Comparables & Break Even for Kung Fu Panda & Zohan

Before we get in to this weeks movies, let me once again thank HSX for allowing me to take over the Sports Fund [HSX:SPORT]. This is going to be fairly challenging long term, as I'm really running out of short term big plays really quick[Where the hell is CARS2 IPO? :)]. I've found quite a few movies to play, thanks to the power of Google, so lets see how things go. If you find a play for SPORT I'm not currently holding, feel free to point it out on the Movies board.

For those wondering how to find HSX stocks using google here's a handy tip:

Just place this text in google's search box [modify intext:"" as needed]
site:hsx.com intext:"football" inurl:SYMBOL


This weeks Comparables and Break Even:

Don't Mess with the Zohan:

Tracking has this one at 30 million or less, in contrast I have the comparables average at about 40 million. I think the average of the comparables and MTC internal tracking [35 million] set a good expectation.

Estimate: 37-42 million

Kung Fu Panda:

Dreamworks animation house has had it's fair share of hits over the years, take for example the Shrek movies. But lets face it, Panda is not Shrek. I think the comparable average is a bit low and we'll see it come in about 6-10 million higher than average.

Estimate: 47-52 million

Credits:

HSX

Box Office Mojo

The Sports Fund

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

Here's some comparables to chew on while I work up the rest of my assessment:

Block Buster Season Begins With Iron Man!

Pay attention boys and gals, this is where all the real money is made[or lost]! We have quite a few really good movies coming up pretty quickly.

This season begins with Iron Man.

In my previous post I gave some food for thought on Iron Man's comparable movies. Depending on how you cut that data you get a result that should be a good indicator of Iron Mans potential. There's two movies you can remove from that list right off the bat, Batman Begins & Superman Returns, both of which are restarts of their respective franchise. With those two removed, it brings us to a 88.88 million average opening & a 23,436 average PTA. Which is pretty realistic, but we would also need to adjust X-Men for inflation. X-Men did 54.47 opening in 2000 and ticket prices have increased about 26% from '00 to '08, so that would bring the first X-Men to 68.63 million opener and 22,688 PTA. Now we're looking at 90.65 opener average and 24,021 average PTA.

So, what about the Fantastic Four movies? Well, I think they are pretty relevant for the worksheet as the worksheet is about obtaining an average price for estimating. If you were to remove both Fantastic Four movies, then I think you would also have to remove Spider-Man 3, as Spider-Man 3 is way out of the curve, and that would bring you to about 91 million average with all 3 removed.

Also, I've seen some talk that Iron Man isn't playing well with females. The only thing I can add to that is my wife had the "ooh shiny" look in her eye after seeing the first trailer. So, it may not be as bad among females as people think [then again I'm married to one of those "Hip Chic's"...so take that FWIW]. Everything about Iron-Man says Win, Win, Win.

So here's my estimate based off of the data presented:

Iron Man: 90+ million opening weekend likely & 100+ million possible


Made of Honor: 10-15 million [sorry no data]

Credits:

Hollywood Stock Exchange

Box Office Mojo

Iron Man Comparables

This should give you something to talk about while I compile the rest of my research :)

Weekend Comparables and Estimates 4/17/08

This weeks Comparables & Break Even snapshot with PTA:

Click on image for larger version

Forbidden Kingdom:

Jackie Chan and Jet Li in the same movie! I personally can't wait to see this one. The PG-13 rating is going to definitely help give it a large pool to draw box office from. I expect this to be the easy winner this weekend.

Estimate: 20-25 Million

Forgetting Sarah Marshall:

This latest Judd Apatow offering is about a man dumped by his hottie girlfriend and not being able to get away from her, even after traveling to Hawaii. This looks like a good Apatow Rom/Com, so I'm going to say it does closer to 40 Year Old Virgin and Superbad type business rather than Drillbit Taylor. I'm not expecting the R rating to hurt this , as Apatow's R rated do better than his PG-13 offerings.

Estimate: 19-22 Million

88 Minutes:

Al Pacino has had his not-so-good performances in the box office, but his cop drama/thrillers tend to do better than his other movies. The movies TV spots and trailer look half way decent, so I would say the typical movie goer has no idea that this is a turd being given a "token" release. Tight competition is going to hold this way back along with Pacino's fading popularity.

