Guardians of the Galaxy Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 Box Office Prediction Thread

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A ticket in 2013 cost $8.13 and a movie ticket now costs $8.84 in 2017. That's a 9% increase. Convert IM3 to today's dollars then do the comparison. That's how you determine legs.

Sorry NHawk, you should just stop talking and educate yourself. Ticket price inflation has absolutely nothing to do with legs.
 
Legs are percentage of audience decline over the run of the movie. Has nothing to do with how much a ticket costs today or 30 years ago. Front loaded movies like Iron Man 3 generally open big and have a rapid decline due to varying reasons. Guardians v2 has had the best run in May since Avengers, partially because of the lack of competition. Even Pirates 5 under performed what I thought were modest tracking numbers.
 
Even adjusted for inflation, the 4-day weekend for GotG2 is more than IM3 got.

But that's beside the point, because inflation has nothing to do with legs. Adjusting for inflation would not change a single thing in the comparison.
Lower drops = stronger legs. Whether you adjust it for inflation or not makes no difference, because it doesn't change the drops.

Legs are usually defined by the multiplier a movie got. The multiplier is calculated by dividing the total gross by the opening weekend gross. Adjusting for inflation would increase the opening weekend and the total gross by the same percentage. Therefore, the multiplier remains exactly the same.

If you don't believe me, look at the-numbers' definition of legs:

http://www.the-numbers.com/box-office-records/domestic/all-movies/legs/leggiest

And obviously the "largest weekend gross" = the opening weekend 99% of the time these days.

Yeah. That's the idea. What you would look at is the opening weekend (as you say 99% of the time) and then look at the percentage of drops and increases going forward. That, by definition, is a trend.

People can "adjust" for ticket price inflation if that floats their boat, but...well....no need to rehash. The fact that IM3 opened to much larger numbers and GotG has now caught or surpassed it's box office totals (daily and not overall) tells you everything you need to know about the legs of each movie. It's possible that WW chops it off at the knees this weekend. We will see. IM3 ran into F&F 6 instead of PotC in it's 4th weekend (so that's probably a win for GotG2), but IM3 didn't have a well reviewed WW to contend with on week 5.

EDIT: BTW, ticket price inflation could "conceivably" affect trends/legs, but it's a pretty convoluted argument to make and not one that you could ever prove one way or the other. It would be all hypothetical. In all likelihood, ticket price inflation, as people are pointing out, doesn't affect the legs of a movie.
 
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BTW, I would say that if you are looking to determine "legs", you would be better served looking at trends than absolute numbers. I'd have to think through the details about exactly how I would do that, but that would be the basic approach to take.
The way I determine legs after the opening weekend is to divide the total amount a movie makes from a certain weekend forward by the latest weekend gross. For example, IM3 got $19,324,592 on its 4th weekend, and it made $60,909,748 from the start of that weekend to the end of it's run. That would be a 3.15x multiplier off the 4th weekend. When comparing it to GotG2, it would be safe to say it should have at least that same multiplier going forward, because it has shown smaller drops so far. I can then use that multiplier to find out how much GotG2 would make if it had that same multiplier after its 4th weekend.

But since the numbers are already so close to eachother, I can compare the absolute numbers to determine how much more it would make. The $60,909,748 IM3 made is pretty close to the (3.15*20,907,121=) $65,897,768 GotG2 would make with that same multiplier, and since I was trying to set a absolute minimum, choosing the lower IM3 number gives me a $5M buffer zone just in case does end up getting a lower multiplier than IM3 got from it's 4th weekend forward. So (60,909,748+313,315,927=) $374,225,675 would be the absolute minimum based on these calculations.

(And as you can see, if you use the multiplier, inflation won't change a thing, because it won't change that multiplier)

OS #'s 40 may be optimistic. 20s may be more realistic Are there really no more territories for this to release in?
Yeah, you can see the release schedule here:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3896198/releaseinfo

As you can see, Japan and Nepal were the last 2 markets, and it opened there on May 12th. It was released in every other market at least 1 week before that.
 
The way I determine legs after the opening weekend is to divide the total amount a movie makes from a certain weekend forward by the latest weekend gross. For example, IM3 got $19,324,592 on its 4th weekend, and it made $60,909,748 from the start of that weekend to the end of it's run. That would be a 3.15x multiplier off the 4th weekend. When comparing it to GotG2, it would be safe to say it should have at least that same multiplier going forward, because it has shown smaller drops so far. I can then use that multiplier to find out how much GotG2 would make if it had that same multiplier after its 4th weekend.

