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

People still buy discs?

 

I do. Because it's a more consistent quality, I hate buffering. However, I do buy my games digitally.

 

U.K. box office
The Force Awakens: $50,686,789 opening weekend; $163,599,922 total gross (3.23 multiplier)
Rogue One: $21,555,806 opening weekend; $81,432,097 total gross (3.78 multiplier)
The Last Jedi: $37,378,914 opening weekend; $111,106,152 total gross (2.97 multiplier)

People don't buy discs? Is this the new goal post moving because that's what it looks like.

 

The Force Awakens was the last disc I'll ever purchase. Physical media is dying.

You're so defensive. How long are you gonna beat this "TLJ is horrible" horse? It's gotta be tiring.

 

Disc sales mean nothing...TFA was a immense phenomenon that needed to be purchased because of sheer popularity.

If TLJ is to be compared to anything it should be age of ultron in terms of DVD sales

 

Hold on. Wait, what? "New goal post moving"?

What goal post on the 'TLJ is a financial success' position was ever moved?

So far as I recall the 'TLJ underperformed' position was asserted, then inquired against how so, then a relative privation was offered, then countered against by financial records, Disney's statements, top grossing of the year ranking, Disney's choices regarding Rian Johnson, et. al. and then that was commonly disregarded in counter argument by another relative privation, then that new relative privation would be addressed, then another relative privation would be given, etc...

At one point I actually had to repeatedly ask what people were measuring by and what their grading was based on because all that it seemed we were getting in here was, effectively, "Well, it should have been more", with no clear idea why or how much more it should have been as a standard setting.

A few, for example, liked to point to the percent change from the previous film, but no one seems to be able to cite what the standard percent change difference threshold is for success marking; only that it shouldn't be what TLJ earned because no one successful does that; which has been shown not to be entirely true at all through hundreds of films in case studies where it's pretty clear that drops can be pretty sizable and still be successes, let alone typical occurrences.
Then the point was that Jumanji was out pacing it, then that didn't break the boundary, then it was BP and that didn't break through (though I think it has by now) either so then it became about how it shouldn't even get this close, then that spun for a while pointlessly because...again...relative privation, then IW came about and finally became that white whale, but it was still just another flawed concept due to just moving targets repeatedly with the only constant being, 'It underperformed because it should have made more'.

So what goal post has been moved on the 'success' position, because so far as I see the 'success' position has been on the defensive position the entire time and just answering to assertions by the 'underperformance' position repeatedly; and it is those assertions which have continually moved.

Again, I've repeatedly had to attempt to get exact kpi methods from people and each time I'm not given one.


Cheers,
Jayson

 

Unfortunately, physical media is dying. Most stores I used to go to buy DVDs, which were mostly record stores, are now out of business. The last Blu-ray I bought was in 2015, maybe earlier. And this is from a guy who had a DVD library in the hundreds. I love physical media because of the permanence, but having moved 3 times in the space of a year, I realized how much it was all tying me down.

I think the only Blu-rays that sell today are these big franchise films like TLJ with big fanbases, or new deluxe editions of classics with lots of features. I didn't bother with any of the Disney films on BD. A friend of mine got them, so I saw the special features that way, and in my country all the Disney Star Wars films stream on Netflix.

For those wondering if the quoted sales figures are good sales or not, the article does state:

"Star Wars: The Last Jedi is currently the year's most popular release in its opening week, with sales of 582,000 in its first seven days; "

 

Variety does appear to reinforce this perspective (I don't know first-hand; I don't normally track disc sales sides - due to my job, I'm far more familiar with VOD sales).

But they said this:
"Disc sales were down 14% last year, falling to $4.7 billion, just one year after registering a decline of nearly 10%. The drop for physical rentals was even more pronounced. Brick-and-mortar rentals and kiosk rentals declined a combined 17%, falling to just over $2 billion.

