Box Office

Ahhh, gotchya!

Cheers,
Jayson

 

Pacing towards the somewhat disappointing end of doing very well.

Well ahead of Rogue One and in hot pursuit of The Last Jedi.

The Force Awakens may have been pent up demand more than a reasonable bar for a solid Star Wars movie.

Solo an accidentally super expensive anomaly with heavy competition in the other direction.

Too much reactionary thinking and unreasonable expectations. Star Wars can sustain an annual movie and the TV shows no problem with solid efforts and semi rational budgets (aka 200 millionish films and Mandalorian TV budgets).

Hit shows and billion plus movies that spike and dip like most big Marvel minis the two part Infinity conclusion.

One day you have properly filled out the galaxy and have more connective tissue to build off of you can ramp that up sorta Marvel style content flow if you would like.

 

I heard Disney stock went down due to the poor criticism of TROS. A fellow investor suggested I invest because of Disney+. I might invest after TROS has had its run.

 

I have held DIS for a long time. Stock has dropped about $1 per share since TROS came out. Started year at $107 and now just about $146. Also pays a decent dividend.

 

The week's update before we head into the weekend.
Mostly idling with a bit of a positive bump on the 1st (+25%). The most notable boost is on the international side, which now surpasses the domestic side helping give the global earnings a +36% jump from the 27th.

I also switched the labeling to "Global" instead of the confusing misnomer of "International" for world wide sales. International in my language here on refers to non-domestic, while Global refers to Domestic + International.







Cheers,
Jayson

 

Nose is starting to pitch in the downward direction; leveling off.

Looking like somewhere between 1 and 1.2 Billion for a final at this point, with a lean towards less than 1.2 more likely currently.






The tracking here has dropped pretty dramatically after the second weekend - so far each weekend has dropped by about half the previous weekend for each day's earnings.
It's not bad. Still a big film. Just if we were hoping for a hale mary pass to pull the nose up, I think that point is long gone. I'm not seeing the likeliness of touching TLJ at this point, but there's a remote chance because humans are fickle (but I wouldn't bet on it).

Cheers,
Jayson

 

Even the high end, which is 1.2 billion at the absolute best is pretty bad for the big final of the 9 part saga.
I personally dont think it will hit R1 numbers (WW) and DOM), its dropping a lot faster in comparison

 

Yep. Unless it pulls a TPM and runs for eternity (doubtful), or some social fad happens, I don't see it nosing back up.
My calculations actually are plotting it only a scratch over a billion to just past 1.1, but I'm willing to bump it to 1.2 just because barely hitting 1.1 or less seems just not right...but...it is behaving that way.

Tough times (I'm being a bit coy because these things are big so even these low values are still good).

Cheers,
Jayson

 

It would still be the first trilogy to break a billion though.

 

I laughed when people said it has better legs than TLJ.
Last Jedis opening was waaay bigger and TROS was released directly before the holiday season and got a massive boost because of it. I expect it to hit 500-530 domestic and 500-550 international.

yep, but keep in mind that TROS will almost be 50% down compared to TFA, nothing to cheer about, especially if you are Disney.

 

Are you saying the Sequel Trilogy will be the first entire trilogy to break a billion?

It had better legs weekend over weekend than TLJ, but that doesn't mean everything (as I've said back in the TLJ box office thread ages past), because if you're opening weekend is big, then a 60%+ drop is still going to be bigger than a smaller opening weekend's 50% drop. Percent change isn't everything, and I deal with it all the time at my job (analyst) where people freak out or hurrah over percent changes and I'm usually taking time (re)explaining that they need to chill because 2 is 100% increase over 1...it doesn't mean much without context (same kind of misuse happens with "average" - most people tend to use "average" to mean "typical" in conversational use, but the value itself is actually most commonly a common mean, which isn't a mode or histogram derivative of any kind similar to "typical").

I don't know. Folks said similar things with TLJ and when the fiscal reports came out, Disney wasn't found to be talking unpleasantly about TLJ at all - it was listed as a tentpole for the section it fell under in their report. If we want to know their opinions on it, we'll just have to wait until they pop the quarterly with TROS on it. Disney has a solid record (and rightfully so since it's illegal not to) of reporting when things underperform their needed expectations (and I've checked on this - I ran a decade's worth of their quarterly reports and they have a few hundred instances of disclosing underforming assets - they are not shy about doing that, because they usually also summarize why very briefly so that shareholders understand the approach for correction).