But since the numbers are already so close to eachother, I can compare the absolute numbers to determine how much more it would make. The $60,909,748 IM3 made is pretty close to the (3.15*20,907,121=) $65,897,768 GotG2 would make with that same multiplier, and since I was trying to set a absolute minimum, choosing the lower IM3 number gives me a $5M buffer zone just in case does end up getting a lower multiplier than IM3 got from it's 4th weekend forward. So (60,909,748+313,315,927=) $374,225,675 would be the absolute minimum based on these calculations.

(And as you can see, if you use the multiplier, inflation won't change a thing, because it won't change that multiplier)


Yeah, you can see the release schedule here:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3896198/releaseinfo

As you can see, Japan and Nepal were the last 2 markets, and it opened there on May 12th. It was released in every other market at least 1 week before that.

That's an entirely reasonable way to look at it AND compare the numbers. What I would add is that the rates of change are causing an intersection in the absolute daily numbers (one, IM3, dropping faster than the other, GotG2). Given that, it's also not unreasonable to think that this trend will continue; which would be to underestimate GotG2's final totals. That being said, IM3 didn't have WW to contend with in week 5.

That's a very long way of saying I can see you are being conservative in your estimate.

Spoken like a true statistician, huh? :cwink:
 
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That's an entirely reasonable way to look at it AND compare the numbers. What I would add is that the rates of change are causing an intersection in the absolute daily numbers (one, IM3, dropping faster than the other, GotG2). Given that, it's also not unreasonable to think that this trend will continue; which would be to underestimate GotG2's final totals. That being said, IM3 didn't have WW to contend with in week 5.

That's a very long way of saying I can see you are being conservative in your estimate.

Spoken like a true statistician, huh? :cwink:
Exactly.

And another reason why IM3 would be a good comparison to determine the minimum is because it had by far the biggest 5th weekend drop of the movies I've been using as comparisons.
It dropped 56.3%, compared to Civil War's 49.1% and Age of Ultron's 47.4%. (For all three movies, memorial day weekend was the 4th weekend, just like it was for GotG2)

So GotG2's drop is probably going to be closer to IM3's drop next weekend. We'll have to wait and see how much Wonder Woman will affect it.
 
Exactly.

And another reason why IM3 would be a good comparison to determine the minimum is because it had by far the biggest 5th weekend drop of the movies I've been using as comparisons.
It dropped 56.3%, compared to Civil War's 49.1% and Age of Ultron's 47.4%. (For all three movies, memorial day weekend was the 4th weekend, just like it was for GotG2)

So GotG2's drop is probably going to be closer to IM3's drop next weekend. We'll have to wait and see how much Wonder Woman will affect it.

That should tell us a lot, but we're probably down to that 5-10M window in our final predictions. I haven't tried to work through the details (and I'm not box office expert), but that would be my guess.
 
Very interested to see if Wonder Woman eats away what's left of this movie's business.

The current daily and weekend trends suggest that this weekend, GotG2 should make between $10-11M domestic. I'd say if it makes over $11M, we can say WW had no effect. If GotG2 makes under $10M, then WW had a definite effect.
 
The current daily and weekend trends suggest that this weekend, GotG2 should make between $10-11M domestic. I'd say if it makes over $11M, we can say WW had no effect. If GotG2 makes under $10M, then WW had a definite effect.

I hate to be pedantic, but, unfortunately, that's the middle name my mother gave me. WW will definitely have an effect, GotG2 may have a good hold and it may not. Anything around 10M would be pretty good.
 
Realistically how much more can GOTG2 get overseas? Because $390 and another $20M WW would put it at $865, striking distance of BvS.
 
Age of Ultron made more than GotG2 did on saturday, sunday and monday. Cheap tuesdays have been getting bigger over the years so it's not that surprising it's beating it on a tuesday. But it will probably also beat it on wednesday and thursday.
Then in the weekend it will probably fall back behind Age of Ultron because of Wonder Woman.

If it did the same numbers Ultron did from this point forward it would get to 388.4M. So yeah, 390M is definitely possible if it holds well next weekend. As I said, next weekend will tell us more about how likely that is.

Age of Ultron made $11.4M, so if GotG2 can top that, 390M will be looking likely. If it falls below $10M, it might be harder, though still doable.

GotG2 has an advantage when it comes to theater count. And with so many disappointing new releases making less than GotG2 every day (King Arthur, Snatched, Alien, Baywatch) there's a good chance theaters will drop those before they drop GotG2. That could be another factor that would impove its legs in the long run.
 
Realistically how much more can GOTG2 get overseas? Because $390 and another $20M WW would put it at $865, striking distance of BvS.
I think it will end up with roughly 470M OS. With Wonder Woman coming out next weekend it all depends on how much it drops. We're aiming for $3.5M OS next weekend, equal to Doctor Strange to make it to 470M. Doctor Strange only made 7M OS after that weekend. GotG2 should do something similar after next weekend. There's not too much room for improvement left OS.

