got a little too cocky there.

Deadline's weekend number is now: $202.6M

 

[Can Crusher]

It didn't matter how good or bad the movie was, it wouldn't have changed the opening. WOM doesn't settle in that quickly.

Movie opened internationally earlier than in the U.S, the reviews have been around for long enough. The marketing also failed to build enough momentum, and I think one of the reasons for that is that there's simply nothing particularly great within the movie that could make the movie stand out in trailers and such.

You're essentially saying there's no way Age of Ultron was ever gonna top the first one. Can't agree with that.

The quality of the film has almost NOTHING to do with its opening weekend. Whether the movie was a disappointment or not (I don't think it was at all, even if it wasn't as good as the first (or as good as five other Marvel movies) wouldn't even factor into the first day's box-office, as there's no real time for word of mouth to even develop, much less take hold.

Day one is all anticipation, hype, and marketing at work. So if the box-office for day one seems disappointing somehow (and I don't think it should) it's because for whatever reason the atmosphere wasn't 100% built before the box-office opened Thursday night.

The movie is doing gangbusters. I'm of course arguing that if the movie had been better, the word would've spread online and it would've had a better chance at drawing in an extra amount of people that would've pushed the OW over the top. Also I argue that the reason why the marketing didn't manage to be better is because there's nothing particularly good in the movie. First trailer was better than the movie in fact, so I applaud Disney for squeezing that out of this shit show.

 

[Cheebo]

Movie opened internationally earlier than in the U.S, the reviews have been around for long enough. The marketing also failed to build enough momentum, and I think one of the reasons for that is that there's simply nothing particularly great within the movie that could make the movie stand out in trailers and such.

You're essentially saying there's no way Age of Ultron was ever gonna top the first one. Can't agree with that.

No one in America pays attention to foreign market word of mouth except those who are actively following the film, and they were seeing it no matter what. Word of mouth doesn't happen that quickly at all.

Marketing is a different story, but traditional word of mouth does not impact first weekend grosses.

 

[ReturnOfTheRAT]

And if you're going to try and predict what it does today and tomorrow, don't forget about the front loaded nature of having high preview totals. Even if it increases today (I have no clue how the boxing will or will not affect it) subtract the previews from the $84.4 mil in your calculations for the rest of this weekend.

 

[Ridley327]

The quality of the film has almost NOTHING to do with its opening weekend. Whether the movie was a disappointment or not (I don't think it was at all, even if it wasn't as good as the first (or as good as five other Marvel movies) wouldn't even factor into the first day's box-office, as there's no real time for word of mouth to even develop, much less take hold.

Day one is all anticipation, hype, and marketing at work. So if the box-office for day one seems disappointing somehow (and I don't think it should) it's because for whatever reason the atmosphere wasn't 100% built before the box-office opened Thursday night.

I think pestul is right that the ads have been very lacking in the attention-grabbing department. They seemed to gravitate towards being little more than announcing, "hey, it's the Avengers, and here's more of them!", without doing much to sell it. There's just nothing really exciting about how they did the ads.

I have my doubts about how the Batman/Superman film will turn out, but the teaser is way more interesting than anything they ever put out for the new Avengers film. That's already doing a good job of making it an event.

 

[TacticalFox88]

Well. Star Wars is assuredly going to crush AOU at this point

 

[Bobby Roberts]

Movie opened internationally earlier than in the U.S, the reviews have been around for long enough..

International news was, for 95% of the moviegoing audience, simply that the film made 200 million overseas last week. That was it. Movie reviews don't really factor in at all as any sort of impetus unless they're uniformly excellent or terrible. Avengers reviews have all been pretty good.

The idea that the marketing couldn't work because they didn't have any quality in the film to pull from doesn't make any sense either considering how many disappointing movies had AMAZING marketing built around their visuals.

This movie's being "disappointing" at the box-office has everything to do with the marketing and the buzz that was built, and for whatever reason, it appears they didn't do AS good a job this time out as they did on the last film to get people excited to see these characters come together again. I get where you're going, but we're talking about day one domestic box-office. There is almost zero opportunity for word-of-mouth to have factored in that fast.

I think pestul is right that the ads have been very lacking in the attention-grabbing department. They seemed to gravitate towards being little more than announcing, "hey, it's the Avengers, and here's more of them!", without doing much to sell it. There's just nothing really exciting about how they did the ads.

I agree with that - if anything, the most effective of the Avengers ads was the first - the one that seemed a little more serious, that presented Ultron as a big ol' "FUCK YOU" threat, with that creepy music and such.

 

[3N16MA]

I had it at 220M thinking a 7% increase was doable. It would have to do some crazy numbers on the weekend to hit that.

If this opens lower than Avengers it is still a success when you look at the big picture. it will hold the 2nd biggest OW slot which makes it hard to consider the haul a failure.

That being said if it does gross under 207M you have to think Disney will be slightly disappointed. It will be the first Marvel sequel to open lower than the previous film.

We will find out soon enough.

 

[jett]

Shhh. Jett is in here. Don't let him hear an unkind word about Speed Racer.

I was LTTP on that one, but did wind up loving it once I saw it. Same with Dredd.

I like how "The Speed Racer of the year" has become a thing. Mad Max looks great, definitely watching that one day one.