OFFICIAL NEWS A Lasting Record Of TLJ's Financial Performance.

Saw AHN in a drive-in theater back in '77 been a fan ever since(my fav StarWars Film BTW). first time I got on the internet super highway I wondered is there a Star Wars website and I found TheForce.net, anyway allot of people talk about romance scenes in AOTC, As someone who was raised in a religious house hold, talking to girls/women was just as awkward for me, so that Anakin and Padme scene felt right at home almost frighteningly so which makes the film great for me thats why films are subjective. Others may cringe every time they see that scene, but for me it will alway be different...

 

Ok here is my counter point. In 1999 dollars TLJ would of ONLY made 500 million. AND must we use the "it's the middle movie excuse".

TLJ was the return of Luke Kriffing Skywalker!

TLJ is not a bomb but a big underperformer.

 

BY whose standards? Yours? Other fans? Disney? (please cite official source if that's the case), or some random YouTube dude, or some random researcher who tries to predict box offices numbers who is not any more accurate than the weather man? That's the whole point, myself, @Jayson and other people are trying to make. You guys claim it under performed but you can't list which standards and anything official from Disney paints a different story.

I'm sorry but a 16 year gap between a franchise will always get bigger numbers than one movie that features an Iconic character for 1/4 of the movie. Episode 7 confirms this. There WILL NEVER be another SW movie that will equal or surpass Episode 7. Also we only had 3 SW (soon 4th) movies right now and I'm already seeing people already to getting SW fatigue. That wasn't even a thought in 1999. If you follow the numbers for squeals, than TLJ is in the ball park.

 

Incorrect.
Regardless if we compare TLJ to TPM in 1999 or 2017, TLJ beats TPM.
TPM stopped running on day 205.
Then it picked up and returned to theaters over 2 years later and continued to add that extra run on to the previous pile.
TPM's total run day count was over 300 days, which is really long.
Even the 205 was long; adding the extra 100 was due to a re-release.

So, let's be fair and do a comparison of first runs of both adjusted to both 1999 and 2017.
We'll adjust TPM up to 2017, and we'll adjust TLJ down to 1999.
We'll also take global box office records and not just domestic (which you seem to be citing above).



As you can see, TLJ beats TPM in both inflation adjusted comparisons, especially when you compare to the same day of the run.
TPM had a much longer run (at this point) and had to run 2.18 times as long as TLJ to reach 99% of what TLJ has earned.

If you walk TPM back to TLJ's current 94th day (I haven't grabbed today's reports - my last day on record is the 18th), then you have TPM at 96% of TLJ. That is about just under 52 million less than TLJ (both adjusted into 2017 for that calculation - 36 million short of TLJ in 1999 dollars).

So it is not accurate to state that TLJ somehow did worse when compared in inflation against TPM.
(For the record, all of the day-to-day tracking charts that I personally compile and post - which look like the above - are 2017 inflation adjusted)

I am more interested in the fact that this kind of marking is highly subjective and ultimately doesn't mean much because so what if TLJ beat TPM?
TLJ could have beat TPM and it could still have been possible for Disney to have lost money on the deal and not seen TLJ favorably.

It all depends on the net earnings that are needed. You can surpass a predecessor and still not make enough back to merit success by the studio and distributor.

So even though TLJ beats TPM, I don't personally think this proves anything about TLJ in regards to success or under-performance.
It's an arbitrary comparison that's novel and it gives some context, but I don't think it determines whether or not TLJ is successful or not.

And it doesn't because anyone could come along and say, for example, "This was the return of Luke! It should have made 1.5 times as much as TPM; it only made 1.008 times as much as TPM! If that's not under-performing, I don't know what is!"

And knock the entire comparison aside as if it was never made by just changing the target from "beating TPM" to "beating TPM by 1.5 times".

Again, it's the "what is enough" issue.

The only solid metric is Disney's own holdings because those are final and will not change in subsequent financial records (unless they are taken to court for fraud and the records for TLJ are found to be in error...which is pretty unlikely to happen).

Cheers,
Jayson

 

I will also go further here to point out another problem that I see.
At this point, any target that we think of is after-the-fact target selecting, which almost immediately invalidates the target as a measure of success.
It does so because we can just sift around for a target which suits our bias perspective; and this works in both directions of success and under-performance.

The only targets outside of Disney's determination that I could see being fine are those estimates for the gross which were made prior to the release or just after opening weekend. Those ranged from 1.4 to 1.7 billion on average.
If someone wanted, they could say that TLJ did under-perform these estimates, but...

