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