Cheers,
Jayson

 

Yes

 

Star Wars compared to the MCU:


Domestic Box Office Totals

The Force Awakens - $936,662,225
Avengers: Endgame - $858,373,000
Black Panther - $700,059,566
Avengers: Infinity War - $678,815,482
The Avengers - $623,357,910
The Last Jedi - 620,181,382
Rogue One - $532,177,324
Avengers: Age of Ultron - $459,005,868
The Rise of Skywalker - $450,796,441 (still in theaters)
Captain Marvel - $426,829,839
Iron Man 3 - $408,992,272
Captain America: Civil War - $408,084,349
Spider-Man: Far From Home - $390,532,085
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 - $389,813,101
Spider-Man: Homecoming - $334,201,140
Guardians of the Galaxy - $333,172,112
Iron Man - $318,604,126
Thor: Ragnarok - $315,058,289
Iron Man 2 - $312,433,331
Captain America: The Winter Soldier - $259,746,958
Doctor Strange - $232,641,920
Ant-Man and the Wasp - $216,648,740
Solo - $213,767,512
Thor: The Dark World - $206,362,140
Thor - $181,030,624
Ant-Man - $180,202,163
Captain America: The First Avenger - $176,654,505
The Incredible Hulk - $134,806,913

 

Oh, no. Not at all.
The OT did that, even without adjusting for inflation - even if it's just domestically, it still crossed a billion.
$460,998,007
$290,271,960
$309,205,079
------------------------
$1,060,475,046

That's not even adjusted for inflation, or counting global values.
Adjusted to 2019 dollars, the grand domestic total racks up to $3.6 billion, and it just keeps climbing if you tack on the international sales, which none of this so far has.

Then there's the Prequels where TPM broke $1 billion globally on its own, not counting the other two, and that's not even adjusting for inflation.

This definitely isn't the first Star Wars trilogy to cross the billion mark.

Cheers,
Jayson

--- Double Post Merged, Jan 6, 2020, Original Post Date: Jan 6, 2020 ---

Fun thing about these comparisons...


The Force Awakens - $936,662,225 - DISNEY
Avengers: Endgame - $858,373,000 - DISNEY
Black Panther - $700,059,566 - DISNEY
Avengers: Infinity War - $678,815,482 - DISNEY
The Avengers - $623,357,910 - DISNEY
The Last Jedi - 620,181,382 - DISNEY
Rogue One - $532,177,324 - DISNEY
Avengers: Age of Ultron - $459,005,868 - DISNEY
The Rise of Skywalker - $450,796,441 (still in theaters) - DISNEY
Captain Marvel - $426,829,839 - DISNEY
Iron Man 3 - $408,992,272 - DISNEY
Captain America: Civil War - $408,084,349 - DISNEY
Spider-Man: Far From Home - $390,532,085 - SONY, but Disney still got a little from Marvel Studios, which is a subsidiary of Disney
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 - $389,813,101 - DISNEY
Spider-Man: Homecoming - $334,201,140 - DISNEY
Guardians of the Galaxy - $333,172,112 - DISNEY
Iron Man - $318,604,126 - DISNEY
Thor: Ragnarok - $315,058,289 - DISNEY
Iron Man 2 - $312,433,331 - DISNEY
Captain America: The Winter Soldier - $259,746,958 - DISNEY
Doctor Strange - $232,641,920 - DISNEY
Ant-Man and the Wasp - $216,648,740 - DISNEY
Solo - $213,767,512 - DISNEY
Thor: The Dark World - $206,362,140 - DISNEY
Thor - $181,030,624 - DISNEY
Ant-Man - $180,202,163 - DISNEY
Captain America: The First Avenger - $176,654,505 - DISNEY
The Incredible Hulk - $134,806,913 - DISNEY
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Running Total Domestic (non-adjusted): Approximately $11 Billion

And we can probably take the common mean (average) for giants like these of 0.9 for the relationship between domestic and international (because I'm lazy and don't want to go drag all of the values up at the moment, because this is close enough) and we get approximately $23 Billion for global.

Shucks. Disney must really be bummed. lol

Cheers,
Jayson

 

Cleaned up the graphs to make it a bit easier to follow everything across all three, and made a few minor tweaks to improve things for added fun.

The clean up stuff is that I just renamed "Tracking" to "Forecast" because that's what it really is, a rolling forecast.
Secondly, I removed the series lines for +/-5% and moved to just having that displayed in the shaded fill zones - this makes it a bit cleaner.
Third, and last, I made all graph legends uniform in display order.

The main big shift is that I added the forecast model to all graphs instead of just the global.

The forecast model works given the following formula (expand spoiler if you want to see it).