(My prediction 465M a few days ago, but I based that projection on estimates which turned out to be quite a bit too low. Now that actuals are in 470M seems more likely)

So if it can get to 390+470 that would put it at 860M. BvS did 873.26M, so it would have to overperform significantly to get there. Pretty unlikely, since it only has about 65M more left, on the slightly optimistic side of things. It would have to overperform by about 13% to beat BvS. It would basically need about 400M DOM and a slight overperformance OS to beat BvS. It's possible, but still a long shot.
 
Too bad they can't release a director's cut for a limited time. :o
 
GOTG" is still 87M ahead of what GOTG did in the same period of time.
Let's see if it can crawl it's way up to 400M domestically.
 
Guards 2 passed $800 million yesterday! (Tuesday night)

Mendelson is suggesting that a $875 WW total similar to BvS in the most likely final landing spot.
 
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GOTG" is still 87M ahead of what GOTG did in the same period of time.
Let's see if it can crawl it's way up to 400M domestically.
This week will be the last week where that gap has increased. From here on out, that gap will get smaller every week. GotG2 still has a shot at 400M, but it's a long shot.

Just looked at GotG, and it actually gained theaters on it's 5th week. And it was still playing in over 3,100 theaters by the end of week 7. It didn't drop below 1,000 theaters until its 12th week. That's pretty amazing, but I guess that's what happens in August when there's no competition.

For comaparison, here's how many theaters these movies had left by the end of the 7th week:
Civil War: 1,434
Iron Man 3: 1,649
Age of Ultron: 2,156

And the week numbers where they dropped below 1,000 theaters:
Civil War: Week 8
Iron Man 3: Week 8
Age of Ultron: Week 10

Hope GotG2 can hold on to its theaters as well as (or better than) Age of Ultron did. That would certainly help its numbers. I think it has a chance to do so, since there's been so many weak wide releases lately that theaters might want to drop before they drop GotG2, and it's still doing solid numbers too.
 
Just looked at GotG, and it actually gained theaters on it's 5th week. And it was still playing in over 3,100 theaters by the end of week 7. It didn't drop below 1,000 theaters until its 12th week. That's pretty amazing, but I guess that's what happens in August when there's no competition.

Makes you wonder why nobody chose to place a superhero movie this August. I think both Thor and Justice League would do better, if one of them was released in August, instead of 2 weeks apart from each other. I was saying the same thing 6 or 8 months ago on IMDB.
 
Guards 2 passed $800 million yesterday! (Tuesday night)

Mendelson is suggesting that a $875 WW total similar to BvS in the most likely final landing spot.
It didn't pass $800M on tuesday. Worldwide total after Tuesday is $797,422,917. It will get very close today (wednesday), and if it doesn't hit it yet it will definitely get there on thursday.

And Mendelson said this:
Scott Mendelson said:
despite hopes and expectations that the Walt Disney release would be yet another $1 billion+ blockbuster, that's not going to happen. At this rate, it's going to end up closer to the $873m worldwide cume of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice
He isn't really saying anything specifically about what the most likely final landing spot is. Just that it will be closer to BvS than to $1B, which is obvious. He doesn't seem to have any specific idea about where it will end up.
 
Makes you wonder why nobody chose to place a superhero movie this August. I think both Thor and Justice League would do better, if one of them was released in August, instead of 2 weeks apart from each other. I was saying the same thing 6 or 8 months ago on IMDB.
Yeah, most big studios still seem to think August-September-October are no-go months to release tentpole big movies. Guardians proved August could work and since then bigger movies are being released in august. I guess it just takes a studio to show it's possible to make a lot of money outside of the prime moviegoing season too. Sometimes it could be worth moving to a month where historically, movies make slightly less money, if it means your movie will face much weaker competition.

It's already kind of happening. Years ago you would never see huge tentpole movies like Beauty and the Beast or BvS being released in february/march. Fast&Furious are also placing their movies outside of the summer movie season now. It's why this year's summer is looking like it will be the weakest summer in years; movies are slowly being more spread out over the whole year instead of literally everything being crammed into the summer like it used to be.
 
It didn't pass $800M on tuesday. Worldwide total after Tuesday is $797,422,917. It will get very close today (wednesday), and if it doesn't hit it yet it will definitely get there on thursday.

And Mendelson said this:

He isn't really saying anything specifically about what the most likely final landing spot is. Just that it will be closer to BvS than to $1B, which is obvious. He doesn't seem to have any specific idea about where it will end up.

The dozens of sites earlier proclaiming Guards 2 officially crossed $800 million should probably take their stories' down then.
 
Im gonna probably agree with Scott Mendelson and say $875M WW may be where Guardians 2 ends up.
 
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