That's funny, but I get ya. You've probably heard me mention this before, but I used to be a statistician and taught statistics and probability at the University of California for a short time. Figuring this stuff out is still kind of a default for me. The thing about predicting the future is that the number crunching (which I find fun in itself and can do most of it in my head) is easy, but the ASSUMPTIONS underlying those numbers are the tricky part. This is why even though I have an interest in the outcome of the numbers, I am always asking people to tell me WHY they think what they do when it comes to the box office receipts. As something of a scientist, that's really the important part. You hear people all the time saying this, that, or the other, but, unless, you have a reason for thinking what you do, I'm not interested in your opinion because it's just a guess or opinion.....and you know what opinions are like.....
I "think" the hold is also partially due to the fact that a fairly large group of people really liked it and decided they wanted to see it multiple times. The people who maybe didn't or were lukewarm to it, were one and done, but if that is, say, 60% of the people, that still leaves a lot of the more die hard fans. I've seen it twice (once in 3D) and while I probably won't see it in the theater again, it's possible I might if the circumstances were right. When you are dealing with a movie going audience in the tens of millions, those chances can add up to a lot of money.
I didn't read that much detail from you before the fact, but maybe I missed it. The 3rd weekend drop of about 50% is not atypical even for a front loaded movie so there was nothing unusual about that. It wasn't a particularly great hold, but was pretty good. What put it over the top was the NEXT weekday hold; which was quite remarkable and the weekend of over 21M was excellent considering the competition. It had been slowly losing ground to CW in terms of the trends and had it only been at 370, it likely would have fallen short. Last week was the turning point and I suspect that there is a pretty large core of people who really loved it and went to see it multiple times. I also think that's why TG didn't affect it too much. It was also a demographic thing and Downton Abbey got pummeled.
You would normally expect it to come in well under 10M because next Monday isn't a holiday and a 50% drop from a "normal" weekend would put it around 7M, BUT with the holds it had this week, it could be higher.
I didn't hear a lot of that, but genuinely felt it was going to open well north of 100M 3 day. I was thinking along the lines of maybe 115??? and maybe 140+??? Glad to see it did well. I'm definitely going to see it Tuesday on the XD Cinemark screen.
I was one of them mainly because of Cruise's last 20 years of movies? This is his biggest movie since 2005's War of the Worlds? And he's had 4 MI movies since then.
IMO, NWH gave it a good, late boost in terms of interest in DS. He also was groomed by Marvel in IW and EG to be one of their most bankable characters. So, yeah, I think they saw this coming, but to actually pull it off would be a relief. It might not have done that well no matter how much planning or effort went into it. I think Thor is almost a gimme to be successful unless Taika goes way too Taika. I was not impressed with the last trailer and my misgivings about him sort of bubbled to the surface.
NWH definitely gave it a boost for presales, and IW in particular along with all the consistent cameos helped boost the character’s profile. Looking forward to Strange’s next appearance now. Certainly one of my favourite MCU characters.