After eclipsing disc sales for the first time in 2016, subscription streaming numbers gained even more ground last year, expanding by more than 30%, to $9.5 billion."
http://variety.com/2018/digital/news/home-entertainment-spending-2017-1202658638/

Cheers,
Jayson

 

It's significant. If nothing went wrong its opening on disc should have matched the way it opened at the box office like Rogue One did (in between RO and TFA but closer to TFA), but instead it opened behind RO both in the 3 day and 7 day stats.


Sales are in units

Star Wars: The Last Jedi (U.K.)
Opened 73.41% higher than Rogue One in the first weekend at the theaters.
Ended 36.44% higher than Rogue One in totality at the theaters.
Opened -11.95% lower than Rogue One in the first week in disc unit sales.

That's quite a story of a drop.

Let's look at Rogue One vs. TFA.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (U.K.)
Opened -57.57% lower than The Force Awakens in the first weekend at the theaters.
Ended -50.22% lower than The Force Awakens in totality at the theaters.
Opened -47.12% lower than The Force Awakens in the first week in disc sales.
Ended -39.10% lower than The Force Awakens in the first calendar year of disc sales.

That was a rise.

 

Is there any worth to noting that it's still one of the years top selling discs, even if it has less sales than a previous film?

Is there a means of checking against market fluctuation with discs?

I mean, for example, TLJ was still the #1 film of 2017, in spite of having a drop from previous films and that can reasonably be matched, in part, to the whole market dropping pretty heavily in 2017.

Variety is stating a combined 24% drop in disc sales in two years.

Does that factor in, or how should we check?

I know how this works for VOD, but I would be assuming by applying how we market check in VOD to discs.

Also, is there any value in trying to get digital purchase numbers for these films (I don't know; I'm asking)?

As to the theater run; TLJ succeeded. We don't have to question that at this point. It's matter of financial record at this point; going back to percentages, yet again, is redundant - we've been there.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

As quoted in the previously mentioned article from Jayson, disc sales have been falling at a faster rate than the 11% sales drop you noted.

Disc sales fell 10% in 2016, and then 14% in 2017, while disc rentals fell 17%. The trend will not reverse itself, and it probably never will, it will just continue to grow. So a ten percent drop in sales compared to R1 would be actually much better-selling than the projected industry decline. As stated, it is so far the best selling disc for its first week of release.

 

If we're going to track disc sales, what's the KPI method here, because I strongly doubt anyone tracks by comparing drop rates to other films.
I know that's not what companies ask from us for VOD sales for our reporting, so I'm going to go ahead and doubt that anyone does that for discs.

This is what I mean by, "what goalpost was moved"?
How can we say that @DailyPlunge moved a goalpost when the goalpost wasn't ever defined in the first place?

By ranking, TLJ appears to be doing well, but these resources, such as officialcharts, NPD, or Media Play News obfuscate the raw values and lean towards weekly chart listing and relationship indexes to the top selling item in each week bin.
That's a very clumsy way to work through data, and that doesn't help much.

I think if we're going to track discs, that it would make more sense to wait and see what the results are (whenever they are posted) at The Numbers 2018 full listing because it doesn't concern with range limitations, and has raw units, sales values, and rankings:
https://www.the-numbers.com/home-market/bluray-sales/2018
https://www.the-numbers.com/home-market/dvd-sales/2018

But I still have to wonder exactly what the target values are here, and why they are what they are?
What's "normal" here? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5%...10% of Box Office sales?
Or is it about market share volume, or some other value?
We could compare against past Star Wars titles, or other franchise titles, but that's not really of value because that's not what determines if they are within a norm or not - what's the standard, or do we just go off of ranking alone and skip dollars or units?

Cheers,
Jayson

 

Yep, until Online streaming becomes more consistent. Also there is alot of compression with streaming. You honestly think a movie that fills up 100GB bluray will be the same as streaming? Plus a lot of online movies don't support HDR when their disc counterpart does. Physical media isn't going to die any time soon until US internet structure improves. Physical 4k movies still look and sound better than their digital counterpart. I'll take a physical that comes with streaming option over just regular streaming any day of the week.

 

There's also the collectible aspect. I like my books and films to be physical, as they simply look cooler than a file in a list.