I've also brought up that it's really not uncommon for estimates of these kind to be off anywhere between 100 to nearly 400 million (typically 200 to 300 million off), so it's not odd that TLJ would end up differing from these estimates.

My day job is as an analyst. Part of that is making estimates. My hobbies these days tend to also be analytical. For example, I work on studying astrospheres and my specific project in this field is cataloging astrosphere estimates and running data analysis on the different estimates and comparing them against a baseline to create 5 point estimate profiles.
Now, in my daily analytical work, if an estimate differs from the reality of the subject, then that doesn't mean - very often - that the subject performed above or below on anything. It means that the estimate had an error margin. All estimates do.
For example, we had estimates in the scientific community, by very talented and skilled analysts, for our own heliopause of 75 AU to 150 AU (depending which estimate you looked at).
When Voyager flew through our heliopause, it registered a distance of 121.7 AU.
No one had anything close to that AU range. Keep in mind that 1 AU is the distance of the Earth to the Sun, so being 28 to 47 AU off from reality isn't exactly what you call "close".
So did this mean that our heliopause over performed some estimates and under performed others?
No. It meant that the estimates were wrong. Like nearly all estimates ever made.
Some were more wrong than others.

Sometimes it might be that something of the subject is wrong, and the estimate was correct to what should have happened, and in those rare cases (usually in engineering) everyone goes and looks for what went wrong and usually what they find is an error in a calculation with another estimate that incorrectly accounted for something and caused the whole system to perform off from what was expected (e.g. incorrectly estimating stress point loads on a bridge).

Now, I made a guess (which I've discussed before) of 1.5 billion and TLJ didn't make that, and I've also mentioned that I don't consider that to mean that it under-performed because that just means my guess was wrong. The above is why I say that.

Now, as it happens, I did happen to also make a calculated estimate for TLJ after it had ran for its first couple of weeks (I basically collected through to the end of December).
It was a brain-dead simple estimate model, as far as models go.
You take the percent change from each day:

Code:

DAY Change
2 ) 0.611296
3 ) 0.304319
4 ) 0.097979
5 ) 0.083845
6 ) 0.064509
7 ) 0.064197
8 ) 0.083489
9 ) 0.090776
10 ) 0.050294
11 ) 0.074584
12 ) 0.070102
13 ) 0.051602
14 ) 0.043778
15 ) 0.041024
16 ) 0.041225
17 ) 0.027107
18 ) 0.030404

Then you take the percent change from each of these percent changes:

Code:

DAY Change Change of Change
2 ) 0.611296 |
3 ) 0.304319 | -0.50217
4 ) 0.097979 | -0.67804
5 ) 0.083845 | -0.14425
6 ) 0.064509 | -0.23061
7 ) 0.064197 | -0.00484
8 ) 0.083489 | 0.300515
9 ) 0.090776 | 0.087284
10 ) 0.050294 | -0.44596
11 ) 0.074584 | 0.482963
12 ) 0.070102 | -0.06009
13 ) 0.051602 | -0.26391
14 ) 0.043778 | -0.15161
15 ) 0.041024 | -0.0629
16 ) 0.041225 | 0.004883
17 ) 0.027107 | -0.34246
18 ) 0.030404 | 0.121639

Then you find the average of this last set.

Code:

-0.118098

And take the last percent change (not the percent change of the percent change, but the first percent change of the money)

Code:

18 ) 0.030404

And apply the average to produce the next day's percent change:

Code:

0.030404*(0.030404*-0.118098) = 0.0268137

To create the 19th day's gross estimate, you take the 18th's gross and perform the following:

Code:

[Gross of 18th day]+([Gross of 18th day]*0.0268137) = $1,078,741,906.24

Now your engine for your estimate is complete.
From here, it's just running it for as many days as you want to run.

So, let's pick 94th day.
This estimate model spits out:
$1,316,224,967.50

Box Mojo's report on the 94th day for TLJ's gross was $1,332,011,651.

The estimate model was off by a difference of just under 16 million.

I had others before this that were more complicated, and they drifted very quickly off and when I circled back around to look at the engine of my estimate model I found errors in the calculations as they were programmed in, and for a while I just didn't feel like going back and recalibrating the engine to fix it and so I just dropped the whole thing.
Eventually I felt like it and corrected those errors and this spit out.
(the error was in the way the derived percent changes were being pulled and averaged was programmed incorrectly so an artificially higher value was being produced. The drop rate of the percent change was spitting out -0.05 instead, which is radically higher than what it was in reality (roughly, -0.12).

Now, if you just went off of the first week, your result would be: $1,177,063,283.49.

If you went off of the opening weekend, your result would be: $1,072,896,002.21.

