Wonder Woman Box Office Speculation Thread - Part 3

[Blitzkrieg]

Wonder Woman grossed an estimated $2.94M on Friday. 36-Day total stands at $361.59M.

0K, that's very good. I'm a believer nao. 10 million+ for 6th weekend might happen after all. Gimme dat awesome drop.

 

[Marvin]

I must have missed when TDK made 185x the money in America Avatar did WW.

yea man it was soo epic.

Clearly you weren't talking just DC when you said WB, or you wouldn't have brought up Harry Potter, right? You were talking about WB as a whole at first.

And DC doesn't have a problem in China.
...

So, again, WB is doing perfectly fine internationally, and that includes DC films in China.

No I clearly 'meant' dc but as a branch of Wb. I specifically brought up a non dc WB film to make that very point. That me brining up another film would do that I suppose. I said it’s WB’s problem cause DC is maybe their most significant thing right now and I’m not comparing dc to Disney/universal/paramount etc.. It would be like saying Disney has a china problem if StarWars was literally making $10 dollars there, then bring up a marvel film to illustrate the point. Eiher way I followed up with clarification.

As for the rest, I admitted agree with some but not all. (everytime out trades, deadline in particular source insider speculation i'm weary).
That insider speculating why the gov’t banned SS there seems as accurate as our insiders here speculating why demo’s turn out to the films they do(such as the female demo with WW), or more comparable, why bleak films historically don’t play well here compared to fun ones. A negative outlook on life? So I will find a tangible history of films with gloomy stuff being banned in china(such as snowpiercer). Also films with a ‘supernatural element’ being banned there? Again, maybe china is just inconsistent that way, but I’d rather see an official statement than ‘some close insider speculates..’ That being said, this is WB’s problem. Not china’s or my district school board, or my local coffee shop, or Disney’s. It’s a problem for WB as I said, rather theirs to deal with. They didn’t plan around that before the fact the way they should/could have. That film got ‘screwed in china’ in that it ‘got banned.’ Deadpool got screwed cause it got banned. And I’m sure there are insider reasons for why…my language remains the same, it got screwed as opposed to “it didn’t get screwed.” Again I’ll clarify, a bad thing happened for Fox on that one and given how sequels tend to play better there, it’s a problem(going forward) given they want their sequels to play like sequels.

As for the shifting exchange rates, that discussion sounds all to in line with that of the old ‘tickets’ sold discussion. A discussion we’ve ignored domestically in the midst of yearly inflation and the 3D surcharge. If TDK had been released under the avengers circumstances one could make all sorts of then points about whatever they need at the time. However tdk made what it made and the latter what it made. What’s more, there is often much more to it then just inflation/rates, for example it’s said the china film market has doubled since 2013. So if IM3 was released today there is no saying what the ups or down would actually be among other things. I’m having a hard time believing the first post avengers event RDJ film doing lower than Logan numbers if released to day..just not how that works. That being said, I wasn’t referring to all 13(or so) of the mcu films, I pointed to their recent string, rather those released in the time of the dceu launching. WW is looking to do civil war numbers here, there less than antman. If the film somehow falls short of 800worldwide, I will look at a better china performance for the balance. Just like with SS. The 15mill more Logan made even would help this possible 800mill push it’s fans are now hoping for.

And that’s great that with ‘decent’ wom BvS would have got past 100mill there. My point was that a few other things may have gotten it there as well(6mill), say, not having 75% of your screens cut for local releases in only your second weekend. If such a thing happened domestically I imagine it would be entered into the equation along with ‘word of mouth’, I imagine, not sure given how we are here though. WOM or not, that’s point stands. But you can see how it quickly turned to an indictment ‘quality’. Ergo my WW point. And you’re right it’s really the (recent)mcu Event films that do the mega gangbusters there, in this new expanded market china has. The rest even the small ones seemingly just do more than 100mill. Regardless of word of mouth, event films OPEN big, word of mouth is supposedly represented in their legs(as seen with BvS here). That the civil war event opened at pretty much double BvS there and AoU opened at like triple, speaks volumes for those films didn’t double or triple it here. Thus my initial conclusion; WB, as in DC, need to do some work there so their ‘events’ play like the events(and just about all wb/dc films are events it seems). The way their films do here, forthe mcu films, the ones their success is measured by, play big here and there. That being said, like someone mentioned above, JLA should prove insightful when it comes to WB’s building of their DC brand in China.
I should add I don't think they are currently doing horrible or even bad there, rather they could caplitalize way more, and hopefully through building.

