Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Locked thread
sector_corrector
Jan 18, 2012

by Nyc_Tattoo
Recently I've become addicted to following the business side of Hollywood. My interest was spurred by a fantasy movie studio league that I set up on a whim. Much like fantasy football compels you to actually care about performance in games that you'd need to be forced to watch at gunpoint, I've found myself caught up in the economic fate of films like Dolphin Story 2 and Left Behind (side note: please, go see these wonderful cinematic treats!).

I don't know if anyone else cares about box office returns, but I'm hoping there's at least one or two others out there.

The purpose of this thread is to talk about weekend box office returns, total bombs and surprise hits. What YA movies are going to turn a surprise hundred million domestic, if this summer will bust Hollywood out of its recent funk and how many more Liam Neeson movies where he growls into a phone can be made before the market reaches a saturation point?

Here are some resources I use, personally:
BoxOfficeMojo (http://boxofficemojo.com/) - Probably my favorite site to follow box office returns and read inside baseball analysis. It's run by a guy named Ray Subers, and is an affiliate of IMDB. He does features every once in a while, like his movie season prediction posts, which often want for accuracy but are entertaining reads anyway. Also one of the best resources I've found for box office statistics, schedules, and cross referencing actor/studio/director grosses.

CinemaScore (http://www.cinemascore.com/) - A weekly poll of movie-goers which measures the appeal of various films. Useful for predicting grosses if you can peg a movie accurately to a similar previous release, but they can only tell you what an audience thinks about something after they see it.

Hollywood Stock Exchange (http://www.hsx.com/) - A market for movie futures utilizing play money. I don't trade, myself, but I've found the trading score for movies is a somewhat useful metric for bombs and hits.

Grantland's Boxoffice Reports (http://grantland.com/tags/box-office/) - Fun write-ups for weekend box office reports. Typical Grantland editorial style which might be a plus or a minus depending on how you feel about them.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

FrostedButts
Dec 30, 2011
I mainly use Box Office Mojo for tracking current and upcoming films. Right on the front page is the current BO and list of upcoming films with theater count. All I need.

sector_corrector
Jan 18, 2012

by Nyc_Tattoo
I really like Box Office Mojo, although Subers predictions seem to vary from pretty average to way, way off. One example was How to Train Your Dragon 2, which underperformed by, like 50%, of what he predicted for his summer list. I was surprised by that one too, but I guess it makes sense in retrospect. It was way too long after the first to hit the same enthusiasm as a sequel, and the cartoon drained away a lot more of the interest.

He also underpredicted Guardians, by 80%, although I think a lot of people did that.

Really, Guardians and Dragon 2 are sort of the story of the summer box office. Amid flagging interest in endless sequels you have a surprise hit with a fun, lively movie using an almost unknown property.

CopywrightMMXI
Jun 1, 2011

One time a guy stole some downhill skis out of my jeep and I was so mad I punched a mailbox. I'm against crime, and I'm not ashamed to admit it.
HTTYD doesn't seem to be as big with kids as other animated fare. These franchises really need to expand beyond the core movie series to explode in popularity. When I go Christmas or birthday shopping for my niece and nephews I never see anything from that franchise. Although these films receive critical praise, it doesn't surprise me that it underperformed.

FrostedButts
Dec 30, 2011
The problem was 22 Jump Street. HTTYD2 released the same weekend and both pretty much had to share their box-office. They stuck around in the top 10 for a very long time, but splitting the take between the two was bad news for Dreamworks since they spent much more money on that production and didn't make the insane figure they thought they'd make.

CRINDY
Sep 23, 2010

forget about ur worries and ur strife
Dragon 2 was a perfect opportunity to expand the series' world.

But they've already been doing that for two years with a Cartoon Network show that has a third season exclusive to Netflix, so they did a pretty good job of reducing demand. When there's not only a movie but 20 hours of episodes available at kids' fingertips, they won't be clamoring as hard to see the next movie. (Fox's marketing also sucked. That one 30 Seconds to Mars song has been used in movie trailers since 2010.)

I love following BOM, and while he can be hit or miss I'm a fan of Forbes' Scott Mendelson (http://www.forbes.com/sites/scottmendelson/).

Trump
Jul 16, 2003

Cute
I use boxoffice.com quite a lot. They don't have the database BOM has, but they update more frequently, and also tracks social media hype, which is quite interesting.

This thread will devolve into the "US market is irrelevant/they don't make as much money overseas as you think"-discussion eventually.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

In Training
Jun 28, 2008

The magazine Film Comment does a yearly write up on the financials of nearly every studio or distribution company that released a film in the past 12 months and it can be pretty interesting, but I don't know if it's available online.

Big budget failures are cool and their fallout and production stories can be interesting but I'm more interested in the opposite end, like the Blumhouse studio that makes millions and millions of dollars producing microbudget thrillers with national distribution.

  • Locked thread