Spoiler: Forecast model

[((day3-day2) / day3) - ((day2 - day1) / day2)] / ((day3 - day2) / day3) = percent change between percent change between two pair of day's earnings (total number of days is 3, where day 1 and 2 are a pair and 2 and 3 are a pair).

That is: How much is the change between two days? OK, what about the next two days? OK, what is the change between those two percent changes?

We'll call this value: Pn (where n is equal to which day triplet is being checked - the first three days is P3, the next 3 days - day 2, 3, 4 - is P4, and so on).

We then take the last 7 Pn values on record and create a common mean (average).
We'll call this value Pu (the u is standing in for the Greek letter "mu" which can commonly be used to represent "mean" or "average").

If there is an actual value for a day, then we'll use that real value.
If the day doesn't have an actual value reported yet, then we take the percent change between the previous day and the day before it...
For example: if our last day is day 9 for actual reported earnings, then for day 10 we take the percent change between day 9 and day 8.
That is: (day9 - day8) / day8

We'll call this Pd for "delta" - a common symbol for change. For a specific day, such as day 9, we write: Pd9.

Let's assume we're calculating day 10.

So we then do the following: (Pd9 * Pu) + Pd9
This gives us our forecasted percent change for the next day (day 10); Pd10.
Then from here, we'll call the prior day's actual or forecasted (doesn't matter which) total dollars "X". In this example, the prior day is day 9, so we'll say X9
So we then do the following: (X9 * Pd10) + X9

This gives us our forecast for day 10.

Rince repeat every day down the line.
Global's a tad different because there's a difference of calculating the current difference between international and domestic and adding that value into the mix...so you take the value you get for day 10, and let's say the current relationship between international and domestic is 0.9 (90%). That is, the domestic is 10% less than the international. Then we take the domestic of day 10, multiply it by 0.9, and then add that new value onto the domestic for day 10. That gives us the global forecast value for day 10.

OK, here's the updated graphs

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------







Cheers,
Jayson

 

I'm not really into box office numbers, estimates, and all that jazz, but in my neck of the woods, the legs on this movie are stronger than I expected. Almost every showing I looked at going to this past weekend was close to sold out and the one I wound up attending (noon on a Sunday) was packed. Given the mixed reactions, it was a surprise to be sure...but a welcome one indeed.

 

Not sure where you're from, but indeed some places are doing better than others relative to the norm.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

Again, I think this goes to show the awesome power critic reviews have over general audience goers. From every metric I've looked at, TROS is a divisive movie, however, it is consistently better received among fans than TLJ was. Why that is not translating to sales (ie, the thing Disney will listen to most in future decisions) is truly breaking my heart. All I can figure is that the people who see movies based on critical response (which we all know has been terrible for whatever reason) were scared off from buying tickets.

To compound things, whether or not you personally liked TLJ, it frustrates me so much that the kind of things I think the critics enjoyed about it are simply not the kind of things that the general Star Wars fan cares most about -- which I think is a theory that's reinforced by the audience scores.

BLERG. I want Star Wars creatives and fans to have a unified vision of what works and what we want. That, I think, is how you cultivate a healthy and profitable fan/creator relationship. I worry that the journey from TLJ through TROS is going to leave us with more turmoil and uncertainty. :-( Maybe the Mandolorian will give a more unified vision? Maybe the return of Clone Wars will do it? But, even the most successful TV show pales in comparison to an Episode film installment. :-\

You can say things were divided after the Prequels or even after ROTJ, but those situations were not nearly this divided in my assessment. :-\ Can anyone give me some reasons for optimism???

 

I'm not sure what's fueling the idea that TROS has been received better with fans the TLJ? All the industry audience scores were down for this film. It scored a B+ and the other audience scores were down vs. TLJ. The word of mouth scores were also lower.

This is a film that wasn't received well with critics and that certainly turned away some of the general public, but the audience didn't like it as much at TLJ/TFA. That certainly effects word of mouth and repeat viewings.

None of these new saga films have been hated, but less people liked TROS and the box office reflects that reality. Had the reviews and audience reception been better this film would have had longer legs. The numbers right now aren't great.

 

Heading into the weekend, TROS is running out of fuel. It's almost at a point where the forecasts will stop calculating a $1 Billion final, and that's interesting.
That is some really fast dropping legs.

International is holding closer to original projections, but Domestic is just shedding weight at a rapid rate. We're well beyond critics at this point. If it's performance remains this way, it really only means one thing: lots of folks aren't interested in going to it more (this is not exactly odd, but I won't go into that here).

Here's the charts.






Cheers,
Jayson