 

[Iceman]

0K, that's very good. I'm a believer nao. 10 million+ for 6th weekend might happen after all. Gimme dat awesome drop.

The gap to 400m is not looking so large any more. Great that the weekends are still substantial at this stage.

 

[SomeOldGuy]

Mendelson's Friday write up:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottm...-spider-man-crosses-360-million/#5e6edccc2ebe

Seems worth calling this out re the current international discussion here:

I don’t have overseas updates past Tuesday, but the $150 million-budgeted film now has at least $735m worldwide. It may cross the $750m mark tomorrow and will soon be past the likes of The Matrix Reloaded ($742m in 2003), Suicide Squad ($745m), Maleficent ($758m), The Amazing Spider-Man ($757m) and X-Men: Days of Future Past ($747m). By the way, once it tops the second Matrix movie, it will be Warner Bros.’ second-biggest global grosser not involving Batman or J.K. Rowling after Chris Nolan’s Inception ($821m in 2010 sans 3D). In terms of domestic booty, it’s already Warner Bros.’ fourth-biggest grosser behind Harry Potter 7.2 ($381m), The Dark Knight Rises ($448m) and The Dark Knight ($534m).

So yeah, OS is doing fine.

 

[Iceman]

Good. It will have to be a big deal at WB.

 

[Wanda Detroit]

A few days ago some thought that a 50% drop for WW would be reasonable this week. It's on track to do just 35%. Amazing.

I've always thought that women would be the main factor in pushing this movie towards success. Some of us aren't online keeping the social media abuzz but we show up.

There was talk that WW didn't have enough online buzz but ended up being the most anticipated movie on Fandango and the most tweeted about movie on twitter. Funny how things turn out.

 

[iEquinox]

And that’s great that with ‘decent’ wom BvS would have got past 100mill there. My point was that a few other things may have gotten it there as well(6mill), say, not having 75% of your screens cut for local releases in only your second weekend. If such a thing happened domestically I imagine it would be entered into the equation along with ‘word of mouth’, I imagine, not sure given how we are here though. WOM or not, that’s point stands. But you can see how it quickly turned to an indictment ‘quality’. Ergo my WW point. And you’re right it’s really the (recent)mcu Event films that do the mega gangbusters there, in this new expanded market china has. The rest even the small ones seemingly just do more than 100mill. Regardless of word of mouth, event films OPEN big, word of mouth is supposedly represented in their legs(as seen with BvS here). That the civil war event opened at pretty much double BvS there and AoU opened at like triple, speaks volumes for those films didn’t double or triple it here. Thus my initial conclusion; WB, as in DC, need to do some work there so their ‘events’ play like the events(and just about all wb/dc films are events it seems). The way their films do here, forthe mcu films, the ones their success is measured by, play big here and there. That being said, like someone mentioned above, JLA should prove insightful when it comes to WB’s building of their DC brand in China.

The growth of the Chinese market has slown down considerably over the last few years. No longer do movies make double the money than if they were released a few years before just because of the growth of the Chinese market.

And you can't really draw some of those conclusions by comparing China numbers directly to domestic numbers. The markets are very different. Just because Ant-Man made about 0.58 times the domestic box office in China, doesn't make it the norm. Look at GotG2, that made about 0.25x the domestic box office in China. Different markets have different preferences. If GotG2 was released by DC you could draw the same conclusions you're drawing about it right now. GotG2 is much bigger than Ant-Man right? And it was released 2 years later(China has grown so much right?), and it was a sequel. Surely it would make more than Ant-Man in China? But nope, it didn't. That's an example about why this logic doesn't really work for the China box office.

