SPECULATION First 2 billion dollar film?

I'm not trying to be a dick but your arguments are a bit stale, like I've heard this same kind of cynicism mixed with rudimentary knowledge of film business for years and years.

And it's not your fault, even people that get paid to report on this stuff are way off on their predictions and the reasons they cite for why they make them.

A whole lot of those same ideologues were certain that The Dark Knight Rises was the sure fire #1 hit for the year in 2012 and their reasoning was mainly based on The Dark Knight's box office draw and the lack of similar appeal to Marvel films. So correct predictions based on real time analytics that Avengers was going to be a billion dollar plus grosser and outplay TDKR worldwide
were scoffed at by self proclaimed box office experts who were really just movie fans who learned how to present conjecture into something resembling intelligent discourse.

But they were all very very wrong, and I'm certain as I am that Mad Max remains the most profitable film of all time and my best friend's brother in law is Mark Berg, Producer of Saw the most profitable film in the last twenty years or so, that The Force Awakens isn't going to play to the old convention that "sequels always under perform their predecessor" because it's a very different market they're catering to and this is a very different sequel.

This isn't just more of the same, it's an event fiilm fans have waited to see for over 30 years, it's a complete reimagining of the brand for a new generation that has come to expect a degree of quality from Disney, and it's a coveted release date in a year of sequel mania where all of the major studios are going balls out with incredibly expensive tentpole films, and the telltale sign of the kind of business TFA is bound to do is that even in this climate of big budget films that dwarfs any year before it, no one wants to compete with Star Wars.

Point being that first shot of Luke, Han and Leia back on the big screen when the next trailer hits alone is going to guarantee a lot of grandparents and jaded geeks butts in their seats in 2015, expect the opening day crowds to do business in a scale we haven't seen in an opening day since 1999 except there's going to be soooooo much more campers and cosplayers, and they're not even the main draw.

And here's the thing, what I'm talking about has nothing to do with how good I expect this film to be, but how well I understand the power of Hollywood to get even the most jaded movie fans to pay up. This film has been buzzing since it was first announced 3 years ago and it didn't even have a name or a cast or a script. And the appeal is really quite wide, and it's not just because it's Star Wars, it's because it's new blood taking the reigns of Star Wars and genuine excitement concerning the Disney deal because people interpret that to mean quality seeing how they turned Marvel Studios from producing mediocrity to dominating the landscape.

It's a sad world we live in that these business decisions are so calculated and almost no real risk goes into it, or else we'd see new stories and characters getting this treatment.

 

I agree with all of your points, except for the fact that you think my argument is cynical -- I'd say a prediction of $730 million is far from cynical -- if anything, compared to the vast majority of box office gurus, it's slightly optimistic. Regardless, what you've said for the most part is true, I just think you're overestimating the impact of all that you've catalogued above. I'm as excited as anybody to see Han, Luke and Leia on the big screen and recapture the feeling from a formative event in my childhood. I'll probably see it at least three times, regardless of quality. But you're falling victim to the fallacy that everyone is the same as us.

We are part of the >10% of the eventual total audience of Awakens that actually pays attention and closely follows Star Wars months and years in advance of its release. I mean, we're talking about this on a Star Wars forum. The vast, vast majority of people who go to see this are going to see a commercial within a month of its release and say, "Huh. A new Star Wars movie is coming out. We should see it." They'll see it once, and then they'll continue to go about their lives. We live in a bubble and have friends equally as passionate as us and, because of that, make the extrapolative mistake of assuming that everyone is as rabid as we are. Nothing is universal. The Super Bowl, the most-watched television program every single year in America and practically its own secular holiday, only garners the attention of about half of the total American population.

I believe the film will make over $210 million opening weekend, but even then, by your calculations, it would still have to make (far) more in the following weeks than any other film in history has made in it's entire domestic run just to break $1 billion, and you seem to imply that it will reach and surpass that mark easily. It would have to do insane business for four months + to even come close to scratching that, something virtually unheard of in today's sphere of front-loaded box office behemoths (yes, I realize that Star Wars is not all movies, but it's also not 1977 or even 1997 any more). Not to mention that, within that four month span, 2016's biggest movie in Batman v Superman comes out, likely killing any dominance even Star Wars might (improbably) still have after three months in theaters (I'm not saying BvS is bigger than Star Wars, just that it will quickly cut any of the remaining legs of the film three months after its release).

Edit: If I'm being honest, I hope it does make over a billion in the States and Canada. I'd love to witness and be a part of a box office phenomenon like that. I just don't think it will, at all.

 

That's fair enough I suppose, something in the range of 730-850 million is a more realistic projection I'll admit. I just know very well that box office is anything but an exact science. People get so caught up in numbers and short lived trends that they don't even stop to think that film is a very young art form and we've only been really formally gathering statistics as we do now for 50 years.

16 years ago if you suggested The Phantom Menace was going to do bigger business than the Original Star Wars people would have rightfully considered you a crank. Today we have the beginning of sprawling multi-threaded mega franchises where sequels genuinely do better business than their predecessors, it's a very different kind of blockbuster. It's about building audiences over time and paying off on character moments and plot threads later down the road much the same way that tv operates. And it's a strategy with bonafide results. Franchises don't fizzle out over time, they build momentum

 

What that would signify is J.J. Abrams, et al will have hit a home run. The fans (including you and me) would be going back for several viewings over the weeks and months, and that would be exciting to behold!

 

The only way the film is going to make 2 billion, is if the 'almighty dollar' plummets in value.

 

Listen to the man who speaks from his rear end!!!

 

A lot of people talk blast here, so I thought it best not to pretend otherwise

 

Truth.

 

Reasons 2 and 5 are virtually the same thing. And they are all reasons that I took into account in my past posts.

If you're talking about worldwide take, of course it will reach $1 billion, that's a foregone conclusion. So is $500 million in the first week.

If you're talking about domestically, I'm not sure what to say. I've already explained my position. I would literally bet my life that TFA will not make $500 million within the first week within the United States and Canada alone -- that's how far off base I believe your prediction is. But to each his own.

I'm not going to go into the myriad of reasons that inform my argument, because I've already listed them in detail in multiple posts in this thread, so if you'd like, I'd invite you to read those.

 

Yes, and it went on to make $169 million on the weekend, less than twice the amount it made that opening day. You can't use the opening day of a franchise blockbuster in any extrapolitive way, especially if that opening day is Friday. Star Wars will likely make close to if not over $100 million its opening day, but the take will drop significantly once you get to the work week. It'll still do comparatively amazing on weekdays, but to use the single largest domestic intake any movie's ever had on a single day as proof that Star Wars will do something no other film has even come close to ($500 million domestically from Friday at 12:01 AM to the following Thursday at 11:59 PM) is mistaken.