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The Force Awakens Box Office Prediction

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V

ViewtifulJC

Banned
Cheebo said:
You can't compare the overseas market of 2005 to 2015, it was not reasonably developed as compared to today. The overseas market is vastly larger today than it was in 2005. Night and day difference in terms of overseas box office gross compared to 10 years ago.

China is not the only one to grow in 10 years, at all.

We have post and pre Avatar WW box office trends. You can't compare overseas gross of movies from 10 years ago, the market is dramatically different today in size.
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The thing is, Star Wars has never been big overseas. Even at the time of their releases, Episode 1 made less than half of Titanic made overseas, and fell behind Jurassic Park and Independence Day, despite years of ticket inflation on its side. In 2005, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire made much more overseas than Revenge of the Sith managed.

So even though the overseas market has expanded since then, that doesn't necessarily mean Star Wars appeal has in the ten years of nothing since the last one. Thats why making any overseas predictions based on "ITS FREAKIN' STAR WARS MY PARENTS WILL SEE THIS" is a bit silly, since its just not the pop culture phenomenon it is in America.
 
K

Krev

Unconfirmed Member
This 'Star Wars isn't big overseas' stuff is pretty new to me.
It's massive here in Australia, but our box office tends to reflect America's more than anywhere else in the world.
But I do have the impression that Star Wars is pretty universally recognised and loved.
 
P

PdotMichael

Banned
ViewtifulJC said:
The thing is, Star Wars has never been big overseas. Even at the time of their releases, Episode 1 made less than half of Titanic made overseas, and fell behind Jurassic Park and Independence Day, despite years of ticket inflation on its side. In 2005, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire made much more overseas than Revenge of the Sith managed.

So even though the overseas market has expanded since then, that doesn't necessarily mean Star Wars appeal has in the ten years of nothing since the last one. Thats why making any overseas predictions based on "ITS FREAKIN' STAR WARS MY PARENTS WILL SEE THIS" is a bit silly, since its just not the pop culture phenomenon it is in America.
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Harry Potter movies are adaptations of a British book series. So your examples are rather movies which just perform better outside of the USA than Star Wars is somehow weak outside of the domestic market.

In fact the foreign results of the three movies are way more stable moved from 52% to 55% share.
 
T

TheMagician

Member
ViewtifulJC said:
The thing is, Star Wars has never been big overseas. Even at the time of their releases, Episode 1 made less than half of Titanic made overseas, and fell behind Jurassic Park and Independence Day, despite years of ticket inflation on its side. In 2005, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire made much more overseas than Revenge of the Sith managed.

So even though the overseas market has expanded since then, that doesn't necessarily mean Star Wars appeal has in the ten years of nothing since the last one. Thats why making any overseas predictions based on "ITS FREAKIN' STAR WARS MY PARENTS WILL SEE THIS" is a bit silly, since its just not the pop culture phenomenon it is in America.
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I don't think this is quite accurate, especially being from England.

The Phantom Menace came here a couple of months after the U.S release and by that time it had been established that the film wasn't great. On release even UK tabloid papers were giving it 2 stars out of 5 and saying what a disappointment it was.

Harry Potter is a great series of movies and Jurassic Park was a great blockbuster as well, so it's no wonder why did better than The Phantom Menace. Titanic was a phenomenon which took years to be surpassed. Id expect these movies to do better than the prequels especially as words gets round pretty quick when films aren't actually that great.

Even my girlfriends mum is coming to see The Force Awakens with us on the first day of release and the film will likely break most box office records here. I just wouldn't judge the series here by the performance of a series of poor quality films.
 
C

Come to Butt-Head

Banned
Everyone keeps bringing up the performance of the prequels. I seriously doubt we can use them to meaningfully determine how well this movie will do.

The quality of a movie definitely matters, and I think this will blow the prequels out of the water. Multiple viewings will be a given, IMO.
 
V

ViewtifulJC

Banned
Its a big mistake to try to take the hype from America/Western Europe/Australia and trying to explotate that to the entire world. 2/3rds of ROTS' overseas gross came from UK, France, Spain, Australia, Japan, and Germany. With Pirates 2 and the Goblet of Fire, those 6 countries only make up about 55%, and Titanic. Its REALLY big in certain regions, but compared to other franchises it just aint that big.

And in the time since, Spain's box office has fallen into the shitter, Japan likes their own movies now, we don't know what form China is gonna open the new Star Wars since they like to promote their own movies now(they could very well open it next to Kung Fu Panda 3 and cut Star Wars off at the knee), and Germany/France/Australia gross has been beaten by several Latin America/Asian countries.