Estimate: 7-10 Million

Credits:

Box Office Mojo
Hollywood Stock Exchange

Comparable Movies & Weekend Estimates 4/10/08

This week for the comparables, I decided to go farther back..all the way to 2000. This provided a much better pool for some of the harder to compare movies. Keep in mind these are my picks, if you disagree with them, that's OK as I encourage everyone to think for them selves.

I said before that comparing movies with the same actor/director/etc. was irrelevant, but that's not always true, but it is most of the time. For example, last week I should have used Clooney movies for Leatherheads because he has a certain style. Here's another example: Judd Apatow for next weeks Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

Here's what I came up with for comparable movies [special thanks to D.Mac, Mr. Havens & zeitgeist for throwing me clues on SMPEP]




Prom Night:

Once again it was easy to find horror films to compare Prom Night with. I threw in Amityville because it was an American horror remake and the right time of year, even though it's the wrong rating.

Estimate: 16-18 million

Street Kings:

This was a little harder to find comparables for. 16 Blocks is the worst fit out of the bunch I have. One thing I noticed is that an R rating comparables actually seem to do better for this genre. This is a hard one for me to call.

Estimate: 14-16 million

Smart People:

This was the hardest one to find comparables for, so I asked on the boards and got several good picks [see previous credits]. Run, Fat Boy, Run looks like a bad comparable at first glance, but it really isn't too bad: Ensemble Cast, Rom-Com & about the same number of theaters.

Estimate: 4 million

That's all for now, thanks for coming by.


Credits:
Box Office Mojo [box office data]
Hollywood Stock Exchange

Early Break Even 4/6/08

The Break Even numbers:

This week brings us the following wide releases:

Prom Night:

Horror/Thriller remake of an 80's classic. This latest horror offering has PG-13 working in it's favor, so I'm expecting toward the higher end of horror box office. The PTA on this one is achievable at 5,200 with the teen crowd to help out.

Street Kings:

This Gang-land Crime/Drama has Keanu Reeves in the lead role and a decent ensemble cast. The 5,400 PTA is achievable, but the R rating is going to hurt bringing in half of it's target Demo of teen males, so it's going to have to roll in to it's price with only the early 20-somethings.

Smart People:

Ellen Page, Dennis Quaid, Sarah Jessica Parker & Thomas Hayden Church headline this Rom/Com. Rumor is there's an incestuous undertone in the developing relationship of Page's & Church's characters, although Church's character is an adopted brother of Quaid's character. Who could possibly believe Quaid and Parker as a couple? I put this one in my "Who gives a shit" category. The PTA, in my opinion, is unachievable at 5,100.

That's all for now, tune in later this week for the comparables and further research.

Credits:

HSX

Final Break Even 4/4/08

Final Break Even:



How I played them, and why:

Nim's Island:

Long. The PTA and break even numbers for this just said "go long". While it could certainly be a short, I don't think it will be, and even if it is, not by much.

Leatherheads:

Short. This was a tough one. Seeing the position on Moviefone's list, I just don't think it will perform good enough to be a long.

The Ruins:

Long. The PTA and break even had no profit in a short for the adjust in my opinion. I think this could skew toward the higher end for an R rated Horror/Thriller maybe bringing in as much as 12 million.

Good Luck to Everyone

Comparable Research and Predictions 4/3/08

Decided to try something new this week and put up some hard[er] core research. Not going to promise I'll do this every week, as it takes a few hours to complete.

I did have a hard time finding comparables for Leatherheads & Nim's Island, so while the movies listed for those aren't the best fit, they are the best I could find without diving into Block-Buster movies. The Ruins on the other hand had a huge amount to draw comparable data from.

So first, let's look at the comparable movies I could find from this year and last year for each of this weeks openers. These are opening weekend Gross, PTA, and the movie rating.

Now lets see this weeks PTA & Break Even snapshot [as of this post]

What you're probably going to ask is why didn't I put in comparables in regards to the lead actors. Well, I find that irrelevant to box office potential. Put an unknown actor in a great movie, and they become known, put a known actor in a bad movie...and the box office tally still stinks.

Predictions:

Leatherheads: 18 million [6,600PTA]

Nim's Island: 20 million [5,800PTA]

The Ruins: 10 million [4,000PTA]

Thanks for coming by

Credits:[box office data]

Box Office Mojo

Early Break Even 3/30/08

This Weeks Early Break Even:

This weeks wide openers:

Leatherheads:

George Cloony's PG-13 1920's era football Rom-Com co-staring Renee Zellweger. Decent amount of theaters, not great though. PTA is achievable, but it might end up a wash depending on how the marketing hits it's demographic. they seem to be pushing this one during sporting events in it's TV push, that could be a mistake alienating the female Demo.