China is also notoriously frontloaded. Therefore signs of bad word of mouth will have an impact faster than in the US, they will react sooner by dropping a movie, especially when it faces strong competition in the 2nd weekend like BvS did (3 new local films opened, with a combined opening of $57M+) If it had shown better drops during the opening weekend and first few weekdays, more theaters would have kept it. In the US most theaters are bound by contracts so they are not allowed to drop movies as fast.

The big difference when comparing movies like Civil War and Age of Ultron to BvS is that both CW and AoU are sequels from franchises that the chinese audience was already familiar with, while Batman or Superman aren't that well known yet in China. All they had seen was Man of Steel(66M) and TDKR(53M, and different actor), while before CW or AoU they there were many MCU movies that built a fanbase. If DC produces a string of movies that the chinese audience really enjoys, they will also start getting bigger and bigger numbers in China for their big event movies. It's unreasonable to expect DC movies to make as much as CW or AoU right off the bat, they had years to build an audience. While BvS would pretty much always be huge domestically, that's because the US has known those characters for decades. They just don't have that history in China.

WB's and their DC movies do very good business in China. If they release more movies that the chinese audience enjoys, they will start building an audience and should also start seeing bigger numbers, especially for VFX loaded event movies(and AoU also had the advantage of robots which are very popular(see transformers)).

WB aren't really doing anything wrong. It's just following a natural process of growth. It takes time and effort to build a big loyal fanbase.

So as I said, WB does not have a problem with international markets, or with China.

 

[macphisto96]

The growth of the Chinese market has slown down considerably over the last few years. No longer do movies make double the money than if they were released a few years before just because of the growth of the Chinese market.

And you can't really draw some of those conclusions by comparing China numbers directly to domestic numbers. The markets are very different. Just because Ant-Man made about 0.58 times the domestic box office in China, doesn't make it the norm. Look at GotG2, that made about 0.25x the domestic box office in China. Different markets have different preferences. If GotG2 was released by DC you could draw the same conclusions you're drawing about it right now. GotG2 is much bigger than Ant-Man right? And it was released 2 years later(China has grown so much right?), and it was a sequel. Surely it would make more than Ant-Man in China? But nope, it didn't. That's an example about why this logic doesn't really work for the China box office.

China is also notoriously frontloaded. Therefore signs of bad word of mouth will have an impact faster than in the US, they will react sooner by dropping a movie, especially when it faces strong competition in the 2nd weekend like BvS did (3 new local films opened, with a combined opening of $57M+) If it had shown better drops during the opening weekend and first few weekdays, more theaters would have kept it. In the US most theaters are bound by contracts so they are not allowed to drop movies as fast.

The big difference when comparing movies like Civil War and Age of Ultron to BvS is that both CW and AoU are sequels from franchises that the chinese audience was already familiar with, while Batman or Superman aren't that well known yet in China. All they had seen was Man of Steel(66M) and TDKR(53M, and different actor), while before CW or AoU they there were many MCU movies that built a fanbase. If DC produces a string of movies that the chinese audience really enjoys, they will also start getting bigger and bigger numbers in China for their big event movies. It's unreasonable to expect DC movies to make as much as CW or AoU right off the bat, they had years to build an audience. While BvS would pretty much always be huge domestically, that's because the US has known those characters for decades. They just don't have that history in China.

WB's and their DC movies do very good business in China. If they release more movies that the chinese audience enjoys, they will start building an audience and should also start seeing bigger numbers, especially for VFX loaded event movies(and AoU also had the advantage of robots which are very popular(see transformers)).

WB aren't really doing anything wrong. It's just following a natural process of growth. It takes time and effort to build a big loyal fanbase.