And on top of all THAT, foreign currencies are so much shittier since Avatar came out. The Euro and the AUD has devalued 25% vs the US dollar since 2009, GBP was 10% higher, the Yen was 30%. Star Wars would have to put up some serious money to catch Cameron's films, taken all the above into consideration.

There's just too many variables to make any real educated guesses about Star Wars' overseas gross. Maybe it'll be really big in those new Latin America/Asian territories. And maybe it won't!
 
A

Abounder

Banned
ViewtifulJC said:
The thing is, Star Wars has never been big overseas. Even at the time of their releases, Episode 1 made less than half of Titanic made overseas...
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Saying Star Wars isn't big overseas is a losing argument, but saying it won't reach Cameron's or other %s is a better one. You also handwave that the infamous Phantom Meance was by far the no.1 movie overseas in 1999, even the Crystal Skull practically tied for no.1 outside of the USA in 2008. Not to mention George Lucas cannibalized ticket sales for theater tech for Ep2, and yet the rest of the prequel poodoo was still top 2-4 overseas.

ViewtifulJC said:
And in the time since, Spain's box office has fallen into the shitter, Japan likes their own movies now, we don't know what form China is gonna open the new Star Wars since they like to promote their own movies now(they could very well open it next to Kung Fu Panda 3 and cut Star Wars off at the knee), and Germany/France/Australia gross has been beaten by several Latin America/Asian countries.
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The only major market that really is a question mark is China. West and other Asian countries love Star Wars, for Japan Episode 3 is still the country's biggest opening weekend IIRC
 
C

Charles Foster Kane

Rosebud
I've said it before, I belive TFA has a shot at beating Avatar at the domestic BO. Only movie in the foreseeable future that I actually see having a shot at that. WW BO is a different story though.
 
Sapiens

Sapiens

Member
Charles Foster Kane said:
I've said it before, I belive TFA has a shot at beating Avatar at the domestic BO. Only movie in the foreseeable future that I actually see having a shot at that. WW BO is a different story though.
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If it gets good word of mouth, it will blow past avatar. Otherwise, it will just do amazingly well and come strong and come really close.
 
A

Anth0ny

Member
Does the fact that Disney now owns Star Wars potentially strengthen the power of the franchise overseas?

I was pretty young when Phantom Menace was released but I feel like I'm seeing Force Awakens stuff EVERYWHERE, even more than Phantom Menace during the pre-release hype phase. Is that a result of the monster that is the Disney marketing machine or what? I'm in Canada but I wonder if this translates to the overseas market, where Disney has been killing it with their Marvel/animated stuff.
 
S

Spyder_Monkey

Banned
Keep in mind a Captain America movie did exceptionally well overseas. Saying that TFA won't do well because the rest of the world isn't big on Star Wars is ridiculous.
 
K

Kraftwerk

Member
I will say that it will hit $3 billion at the least WW. I mean, there are so many people I know that started watching the old star wars movies due to the hype of this one, people who had never seen them before.

The hype levels are just astronomical.
 
G

guek

Banned
Spyder_Monkey said:
Keep in mind a Captain America movie did exceptionally well overseas. Saying that TFA won't do well because the rest of the world isn't big on Star Wars is ridiculous.
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I don't think anyone is saying it won't do well overseas, just that it won't do as well as it does in NA. In the context of beating Avatar, it would have to do better than really good, it'd have to be a cultural juggernaut.

That's not an impossibility, just not a certainty like it is in NA.
 
A

Anth0ny

Member
avatarboxofficejsort.png


that ratio is so fucked up just looking at it
 
K

kswiston

Member
Abounder said:
Saying Star Wars isn't big overseas is a losing argument, but saying it won't reach Cameron's or other %s is a better one. You also handwave that the infamous Phantom Meance was by far the no.1 movie overseas in 1999, even the Crystal Skull practically tied for no.1 outside of the USA in 2008. Not to mention George Lucas cannibalized ticket sales for theater tech for Ep2, and yet the rest of the prequel poodoo was still top 2-4 overseas.
Click to expand...

No one is doubting that Star Wars is big overseas. I think the point that a lot of people gloss over when they throw out these crazy $2-3B overseas numbers is that, while Star Wars was always a solid Top 2-4 performer in any year it was released, it was never head and shoulders over other films of the same era overseas.