The first Weekend to weekend: $1,183,474,386.03.

First Monday to Monday: $1,491,829,376.31.

First Week, discounting opening weekend: $1,244,227,916.42.

Average of all of these different short sample range ways of grabbing an estimate: $1,233,898,192.89.
(This doesn't include the long sample estimate of $1,316,224,967.50 in the average).

Now...there IS actually a way that I can produce an estimate model which will spit out around a 1.7 billion value.
If I take only the percent change over the opening weekend and then take roughly a third more than that average percent change as a negative...

Code:

[(0.61+0.30+0.10)/3]/1.33*-1

Then I get around that ballpark: $1,611,675,394.61
You can hit 1.7 billion by making the drop around 1.4 instead of 1.33.

I don't know if this is what folks were doing, but something like this was likely done in some fashion or another.
The problem with it is that it's far too small of a sample set of data to work from, so you end up having to create constants everywhere rather than relying on the data set to inform the model.

Media doesn't get to take a break for reliable data sampling, however, so I don't think anyone will sit around and say, "Hey boss, I know you want us to get a headline grabber out today, but our estimate models would be a lot more accurate if we waited at least a week before doing that."

Anyway, I think this post more or less turned into a ramble a bit of me picking apart estimates in general.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

What sorcery is this?! Are you taking into account the US dollar was weaker over seas then? (Or was it stronger?)

 

It's a standard inflation conversion from one year to the other.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

I made a typo when writing this up.

Where it reads:

It should have read:

Code:

0.030404 + (0.030404 * -0.118098) = 0.0268137

Cheers,
Jayson

 

I mean if u think ABOUT it, math is like magic. They even start with M, A.

 

It's MATHICAL!


Cheers,
Jayson

 

Week 14 ended yesterday, March 22, 2018.

 

Wut was up with that spike in week 11/12? Last chancers going?

 

It's hard to determine as it's relative to another rate of change - RO's.

It would be easier to tell if there were actual fluctuations to the film itself if all three were relative to a fourth comparison point.
The way it is atm is like showing percent change of speed between Ron and John, and percent change of speed between Ron and Walter.
What we don't know is anyone's speed relative to the road, so we can't say if a spike in Ron's speed relative to Walter is because Walter slowed down or Ron sped up.

There's nothing wrong with Magnar's data, btw.
You just happen to be asking a question that's a bit beyond the data's currently displayed capacity due to the comparison form.
Even an RO to TFA would help answer your question because that's Walter to John and you can then infer from Ron to John and Walter to John whether Ron's spike over Walter is due to Walter slowing down or Ron speeding up.

Magnar could probably throw a line in for RO relative to TFA (guessing); then I think you could answer that question.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

And... Black Panther is $1.2 million away from doing the unthinkable and having a standalone Marvel Movie make more domestic money than TLJ, a flagship SW Episodic Saga Movie, with BP having been released just two months later with a lower OW Box Office. It should pass both TLJ and The Avengers this weekend, on its way towards JW.

TLJ will now be the #7 domestic film of all time, on its way to #8 once Avengers: IW gets released. Its fairly safe to say if the anemic TLJ couldn't beat the original Avengers domestically, a 6 year old movie, it very likely won't beat IW.

 

I love it

 

Well, since folks like to keep comparing BP to TLJ (which I still think is an insult to BP if you're claiming that TLJ is clearly a bad SW movie by pointing out how BP is doing...but anyway...), I decided to take the chance to try a depreciation log-based estimate model I've been thinking of using for a while.


The TLJ estimate is not a log style (it's as I previously outlined)

Cheers,
Jayson

 

You mean Black Panther? The #5 domestic grossing film of all time, which likely may be the #3 before its run is over? THAT Black Panther?
Vs The Last Jedi? The #7 domestic grossing film of all time, likely headed lower as the year progresses? THAT Last Jedi?

And that a standalone Marvel Movie just crushed it against a flagship Star Wars film doesn't look bad at all... for Black Panther. Its the cinematic equivalent of Virginia going down vs UMBC. Absolutely no one expected it, but man does the #1 look horrid.

 

Congratulations. You just devalued BP's success.

You think TLJ should have made more. Cool.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

Pretty much *everyone* did pre-release. Don't try to play that you thought BP would outgross TLJ in any way, shape, or form... even at its final total. A Marvel origin story, standalone usually doesn't even get in shooting distance.

And given those are your words, apparently you think BP's success should be devalued(in favor of TLJ). Shame.

I simply called it what it is, a movie overperforming and slaying an underperformer, just like a #16 taking out a #1. The only movie looking bad here is The Lost Jedi.