SPEARE'S TIPS - The Films of 7/18

[transformers2]

Completely echo surfer and geez's sentiments. Hell, I took Godzilla in the 1st round of the Full-Year League and I'm not disappointed with its output.

[BanksIsDaFuture]

BoxOffice.com predicted it as 75/235 in March: http://www.boxoffice.com/featured_stori ... t-godzilla

BOM predicting $230 in April: http://boxofficemojo.com/news/?id=3826&p=.htm

Here's one for $270M in April: http://www.chicagonow.com/hammervision/ ... s/#image/3

So not 250 exactly, but well over 200.

Forbes predicting $245-$280M after opening weekend: http://www.forbes.com/sites/scottmendel ... m-weekend/

[Shrykespeare]

Weekend Estimates

Top 10:
5 points - Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, $36M
4 points - The Purge: Anarchy, $28.4M
3 points - Planes: Fire and Rescue, $18M
2 points - Sex Tape, $15M
1 point - Transformers: Age of Extinction, $10M
Tammy, $7.6M
22 Jump Street, $4.7M
How to Train Your Dragon 2, $3.8
Maleficent, $3.3M
Earth to Echo, $3.3M

PTA:
5 points - Boyhood
4 points - Mood Indigo
3 points - The Purge: Anarchy
2 points - Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
1 point - Wish I Was Here

[Wrestler]

Big openings and poor holdings is just going to end up being how people remember this summer. Heck theres a very good chance transformers doesn't get past Lego and Cap. I think come august we will see just how brilliant a move it was for Marvel to bookend the summer rather than try and fight with everyone else. Cap performed amazingly in April and the closer it gets to Aug 1,the more marketing material and reviews that are released just keep pushing the estimates up higher and higher for Guardians. At the beginning of the year a lot of people were expecting about 50m opening then the first tracking came out pushing it to 60, now they are thinking more like the 70s. How awesome would that be for them to set a April and August OW record in the same year.

[Geezer]

Those are all the predictions from solo writers, Banks. The HSX community had Godzilla right around 180 million before it opened. So according to that figure, it overperformed, slightly. I know that HSX can certainly be wrong (that's how you make money in the game, obviously) but at least its a composite of the predictions of thousands instead of just a few opinions.

[undeadmonkey]

I understand what geez and ss are saying, expectations, predictions etc. but I don't agree. If you look at the summer as a whole, revenue is way behind last year and many years before. I don't remember where i read it, but this year is down about 20% compared to last year, which is about $500M and even though Guardians looks like a hit, i don't see it making $500M.

[silversurfer19]

I'm not sure it's that simple. I think it's much more a case of a couple of movies not being able to match what their comparative movies achieved last year - Spider-Man 2/Iron Man 3 and HTTYD2/ Despicable Me 2, which accounts for about $400m difference, combined with there just not being the number of 'suprise' break outs like Now You See Me, WWZ, Gatsby, The Conjuring. Add these all together and you easily cover that $500m drop. If any of the smaller movies had reached their potential (I'm looking at the likes of A Million Ways here), then the figures would have been much closer.

For the most part the tentpole movies released have performed as expected, and on a par with previous years, it's just those couple of big movies underperforming combined with a lack of major surprise that has resulted in a lesser box office on the whole.

[Chienfantome]

It's exactly what lacked this summer, a couple of giants at the BO, and that's exactly what's making the season and the year more interesting and challenging in our game.
It's almost certainly, also, a lack of quality from the big films. They needed fantastic word of mouth to go from solid numbers to outstanding numbers, and they didn't have it.

[Walleye413]

I gotta say this article pretty much sums up my thinking for the summer as well. Audiences and Critics are higher on the movies this year over last year. I thought that anecdotally, but this backs it up. It leaves more questions unanswered than answered, but makes great points all around.
http://insidemovies.ew.com/2014/07/21/s ... -analysis/

For game purposes I don't mind the leveling of the field, as it were. But as a movie junkie, I worry about the future of cinema, and if the great variety we currently see on television will ever be brought back to the big screens.

[numbersix]

That article only makes a comparison to last year, which isn't very useful.

Also, Cinemascore can be very unreliable. Tammy received a poor C+ but look how it's holding.