Captain Marvel The Captain Marvel box office prediction thread

[Warlock]

I got this from Deadlines summary of last weekend:

" As our film finance sources called it, Captain Marvel sits at $760M WW through 12 days, which propels the pic past profitability in the theatrical window off total production and P&A costs of $300M."

Firstly it's a long way past $760M WW now, $900M by the end of the weekend is conservative. Secondly, that is a lot more than I had heard the film's budget costing. I found this quite surprising.

Edit: That publicity and advertising must be really something to cost over $100M on < $200M movie!

 

[Patrick77]

The 300M is the cost of making the movie + the cost of advertising, so that's about what one would expect. Basically: a production budget of roughly 150M, and the same for advertising.

If anything, the production budget is on the low end. The budget for these movies can easily creep up toward 170M or even higher.

The standard estimate for profitability is 2x the P&A costs, which would be 600M in this case. (This has to do with the studio only getting part of the revenue from the box office.)

That means that Captain Marvel is going to make a ton of money lol.

Marvel Studios has really mastered the art of keeping the costs relatively modest while still raking in the big numbers for these solo movies.

 

[Warlock]

The 300M is the cost of making the movie + the cost of advertising, so that's about what one would expect. Basically: a production budget of roughly 150M, and the same for advertising.

If anything, the production budget is on the low end. The budget for these movies can easily creep up toward 170M or even higher.

The standard estimate for profitability is 2x the P&A costs, which would be 600M in this case. (This has to do with the studio only getting part of the revenue from the box office.)

That means that Captain Marvel is going to make a ton of money lol.

Marvel Studios has really mastered the art of keeping the costs relatively modest while still raking in the big numbers for these solo movies.

I thought 2x the budget in the US box office only where they recoup 50% of the box office. O/S the film maker only gets 30% from China and between 30 and 40% from other countries overseas. Can someone confirm these numbers if you have a good source please?

 

[Patrick77]

2x the P&A budget is a rough estimate for profitability.

When sites like Deadline eventually do a breakdown of the costs and revenue, they will take into account the various percentages from the different markets.

Yes, from memory, it's about 50% from the US box office, 40% from international territories outside of China, and 25-30% from China. The costs of distribution also vary, and those costs are lower in China.

If you want to see roughly how this works, you can google Deadline's breakdown of the most profitable movies for each year. They do a breakdown like that every year.

 

[Warlock]

So as suggested I looked up the Deadline summary of the most profitable movies in 2017.
And as suspected, the more US loaded the box office the higher the percentage take, an example is

Get out which had a 47.96% final profit from total box office takings, which had 69% of its taking in the U.S. In comparison to-

Despicable Me 3 at 41.04%, which had a heavily overseas loaded box office, which only had 25.6% US box office takings.

As expected it varies a lot depending on where a movie makes most of its money. However a division of the total box office between 2.1(for U.S heavy box offices) and 2.5 (for WW heavy box offices) and maybe 2.3 for something in between will generally give a realistic idea of the net earnings before ancillaries.

This is very much in line with what I suspected and posted above, and Patrick77 concurred.

 

[Silver Surfer]

Deadline bumped their number upto 34m.

 

[Iceman]

Deadline bumped their number upto 34m.

Nice, that is a lot better (with its implications for future earnings).

 

[Naglfar]

 

[Patrick77]

If a movie is making an inordinate amount of its money in China (like Venom, or a similar thing), or if a movie completely bombs in the US, then the 2x isn't going to work as well as an estimate.

But, for a movie like Captain Marvel, which is making money all over the place, 2x the P&A is probably a pretty decent estimate of the breakeven point, or a little more than that.

The 150M marketing budget is pretty standard for these movies. Deadline shows the advertising for Homecoming and Ragnarok at a little over 150M, for example. Same number.

 

[Shuri]

This again makes me think $400mil is still not a lock.

I think it will have late legs. I always knew US would affect it a bit.

 

[Shuri]

I hope it closer to 35 than 32.

 

[Silver Surfer]

15.5m Saturday according to Rth, should lock up 35m+.

Comparisons:

IM3: 35.7m
GotG2: 34.6m
THG: 33.1m

 

[Blitzkrieg]

 

[Silver Surfer]

Don't see how it misses 400m now, should probably get there before Endgame even hits theaters.

 

[KaijuDude1992]

Great drop for CM this weekend considering it was facing huge competition from Us. As long it crosses $400M domestic and $1BWW I'm satisfied.

 

[Silver Surfer]

Great drop for CM this weekend considering it was facing huge competition from Us. As long it crosses $400M domestic and $1BWW I'm satisfied.

Should hit 1B WW by next Sunday or Monday.

 

[The Chris]

Wow. Considering how much I love both "Us" and "Captain Marvel" this was a really awesome weekend! One over performs and the other doesn't skip a beat!

 

[8ulk87]

Total Lifetime Grosses
Domestic: $321,498,835 35.3%
+ Foreign: $588,800,000 64.7%
= Worldwide: $910,298,835

 

[Webfoot Hero]

As long as this film continues performing like IM3 or THG, it looks like it's a matter of when, not if, CM hits $1 Billion. I'm now more interested to see how it performs in the couple weeks before Endgame opens.

 

[Holy Slapper]

Great drop for CM this weekend considering it was facing huge competition from Us. As long it crosses $400M domestic and $1BWW I'm satisfied.

I was surprised Us only got a B Cinemascore. Based on some reviews out on Youtube, there's some way too precitable stuff happening in it or maybe this type of horror films don't score higher?

 

[writer0327]

I was surprised Us only got a B Cinemascore. Based on some reviews out on Youtube, there's some way too precitable stuff happening in it or maybe this type of horror films don't score higher?

I think the ending baffled some folks and they left the theater puzzled.

 

[Webfoot Hero]

I was surprised Us only got a B Cinemascore. Based on some reviews out on Youtube, there's some way too precitable stuff happening in it or maybe this type of horror films don't score higher?

I can't remember which site it was but they said a B Cinemascore for a horror film is actually pretty good.

 

[Patrick77]

Cinema Score does tend to be lower for horror. "It" was like a B+, I think.

A "B" Cinema Score would be really negative for a superhero movie that is supposed to be a crowd-pleaser, but for something like Us, I don't think that it means much.

 

[Silver Surfer]

Some trajectories from similar openings if CM makes the same amount of money they did after weekend 3:

Guardians 2: 89m from this point on: 321 + 89 = 410m finish.

Hunger Games: 106m from this point on: 321 + 106 = 427m finish.

Jurassic World 2: 85m from this point on: 321 + 85 = 406m finish.

 

[Patrick77]

With Endgame giving Captain Marvel a late boost, I would guess that 415-420M will be the end point domestically, something like that.

35M this weekend is a really solid hold.