Nim's Island:

Abagail Breslin and Jodie Foster star in the PG Family-Adventure based on a children's novel. Family film during spring break, and a goodly amount of theaters to boot, could do well. PTA is under 5,000, which is a positive sign for profitability if it does well opening weekend. PG Family pic's tend to do well, but anything can happen.

The Ruins:

Horror-Thriller based on a best selling book. Horror flicks have done reasonably well as of late, so I wouldn't count this one out. However, this one happens to have an R rating, which puts it in questionable territory. but, the 4500 PTA is an achievable goal.


That's all for this week. Thanks again for coming over to look.

Power Trader Update

HSX has requested the removal of the following items from Power Trader:

All Flip buttons

But, here's the thing. Flipping stocks is actually going to be faster. See, when I implemented the flip buttons, I had to also implement a timer as a safety measure. Well, with flipping out, now there's no timer.

So, in order to keep things as easy as possible, I put in code to retain the ticker symbol in the ticker box when trading & retrieve the ticker when on a stock page.....SO all you have to do is:



Flip Short:

Hit the sell button, then the short button.


Flip Long:

Hit the cover button, then the buy button.


Re-short:

Hit the cover button, then the short button.


So, all in all, I think this is actually faster then the automatic process anyway.

You can grab the update here: Power Trader Zip


Thanks,

Break Even 3/28/08

This weeks Box Office Break Even:

Run, Fat Boy, Run:

The low break even put this one in a great place for going long for breakout potential. Other Simon Pegg Movies have also closed out from HSX higher then this ones price.

Prediction: 5.5 million

21:

Good tracking from several sources say this ones long from halt price.

Prediction: 22 million

Stop-Loss:

The R rating and very low theater count kill this one for me. Not to mention it's yet another politically motivated war drama and those have not done well over the last 12 months. However, I think it is slightly long from halt.

Prediction: 7 million

Superhero Movie:

These have mixed results in the box office, however there are several spoofers that opened during this time of the year that closed out significantly higher than SHERO's price. These are tough to predict, but there are several factors working in it's favor: spring break is hitting full swing in the next week, and these tend to do well among teens and early 20's.

prediction: 18-20 million [possibly more if WOM is good]

That's all for this week.

Thanks for looking :)

Early Break Even

This weeks early break even numbers:

This week brings us 4 wide openers:

21:

Kevin Spacey will be the draw on this one. While Mr. Spacey has definitely had films with low grosses, I see this one doing better than his low points. This one has had quite a bit of TV advertising, and the spots looked fairly good. PG-13 is going to help this out along with Spring Break to draw out the teen and college crowd.

Stop-Loss:

While this does have a few young stars to draw out the teen crowd, it also has the only R rating for the weekend. The small amount of theaters wont help either, as it gives this one a fairly high PTA for an R-rated film. With that said, at one time they were advertising the hell out of this one on Myspace, so we could see a higher than normal interest from the 18-25 crowd.

Superhero Movie:

We all loath these spoof flicks on the HSX boards. But lets face it, they draw a crowd on opening weekend. PG-13 funny flick + spring break, but with a 5,700 PTA it could go either way.

Run, Fat Boy, Run:

Simon Pegg is one of my personal favorites sense Shawn of the Dead. Add Hank Azaria and Thandie Newton and I think this one could be a decent draw. Even though this is only in just over 1,000 theaters, the PTA is still very achievable at about 3,700 needing a mere 3.9 million to break even. The low PTA places this one in a good position for going long with little down-side risk at the moment[could change at any moment].

HSX Break Even

Here's the final break even for this weekend:

This week brings us the following wide openers:

Drillbit Taylor:

Not expecting much from this one, even if it does good Friday, WOM will kill it.

I'm expecting 10m+- for the weekend.

Shutter:

Let's look at the alternate title they should have considered for this one:

"White Noise 3: For the Hearing Impaired"

Expecting 5-6m for the weekend

Meet the Browns:

Yea, it's Tyler Perry. But here's a gentle reminder "Past performance does not guaranty future results". In my opinion the PTA is just too lofty after what we've seen over the past few weeks.

