Box Office Update for May 25-27(28) (Solo is weak) and a little bit of weather

Good afternoon Disney friends,

I hope you are having a great Memorial Day weekend. Walt Disney Pictures will have 2 of the top 3 films of the weekend: Solo: A Star Wars Story and Avengers: Infinity War. (If the sale of Fox to Disney had already occurred then Deadpool 2 would have given Disney the top 3 films.) 

Unless things turn around, Solo is coming in way under the projections heading into the weekend. The film is looking at around $83 mil for the 3 day weekend and about $101 mil for the 4 day holiday. That is under the the projections of somewhere between $130 mil and $170 mil. There are going to be a lot of speculation as to why this happened, but in the end, the people still thought the film was good, but we will have to see how it plays over the next few weeks to see if Disney just had a bad weekend or was this film just not what people wanted.

Avengers had a pretty good weekend with an estimated $16.5 mil, which was down 44% from last weekend. If this holds true, the film will probably cross the $625 mil mark tomorrow. It has also grossed a total of over $1.9 bil worldwide. 

Black Panther is still inching to the $700 mil marks and is about $1.5 mil short.

These films have helped Disney cross the $4 bil mark for the year at the worldwide box office. The next two weekends have smaller opening films in all categories. So until Incredibles 2 opens on Jun 15 and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom enters theaters on Jun 22, Disney films might be able to have some pretty strong holds if they are going to leg it out to higher levels.

On a weather note, Subtropical Storm Alberto is bringing copious amounts of rain to the southeast. Walt Disney World is getting bands of rain. Vero Beach resort (on the east coast of Florida) will be getting the same. Cruises sailing out of Port Canaveral will also have to deal with rain off and on. Disney's Hilton Head resort will get quite a bit of rain today and tomorrow. 

I hope you have a great 1st unofficial week of summer.

Good afternoon Disney friends,

Well it is the last weekend before the unofficial start of summer vacation series and Deadpool 2 knocked Avengers: Infinity War out of first place. Infinity War will end the weekend just shy $600 million for its domestic take. The film will cross the $600 mil mark either tomorrow or Tuesday assuming weekend estimates are correct. The film was still the second highest grossing film ($28.6 mil) of the weekend by almost double of the third place film. Deadpool will probably come under the Disney banner in about a year if the purchase of Fox films from 20th Century Fox goes through. The film has grossed a total of $1.2 bil from the international market for a worldwide total of over $1.8 bil. It is still going to be interesting to see if the film can make it to the $2 billion mark which would make it only the fourth film to do so. 

Next weekend sees more competition when Solo: A Star Wars Story enters the marketplace. Right now it is looking like solo is going to open up to a total of $160-$170 mil for the 4-day weekend based on current pre ticket sales and industry projections. Disney is still looking to have a great summer based on the fact that it still has two more blockbusters, Incredibles 2 and Ant-Man and the Wasp, that are building expectations. Black Panther is still moving slowly to the $700 mil domestic mark coming in just $2.2 mil shy of the mark.

Thank you for sharing your time with me and I look forward to speaking to you next week with numbers for Solo and see if Avengers: Infinity War still being in the top five.  hopefully by then Black Panther will cross the $700 bil mark.

Box Office Round Up (May 11-13)--The Avengers Make it to China

Good afternoon Disney friends,

First off, Happy Mother's Day to all of the moms. I hope you have had a wonderful day. 

Another weekend at the movies is about in the books and Disney is still placing 2 films in the top 10. Avengers: Infinity War is still leading the box office with an estimated $61.8 mil, which is the 4th highest third weekend of all time. The film will also be the second fastest film to $500 million (only behind Star Wars: The Force Awakens.)  The film's current domestic box office take is  $547.8 mil, which places it at number 8 on the all time domestic list. Next weekend will see it knocked off of its perch when Deadpool 2 opens. Then the following weekend will see more competition when Solo: A Star Wars Story opens. It will be interesting to see how deep these 2 films cut into Avengers' box office take. 

The big news for Infinity War comes from China. The film opened there this weekend with a total take of $200 mil. This is the 1st or 2nd largest opening in that market (depending if you use local currency (2nd) or converted to US$ (1st) and has pushed the international gross to in excess of $1 bil and the global numbers to $1.6 bil. The film now stands at number 5 for the worldwide market and will bypass Jurassic World later this week. 

There are now 2 questions for this film. First, how much further will it go domestically considering the competition coming up? Secondly, will it be able to get to $2 bil worldwide?

The House of Mouse's other top 10 film was Black Panther, which was number 9.  The film now stands about $3.8 mil short of $700 mil.

Thank you for spending your time allowing me to share my enjoyment of Disney movies with you. i hope you have a magical week and if you need any help booking a magical vacation, please let me know how I can help you book your next vacation.  Just email me at brian.herndon@mousemadesimple.com.

Weekend Box Office Update--May 4-6

Good afternoon Disney friends,

The weekend numbers are in and Disney has broken more records. First, the House of Mouse made it to $3 bil for the worldwide market on May 5, which broke Disney's record previous record of making it to that mark by one day (2016.) Disney now has 17 out of the 34 films that were able to gross $1 bil from the worldwide market. 

In terms of Avengers: Infinity War, the film was able to gross $112.4 mil this weekend based on current estimates. The weekend gross gives the film the second highest second weekend only behind StaIr Wars: The Force Awakens. Again, it bears repeating that Avengers is pulling in its numbers on a week when most children are still in school. Star Wars second weekend fell on Christmas weekend. Looking at the worldwide box office, the film became the fastest film to $1 bil. This figure beats out Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The film still has China to come, which will occur on May 11. Iron Man and friends will have one more weekend at the top of the heap before Deadpool 2 opens on May 18 followed by Solo: A Star Wars Story which is slated to open the following weekend.

Speaking of Solo, the film is already outpacing Black Panther in tickets sales on Fandango. Some of the current projections and looking at a four day opening of around $170 mil. 

I hope you have a magical week.