So as I said, WB does not have a problem with international markets, or with China.

And it's worth noting that a film like WW helps to build that fanbase. If JL is good and has solid to good word of mouth, then it has the potential to do better than most of the prior DC films released there (though looks like Wonder Woman is going to cross $100M in China, especially with the holdover until July 31 - so that's a big number to cross). But I suspect JL may have an opening weekend in China that is closer to BvS. The dollar is worth a bit more now (though it has fallen a bit since earlier this year), but a big $50M+ opening is still possible in China.

 

[Flemm]

Good. It will have to be a big deal at WB.

Yeah, WW has all the signs of a great franchise-starter on its own, while also making a push to change the DCEU narrative, which I hope Justice League can continue.

The movie actually had no-so-great numbers in the continental European markets to start out with (which can be pretty big markets), but good legs in at least a couple of those places, so it's probably working like an introduction to the character over there.

I think the studio can expect to see some growth there for the sequel, and WW is already doing great in a lot of other places.

 

[-Arya-]

Mendelson's Friday write up:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottm...-spider-man-crosses-360-million/#5e6edccc2ebe

Seems worth calling this out re the current international discussion here:



So yeah, OS is doing fine.

It'll probably pass Harry Potter by the end of its run domestically. That's a big deal. Batman won't be WB's answer to everything anymore thank god.

 

[StormC]

By the way, once it tops the second Matrix movie, it will be Warner Bros.’ second-biggest global grosser not involving Batman or J.K. Rowling after Chris Nolan’s Inception ($821m in 2010 sans 3D).

Mendelson is forgetting Tolkien, too.

 

[Marvin]

The growth of the Chinese market has slown down considerably over the last few years. No longer do movies make double the money than if they were released a few years before just because of the growth of the Chinese market.

Some movies (still) do those big china numbers, as did some movies did during it's 'peak'. Depends on what is being released and a few other things. I read an editorial that the down swing in china box office is due to quality(then again this person also moonlights as film critics for said trade). Fast/Furious, Pirates, TF are notable. It was never 'all films'. Good for china films are what pulled that stuff off, as they still will all things being equal. Even if that means the difference between DOFP and this last one here. One was better for china(for reasons you partially explain below), not simply a matter of a lower market.

China dropping 75% of screens for new releases doesn't happen with every film that's looking to do bad in china. It may happen more if china had three of it's own high profile things it really wanted to push that next weekend however. Andy Lau and Sammo Hung...They still are trying to prioritize their own brand at home above hollywood.
Regardless of what the rate of drop was looking to be, 75% screens expedited said rate immensely, again as it would here, unless you are suggesting it would have made the exact same amount. Amount of screens a new release even opens at is a big factor when really talking box office. Bad luck(or planning) for WB on that end, even staggering the china date could have avoided that.

It's unreasonable to expect DC movies to make as much as CW or AoU right off the bat, they had years to build an audience. While BvS would pretty much always be huge domestically, that's because the US has known those characters for decades. They just don't have that history in China.

WB aren't really doing anything wrong. It's just following a natural process of growth. It takes time and effort to build a big loyal fanbase.

It may be unreasonable yet how many instances are the totals and expectation of the totals compared regardless in trades or any discussion. A similar china performance would have certainly yielded the bar for success billion dollar mark, yet this basic conceit you are raising here is overlooked by even the trades. Thus I'm over looking in the form of the statement 'dc needs to do better in china'. If that means they need to undergo the same time and consistent actors building a brand there(like I already said) then so be it, but as of right now, their totals in my opinion could be higher due in good part to this discrepancy. Still we appear to be around in circles yet saying the same thing that i would put into focus here. WB(dc) is lacking in china it's films compared to the likes of it's competitions last films. In time they will be afforded the same opportunity as the competition to perform well there, thus they are 'doing fine' rather 'on pace'. However this lacking right now is something WB needs to pay attention to. For starters, no more banned films there. Maybe cast a high profile chinese actor as opposed to japanese, more fun, more intl on location filming(TF/AOU) etc. I'd say the same thing about Star Wars. Sure it's doing 'good' there, but...