Expecting 18m+-

As always, thanks for looking

So. What's up with Power Trader?

I'm sure some are wondering about the status of Power Trader, so here it is.

Power trader will exit Beta this weekend with an update. The only update this week will be a "re-short" button. I've been quite pleased with the lack of problems with Power Trader, it seems to work quite well and does the job it was designed for.

So. Where's the ticker and monitor?

Here's the thing. I have the ticker complete and I'm just waiting to see if the HSX peep's have any comments on what I placed on the feedback board. So far so good. With that said, here's why it took longer than it would seem other programmers could accomplish the same task.

When starting on the ticker, I had a few goals in mind that, if not met, I would not continue developing the ticker.

#1: It had to cause -less- server load on HSX servers than people using "Radar Ports".

#2: It had to NOT use a database, loading XML data in to a database and then querying the database is an extra step I wasn't going to take and it would have slowed the process.

#3: It had to be light-weight, both in coding effort and final binary size.

#4: It had to be able to provide "Live" price data and not miss anything.

So, how did I accomplish all of those lofty goals? Behold the power of C# with the .net 3.5 framework. .net 3.5 provides LINQ, and more specifically XLINQ. LINQ provided the query language to be able to directly query an XML file with no schema, no database and the query language is similar to SQL, making it very easy to generate complex queries with very little code. And here's the kicker, it's super fast, as it loads the data in to memory space before running the query.

E.G.

XElement Elem = XElement.Load(@"C:\HSXdata\hsx.xml");
XElement Elem2 = XElement.Load(@"C:\HSXdata\hsx_old.xml");

var query = from c in Elem.Descendants("sec")
from d in Elem2.Descendants("sec")
where
(c.Element("tkr").Value == d.Element("tkr").Value)
&& (c.Element("prc").Value != d.Element("prc").Value)
select new { c, d };

OK, so I went all geek on you. This is what that means for you, this query looks through every stock on the exchange in 3 seconds and give all of the price changes. Pretty cool eh? Another cool thing I added to it is that the output is CSV, so you can throw the text into any spreadsheet and chart, filter & sort until you're blue in the face.

So, what about the monitor? Well the code the ticker provides directly translates to the code for the monitor with a few minor changes. So as soon as I'm sure the ticker is stable, I can start in earnest on the monitor.

Thanks, as always, for your interest.

Early Break Even

The Numbers

This week brings us,

Tyler Perry's: Meet the Browns

There's no theater count to this one on HSX, so I used Filjerk's estimate, as I'm sure it's close enough for this exercise. That's one hell of a PTA! Nuf said.


Shutter

Yay! Another crapfest of a remake! Yea, I'm going with ~m weekend all day on this and never looking back.


Drillbit Taylor

Looking through the trailers and TV spots, one thing kept poping in to my head. "This could have been a great movie". but if the TV spots and trailers are any indication of how the movie really is, it's not. But people will still come out to see Owen Wilson.


Thanks for taking a peek ; -)

--Credits--

HSX: The Hollywood Stock Exchange

FilmJerk.com

3/14/08 Break Even Analysis & Predictions

This weeks wide openers include:

Horton Hears a Who [holding long for breakout/legs]

I have a good feeling about this one for the weekend. But to top things off, it runs through spring break & Easter. So no matter what happens this weekend, it's sure to have legs.

Prediction 50+ million as much as 60 million

Never Back Down [holding long for breakout potential]

Never Back Down looks way under priced to me. The PG13 rating is going to help bring in teen boys. With a PTA of just under 3,000, I see no down side to this stock at all.

Prediction 15 million

Doomsday [holding long]

Dooms day looks at minimum break even to me, maybe even slightly long. Theater count is going to hold it back though.

Prediction 7 million

Thanks, and good luck to everyone

Way Too Early Break Even for 3/14/08's Openers

This weeks breakdown includes

Horton Hears a Who, Doomsday & Never Back Down








Horton:

Who doesn't love movies about Who's? Jim Carey, Steve Carell & Seth Rogan top out the voice cast along with numerous other sizable names. Kids movie, G rating, big names, excellent animation & Dr. Seuss...nothing holding back the box office on this one.

45m-50m

Doomsday:

Road Warrior meets 28 Days Later with a fem-fatal lead instead of a Jew bashing drunk Mel Gibson. Looks like a good ol' end of humanity flick. Theater count is going to hold this one back, along with the limited appeal of the genre.

