Weekend Box Office Round Up for Jun 1-3 (a look at why Solo is so low)

Good afternoon Disney friends,Dismiss 

The weekend after Memorial Day lived up to its normal weekend numbers and was off quite a bit from last weekend. Part of that is probably due to the fact that so many high school graduations are occurring. Even with the low weekend, Disney still held on to spots 1 and 4 with Solo: A Star Wars Story and Avengers: Infinity War respectively. Both films are expected to bring in double digit receipts from the weekend box office.

First to Solo. Estimates are for the film to bring in about $29 mil this weekend from the domestic markets. This film is doing poorly for one of the biggest franchises in movie history. There are probably 3 major reasons why this film is coming in so low (see what I did there.) 1. It was just to soon after Star Wars: The Last Jedi. When the original trilogy came out, films were released every 3 years (1977, 1980, and 1983.) That allowed for a build up of anticipation which just did not happen with this film since it has only 5 months since the last film in the franchise. 2. Deadpool 2 and Avengers are cutting into the market share. This weekend those 2 films combined ($33.6 mil) grossed more the Solo. Some of that money could possibly have gone to the Star Wars film. 3. Bad publicity about the film may have scared off some casual viewers. After the original filming had finished, there were concerns about the direction of the film which led to the firing of the original director and bringing in Opie (Ron Howard) to try to save the film. He did a fairly good job based upon the fact that the film is getting good reviews from critics and movie goers, but it just was not enough.

Next, Avengers is slowly moving in on the $2 bil worldwide mark. The film currently stands at $1,964,869,932. This weekend the film was able to pull in over $10 mil stateside for running domestic total of just shy of $643 mil. Even with schools getting out for the summer, with movies like Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and Ant-Man and the Wasp hitting markets over the next month, it will be hard for Avengers to make to $700 mil (of course I could be horribly wrong on that prediction.)

Lastly, Black Panther crossed the $699 mil mark and has less than $900k to go to make it to the $700 mil mark. Again, this will depend on how well it can hold facing stiff competition to come.

I hope your upcoming week is magical.

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.

Weekend Box Office Update (April 20-22)--Summer comes early preview

Good afternoon Disney friends, 

The final weekend before summer will soon be over and Disney still has Black Panther in the top 10. With a weekend gross of $4.6 mil, the film has remained in the top 10 for 10 weekends in a row. As of now, Black Panther's total gross accounts for over 25% of the domestic box office take of the $2.5+ bil that the 212 films of 2018 have grossed. That will change next weekend.

Now I know many people think simmer will never get here, but in terms of movies it will be here on Friday. The first weekend in May has traditionally been considered when it comes to movies, but when Disney announced earlier this year that it was moving up Avengers: Infinity War by a week, summer moved up too. Tracking for this movie had been following the same pattern as Black Panther. It has been continually increasing over the past few weeks. I do not know where this film will end up next weekend, but it is almost a foregone conclusion that it will be the highest April of all time. Now, here is where life gets interesting. Tracking for films such as this are difficult. There is nothing really to compare it to except for the other Avengers films. The 1st was the first film to top the $200 bil mark and only 4 films have done so since. This film is also basically not a sequel of Avengers: Age of Ultron but this films stands as the final of phase 3 of Marvell's plan. (Yes, I know Avengers 4 comes out next year, but all Marvell films have been building up to this.) The build up for this film has been incredible. Ticket presales have broken records and the film is currently outselling the previous 7 Marvell films combined. Fandango is reporting that over 1000 showings have already been sold out. 

Here are the top 5 opening films for the domestic market:

Star Wars: The Force Awakens (BV) $248 mil

Star Wars: The Last Jedi (BV) $220 mil

Jurassic World (Uni) $209 mil

Marvel's The Avengers (BV) $207 mil

Black Panther (BV) $202 mil

Who knows where this film ends up, but there are a couple of things to watch for. 1. When The Force Awakens opened for Thursday night previews, it pulled in over $51 mil (which was added into Friday for a one day total of over $100 mil-the 1st and only film to do that.) 2. Jurassic World's top Saturday take of all time was over $69.9 mil. If this film comes out of the gate on Thursday over $51 mil and become the top Saturday of all time then we may be looking at the highest opening domestic film of all time.

Only time will tell. We will know more officially in 7 days.

If you need help booking a Disney vacation, please email me at brian.herndon@mousemadesimple.com.