And you're right, Batman and Superman and Wonderwoman, like Star Wars aren't built there yet, but that doesn't seem to matter in a 'movie with batman and superman should have etc...' rhetoric.

 

[Marvin]

It'll probably pass Harry Potter by the end of its run domestically. That's a big deal. Batman won't be WB's answer to everything anymore thank god.

Batman was hardly ever WB answer to everything, they make way too many movies for that statement to be taken seriously imo.
Though looking at your sig I suppose I see what your meaning is.

Pretty sure DC committed to alot of non batman stuff, before this WW success, if that new intro is any sign.

 

[-Arya-]

Batman was hardly ever WB answer to everything, they make way too many movies for that statement to be taken seriously imo.
Though looking at your sig I suppose I see what your meaning is.

Pretty sure DC committed to alot of non batman stuff, before this WW success, if that new intro is any sign.

Have you seen their planned movies? 4 Batman related titles (The Batman, Nightwing, Batgirl, Gotham City Sirens). Not to mention BVS and SS featured Batman too. WB was committed to do Batman stuff because they though that was the main selling point. It's not alone anymore thanks to WW. Enough is enough

 

[Micromind]

Mendelson is forgetting Tolkien, too.

The key thing here is the fact that WB has no ownership of ether Tolkien's characters or Harry Potter characters, they have movie making rights which are given for a fee and they have to share a certain percentage of profits with the creators / creator estates.

But they do own rights to Wonder Woman (and most of the DC characters), which makes them more profitable.

 

[Marvin]

Have you seen their planned movies? 4 Batman related titles (The Batman, Nightwing, Batgirl, Gotham City Sirens). Not to mention BVS and SS featured Batman too. WB was committed to do Batman stuff because they though that was the main selling point. It's not alone anymore thanks to WW. Enough is enough

Interesting thought I suppose.

I know that thus far we have gotten some number of dceu films and only one of them really a batman thing. That he's related to something is like coming down on justice league for being related to batman, thus I don't consider suicide squad a batman thing. It had flash rogues batman rogues and other rogues. That joker is featured in something(say jla dark) doesn't quite do this thing for me personally.

I'm looking out at the pending dceu and i'm seeing each member of the jla with planned(rumored) solo film. That alone is plenty counter argument. That there is also sirens, is building off of harely and her own sequel success. Batgirl and this suppossed nightwing thing I'd give to you. But if they release 100 non batman things, and 50 batman things in 5 years, I'm gonna go head and say they aren't looking at batman for the answer to everything rather they are looking to everything including batman related things and aquaman doesn't have sub sidekicks like batman that they will make a profit on. But who knows maybe WW has changed that now too.

Maybe we'll get a lego wonderwoman now too.

 

[Flemm]

Unless I'm forgetting something, prior to WW, in terms of recent non-Batman adaptations, there was Green Lantern, which basically flopped on a 200M dollar budget, and Man of Steel, which disappointed on a 225M dollar budget.

Meanwhile Wonder Woman is exceeding expectations by a lot on a budget of 150M.

So I think it is probably going to make an impact.

 

[Osiris-Rex]

Have you seen their planned movies? 4 Batman related titles (The Batman, Nightwing, Batgirl, Gotham City Sirens). Not to mention BVS and SS featured Batman too. WB was committed to do Batman stuff because they though that was the main selling point. It's not alone anymore thanks to WW. Enough is enough

Starting with the huge hit Batman, released in 1989, WB has released 12 superhero movies Batman related: Batman, Batman Returns, Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, Batman Forever, Batman & Robin, Catwoman, Batman Begins,
The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises, Batman v Superman, Suicide Squad, and The Batman Lego Movie.

and 8 superhero movies with everyone else: Steel, Constantine, Superman Returns, Watchmen, Jonah Hex, Green Lantern, Man of Steel, and Wonder Woman.

