STID "tracking" for $85-90 million opening [U.S. box office]

Please lets stop mentioning Nemesis.

You know STID is in trouble when people start mentioning that flop Nemesis. STID might be making more money, but it cost way more to make. It still has a long way to go before making a profit.

 

http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/2009/TRK11.php

ST09 dropped almost 50% each of the following 3 weeks after the opening, and it still made $43 million in its second weekend. STID will have the benefit of Memorial Day weekend for it's second domestic week. ST09 also opened and played in MORE theaters than STID. Likely the per theater count of STID will be slightly higher. If it makes $26-29 million on SAT it will be on par with ST09 ($27.2 million).

RAMA

 

i saw it thursday night, the theatre was 3/4 full. i saw it again friday night, the show was sold out. But at my theatre they only had two 2-D showings for the whole day. All my local theatre wants to do is push the 3-D movies.

 

http://www.trekbbs.com/showpost.php?p=8115679&postcount=478

 

The only reason I can think of for why Paramount would do this is a crazy, irrational, conspiracy-theory-based idea that basically goes like this:

At the last moment, Paramount looked at the metrics, realized the numbers were going to come in much lower than expectations, so they tried a desperate, last moment change in the hopes of generating early buzz and/or word-of-mouth. If that failed to work, at least the change would confuse or obfuscate lower numbers than they wanted to see.

Still, the numbers so far aren't bad (even if they aren't breaking the bank) and the film has an 'A' from Cinemascore, so the word-of-mouth might still help.

 

From Box Office Guru on Twitter:

 

FUCK YEAH

 

Good, glad to see its jumped a bit at least.

I'm still a bit perplexed at the box office though. Word of Mouth has been great, tons of people on my FB (Non-Trekkies) are talking about it and seeing it. I really thought this one would increase in box office over the first one.

I guess the combination of the 4 year wait and IM3 hurt us?

 

YES! Finally some good news. Gonna be fun tracking this box office run because its certainly been a rollercoaster ride so far !

 

I've been three times with various members of the family and they've all loved the movie. From age six to age seventy.

I really don't understand why this film is struggling?

 

This thread with all it's ups and downs, bigger budget sequel talk and dead franchise talk is as thrilling as the movie itself.

 

First Contact made US$146m.

As it stands ST:ID has only made US$67.2m thus far.

Nemesis made US$67.3m.

So in straight figures it hasn't beaten either of those films yet. True the Sunday figures for the US+Canda and the first full week for the rest of the world (where it was relased on May 9)have yet to come in which should easily push it past First Contact figures.

 

A sunday bump like that would be great come on people go to the dam CINEMA

 

Whatever happens, Paramount will be fine financially. They did make Iron Man 3 as well.

 

IM3 was made by Disney/Marvel.

But Paramount really doesn't have any popular film franchises these days except for Trek.

The only other blockbuster movie they have out this year is World War Z! That looks like a complete disaster.

 

So now we are looking at:

13.5 + 22 + 27.5 = $63m Wed*/Thu/Fri/Sat

So:

Star Trek 09 Sunday was very good, people think it was because of Mothers Day. It is not mothers day this time...

If we do add ST09 Sunday we get:

$63+21 = $84m

So $84m is the max I think. If it makes it to $84m then considering the grim Thursday and Friday numbers it will be a mini recovery though still short of the $100m they wanted. I am hoping for $80+

 

They don't have an abundance of strong franchises, but they do have a few. Transformers, Madagascar, and Mission Impossible are currently their biggest ongoing franchises (the first two being co-owned with DreamWorks). Trek is in the next tier after them.

 

My mistake. Was going from memory of logos on earlier Iron Man movies. Haven't seen the latest one.

 

That's some very good news and bodes well for Into Darkness to have a slightly longer shelf life than your average tentpole franchise summer blockbuster. Weekday numbers this week should give us a good indication of what's going to happen over the next few weeks and how Into Darkness will fare versus some upcoming releases.

I know people were in full fledged panic over these numbers but there are a couple of factors to bear in mind and some realities people need to understand:

1) Star Trek 2009 was the beneficiary of a very friendly release schedule. The film faced very little, if any, competition in May 2009. The two biggest holdovers which Trek faced its opening weekend were "Obsessed" starring Beyonce, and "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" which underperformed at the box office. The following week saw the much anticipated release of "Angels & Demons," the sequel to the "Da Vinci Code." However A&D was blasted in reviews and the film managed to make a little over half of the originals release. On the 22nd of May Trek faced off against "Night at the Museum 2" and "Terminator Salvation" and performed extremely well making $22 million over the weekend, down a mere 46% from the week before. Star Trek 2009 pretty much coasted through the month with little resistance until the beginning of June with the release of the original Hangover.

Contrast that with Into Darkness which has had to contend with two major holdovers in "Iron Man 3" and "The Great Gatsby," both films which eat into key demographics. Star Trek 2009 performed very well with women and had a larger female audience percentage than previous Trek films, and that percentage is hurt by the overperformance of Gatsby, which a number of analyst projected would fail at the box office... it didn't. Additionally, Iron Man 3 has had a very strong run and its numbers are holding up extremely well, so again another demographic is being eaten away. Add to that next weekend Into Darkness faces "Fast and Furious 6" and "Hangover III," both extremely popular film franchises.

Ultimately what will keep Star Trek going is word of mouth and fortunately WOM has been great with the film scoring a Cinemascore grade of "A" with audiences. So these next few days and next weekend will be very telling. Frankly, I think the film will do just fine and probably end up in the same ballpark as Trek 2009. However, where the film is really performing well is overseas and I suspect if Into Darkness' domestic numbers come up short of Trek 2009's, the international numbers will more than make up for that slack.

2) I honestly think the max a Star Trek film can make is in the neighborhood of $250-270 million domestically. Star Trek is a very popular franchise, but it simply doesn't have as big a movie fanbase as Harry Potter, Star Wars, Transformers, or the Dark Knight, and I think to expect it to perform like those franchises is very shortsighted on Paramount's part.

So Paramount needs to decide how they intend to proceed. Do they continue to make films with budgets around $150-190 million, but accept the fact the film will gross a total $400 million plus worldwide, or do they maybe scale back a bit? Still make big Star Trek films, but try to budget around $125-135 million and hope for similar numbers. There's simply no way to go back to the days of the Next Generation films trying to make Trek films with $60-80 million budgets.

Yancy