 

Exactly! How am I suppose to watch a movie when theirs an internet outage? It happens often due to old infrastructure (from an internet provider is too cheap to upgrade and prohibits outside competition) and or by some random construction worker who accidentally cut a fiber line 2 states away that cuts internet off for a particular region (it happens.). Like I have a nice 4k tv and Xbox One X that supports 4k bluray play back, why wouldn't I take advantage of the better quality tech that also give me the digital counterpart for the convince factor? I can't wait until the day I turn 60 to have a movie wall dedicated to SW movies. I'm already sad that we have a generation that doesn't have no clue on what AOL trial disks were much less receiving a gaming magazine that came with a demo disc that has more content than whats currently on many open betas and split screen multiplayer.

 

Streaming is good enough for me at this point. It's convenient and 4K is kind of overkill.

People collected VHS->DVD->Blu-ray->4K...

I'm tapping out.

 

HiFi concerns are why disc sales still do exist, but the huge drop is because the general market is moving pretty rapidly over to streaming over discs.
HiFi might be awesome, but it's also expensive and niche.
Non-Bluray disc sales now are practically none compared to streaming, and now that streaming can get up to UHD levels, a lot of the general market has notably moved over.

It's pretty huge.
In the cable world, I know companies are pivoting to move to streaming box (smart box) devices almost exclusively; my company offers people to take streaming non-dvr boxes over non-streaming non-dvrs, and quite a few folks are dropping dvrs due to streaming. Bandwidth consumption, as a result, has absolutely jumped.

What do you think the net neutrality war is over?
It's over survival in a world where inline TV contracts don't exist (effectively), and that's huge money.

So I don't think disc will die, but it will go the way of the sports car coupe; niche high-end.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

I didn't have too much problem with the PT era. Had issues with 1, still think 2 was the best, and 3 was fine. The big thing being that while some of the choices were questionable, there was no doubt it was riding story rails and they were entries in The Saga.

TLJ was the first time I felt I was being lectured to, rather than being told a story of The Star Wars Saga, and the overall tone of the movie was so anti-fan, after we sent TFA off the charts, that its staggering. Star Wars Movies are basically family dynamics against a space setting. There is a reason its currently getting snapped into oblivion by Infinity War. Pretty soon we may be talking about how SW will start making DCEU money.

Its not rocket science. The family stuff is what seperates Star Wars from the pew pew stuff and makes it enduring. Even without direct family ties, the original film's big 3 had such chemistry that by the end of the first film, they were basically family. At the end of the 3rd film, they were actual family.

We didn't pay to see Flash Gordon. Although honestly that would have been a better film than the pitiful effort we got out of Rainy Johnston.

From the #1 domestic film of all-time 3 years ago, to no better than a standalone original Marvel Movie this year, to what... making DCU money?

The Kennedy Dive is incredible... and potentially you have no idea what purgatory awaits SW. If Solo goes belly up and can't clear at least a $150 million OW, it won't be pretty. Even after that, it needs *at least* a billion at the Box Office and not to replicate its legs getting broken by weak competition as people raced to see other movies instead. And that's just Rogue One numbers. LOL if it does Deadpool 2(note.. DP2 is R-rated with a smallish $110 mil budget, in that context its numbers are great) numbers. You're talking about the first SW film in 13 years to open in a prime May slot. This should have been an easy get.
​

 

You do realize that Black Panther made a lot of money, right? So, you're essentially saying that TLJ made a lot of money. Marvel has 19 movies and Infinity War has 10 years of buildup of storylines, character and arcs all coming together. So, you seriously thought 8 was going to beat 7? I have to ask, did you join this community just to trash 8? Anytime I see one of your posts its always doom and gloom.

 

Projections for Solo have it grossing somewhere around $800,000 worldwide, which would put it ahead of Episode II and close to Episode III, which were both released in May and during a time when each prequel had twenty years of build-up without any additional hype. So, it's business as usual. You should fact check, firstly, and secondly wait until the actual release happens until you start talking about it's "failed" numbers in the past tense. You literally don't know what you're talking about.