So, yeah, I say WB is myopically Batman when it comes to Superheroes.

 

[Osiris-Rex]

I know that thus far we have gotten some number of dceu films and only one of them really a batman thing. That he's related to something is like coming down on justice league for being related to batman, thus I don't consider suicide squad a batman thing. It had flash rogues batman rogues and other rogues. That joker is featured in something(say jla dark) doesn't quite do this thing for me personally.

Batman was in Suicide Squad.

 

[-Arya-]

Starting with the huge hit Batman, released in 1989, WB has released 12 superhero movies Batman related: Batman, Batman Returns, Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, Batman Forever, Batman & Robin, Catwoman, Batman Begins,
The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises, Batman v Superman, Suicide Squad, and The Batman Lego Movie.

and 8 superhero movies with everyone else: Steel, Constantine, Superman Returns, Watchmen, Jonah Hex, Green Lantern, Man of Steel, and Wonder Woman.

So, yeah, I say WB is myopically Batman when it comes to Superheroes.

It's stunning to me how badly handled most of their non Batman properties have been. I just....can't.

 

[DieSmiling]

Starting with the huge hit Batman, released in 1989, WB has released 12 superhero movies Batman related: Batman, Batman Returns, Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, Batman Forever, Batman & Robin, Catwoman, Batman Begins,
The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises, Batman v Superman, Suicide Squad, and The Batman Lego Movie.

and 8 superhero movies with everyone else: Steel, Constantine, Superman Returns, Watchmen, Jonah Hex, Green Lantern, Man of Steel, and Wonder Woman.

So, yeah, I say WB is myopically Batman when it comes to Superheroes.

This is a little misguided. Halle Berry's Catwoman made zero mention for Batman (and for that matter, made zero mention of the real Catwoman) and Batman appears in Suicide Squad for a few moments. That's like saying all Marvel movies are Stan Lee centric because he appears in all of them.

That said, Batman is their cash cow -- he's the biggest revenue generator they have. Is it shocking they want to feature him?

I'm thrilled Wonder Woman is going to open doors for more DC properties (particularly after the massive Green Bomb of 2011 seemed to close them) but I don't see why we need to hate on the number of Batman projects. Nightwing, Batgirl, GSS, etc. are going to be awesome.

 

[-Arya-]

We're not hating on them exactly but just pointing out how narrow-minded WB has been over the last 2 decades.

 

[Erzengel]

Personally, WW hasn't washed away the sins of DCEU past for me. Get JL right and on to the next step.

I don't think DCEU is in a place where we can assume that all future projects are going to be awesome. They haven't earned that type of cred just yet.

 

[Flemm]

It's not like studios were falling all over themselves for Marvel's lesser-known properties either, marvel studios has really changed perception by building up a bunch of B and C-list characters into a shared universe (that people were skeptical about originally).

So that would probably have encouraged a bit more experimentation with the DC characters anyway, but something other than Batman doing extremely well is still going to help.

The response to MoS being disappointing was basically to bring Batman into the sequel, in a way that I think was a big mistake, even though audiences still perceived the movie as enough of an event for it to make money.

So this movie's success is a big step. It doesn't guarantee that future movies will be good, but it shows that another character can have a hit movie.

Studios like safe bets (such as the WW sequel, which the studio will fast-track because it will be seen as a good investment).

 

[Marvin]

Batman was in Suicide Squad.

I don't think you got my meaning.
Him cameo'ing in something, an episode of that thing, doesn't make that a batman thing for me. I don't consider the Avengers a marvel myopically leaning on thor due to him being in it. It's an avengers thing. I wouldn't even call spiderman homecoming an ironman thing. He just happens to be in it.

If anything DC has leaned on superman even more than batman thus far.
Problem solved.

Interesting that you didn't start your timeline from the first big dc movie in the 70's there.