As low as 6m, might surprise at 10m [not likely]

Never Back Down:

Teen angst and martial arts...where have we seen this before.....Karate Kid? Fight Club for kids? I expect teen boys to go nuts over this one, could be this years disterbia?....with a smaller gross maybe [Disterbia came out in April & grossed 22m opening weekend]

10m-15m

3/14/08 Wide Opener Trailers

Here's next weeks wide openers trailers all in one convenient place


Horton Hears a Who



Doomsday



Never Back Down

Template Change

I'm changing the template at 12:00 Eastern, might be some funkyness durring the change.

Unfortunatly the poll's will be wiped out

Break Even 3/7/08

And! Pencils down!

Here's the final Break even numbers including PTA for this weekend

And here's some interesting Options numbers for you to mull over

[These are from yesterday though]








Good luck to everyone!

The Gut Check

Been a topsy-turvy week after Semi-Pro took a nose dive. So lets look at this weeks wide openers.


10,000 BC

I'm long on BC. Why? Because as I see it, at current price, it only needs 36 million to break even. A total no brainer for me. An here's why: I don't feel there's any downside to holding this thing long, worst case, it's break even.

Looking through Movietickets.com, I've seen some sellouts in the LA market for Friday and it's #1 on Moviefones list by a nice margin.

Plain English: Holding BC long has almost no risk at this price in my opinion.

Prediction: 50+ million

The Bank Job

I'm short on Bank Job. Why? I don't see it doing any more that 5-6 million this weekend because of narrow appeal. Probably a good movie, but I just don't see strong interest in the U.S. market.

Predication: 5 million

College Road Trip

I'm short on Road Trip, just don't see this movie hitting big. While I can certianly see the appeal of Lawrence & Raven-Symone, I only see this movie drawing interest from 2 groups "Highschool kids with parents" & "Parents with Highschool kids". And frankly, it just doesn't look all that funny[sorry].

Prediction: 15 million

Revised Theater Count for 10,000 BC

Filmjerk's Early Report indicates an increase in theaters to 3750+ for this weekend. This indicates to me that it could get as many as 3900 by weeks end, if that's the case, then my 15,000 PTA Prediction brings us to as much as 60m opening weekend.

Here's my Weekend Spread [based on 3750 theaters]:

Low End: 40m [10,000+- PTA]
Prediction: 50m+ [13,000+ PTA]
Prediction Top: 60m [16,000+- PTA]
Breakout Hit: 70m+ [18,000+ PTA]

Filmjerk
Hollywood Stock Exchange

3/7/08 HSX Analysis & Box Office Predictions

HSX Break Even Analysis:

10,000 BC:

The first "event" type movie of the season, don't be fooled by the studio placing this hit in the "dead zone". Last year, about this time, 300 was a smash hit taking in 70m weekend box office tally with just over a 22,000 PTA. While I don't expect that kind of take, 50m + looks very good , placing 10k at about 15,000 PTA(very doable). I'm also expecting the actual screen count to be more along the lines of 3,500+.

The first trailer did not portray this film well, making it look more like a documentery, but the second more than makes up for it, adding some plot and action. The movie looks quite stunning visualy. The PG-13 rating will help this one quite a bit. Expect big!

The Bank Job:

I can't help but feel I've seen this move before, watching the trailer. I tend to like Statham movies, but I'm not as excited about this one. I expect to see about 5m placing PTA just shy of 4,000.

College Road Trip:

This G rated Disney flick will scew heavily on the family side, however, I'm expecting families with preteen children to wait for Horton Hears a Who. The trailer generaly looks funny, but, it also looks a bit much like RV(to me). I'm anticipating a 15m weekend take for a PTA of about 6,500.

http://www.hsx.com/

Ferrell's Ball Deflates at the Box Office

The Friday numbers are in, and Semi-Pro has essentialy "Flopped", just edging in at about 5.5 million for Friday(ouch!).

Early Weekend (3 day) Estimates:

Semi-Pro: 16m
The Other Bolyn Girl: 8.7
Penelopy: 3.3m

Edit:(studio estimates)
Studio 3 day estimates

Semi-Pro: 15.3m
The Other Bolyn Girl: 8.3m
Penelopy: 4.01m

Edit:(actuals)

Semi-Pro: 15m
The Other Bolyn Girl: 8.2m
Penelopy: 3.8m