If the biggest current films are falling into the $950M-1.1B range overseas, why is Star Wars magically going to hit 2-3 times that? Where is that money coming from? European, Australian, and Japanese box office is not all that much higher than it was in 2005. Especially with the exchange rate. 40-50% over what The Phantom Menace or what Revenge of the Sith did is probably being generous in those territories. So basically, to hit $3B, you are expecting Asia and Latin America to spend $2.4-2.5B on this film.
 
M

massivekettle

Member
kswiston said:
No one is doubting that Star Wars is big overseas. I think the point that a lot of people gloss over when they throw out these crazy $2-3B overseas numbers is that, while Star Wars was always a solid Top 2-4 performer in any year it was released, it was never head and shoulders over other films of the same era overseas.

If the biggest current films are falling into the $950M-1.1B range overseas, why is Star Wars magically going to hit 2-3 times that? Where is that money coming from? European, Australian, and Japanese box office is not all that much higher than it was in 2005. Especially with the exchange rate. 40-50% over what The Phantom Menace or what Revenge of the Sith did is probably being generous in those territories. So basically, to hit $3B, you are expecting Asia and Latin America to spend $2.4-2.5B on this film.
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Uh, no way does Star Wars only do $600m in North America + Europe. That would be pretty much bomba territory (relative to expectations).
 
K

kswiston

Member
ksharp said:
Uh, no way does Star Wars only do $600m in North America + Europe. That would be pretty much bomba territory (relative to expectations).
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I was just talking about international. Some people on the past 2 pages are throwing out $4b worldwide.
 
D

Dolla Dolla

Member
I think the pre-release numbers are pretty ridiculous. It will be the biggest opening of December easily, but I don't think it'll be the biggest opening weekend of all time, just because December is usually muted. Good releases usually last throughout December and January, sometimes February since January is a dumping ground for releases.

OW: 180 mil
WWOW: 500 mil
DG: 600 mil
OSG: 1.2 bil
WWG: 1.8 bil

This is me being conservative. I can see it hitting over 2 billion if it decides to shatter some consecutive weekend grosses.
 
W

wachie

Member
kswiston, why don't you put a stake in the ground and post your predictions instead of pointing holes in others? :p
 
K

kswiston

Member
wachie said:
kswiston, why don't you put a stake in the ground and post your predictions instead of pointing holes in others? :p
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I am feeling optimistic today, so I'll say:

DOM OW: $225M (I think Thurs previews + Friday will break $100M for the first time in history. The large majority of those $50M ticket presales are going to be for Thurs/Friday)
WW OW: $525M (No China until Jan 8th).
DOM Total: $800M (Jurassic World legs with the opening I picked would be $700M. Bump it up for the Holiday period).
WW Total: $2.0B
 
W

WaffleTaco

Wants to outlaw technological innovation.
Yeah I'm going with 1.3 billion...the movie is going to be absolutely front loaded and the only people going in week 3 or 4 will be long time fans who have already seen it.
 
W

wachie

Member
kswiston said:
I am feeling optimistic today, so I'll say:

DOM OW: $225M (I think Thurs previews + Friday will break $100M for the first time in history. The large majority of those $50M ticket presales are going to be for Thurs/Friday)
WW OW: $525M (No China until Jan 8th).
DOM Total: $800M (Jurassic World legs with the opening I picked would be $700M. Bump it up for the Holiday period).
WW Total: $2.0B
Click to expand...
Heh, that's similar to mine and 3N16MA's, we all canucks think alike.
 
V

ViewtifulJC

Banned
kswiston said:
I am feeling optimistic today, so I'll say:

DOM OW: $225M (I think Thurs previews + Friday will break $100M for the first time in history. The large majority of those $50M ticket presales are going to be for Thurs/Friday)
WW OW: $525M (No China until Jan 8th).
DOM Total: $800M (Jurassic World legs with the opening I picked would be $700M. Bump it up for the Holiday period).
WW Total: $2.0B
Click to expand...

If that happens, I think that would be a huge success. OW record, highest domestic of all-time, first non-James Cameron film in the two billion dollar club.
 
K

kswiston

Member
ViewtifulJC said:
If that happens, I think that would be a huge success. OW record, highest domestic of all-time, first non-James Cameron film in the two billion dollar club.
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No doubt. That said, I hope no one decides that the film is a disappointment (AoU style) if we get Avengers to Jurassic World numbers instead.
 
V

ViewtifulJC

Banned
kswiston said:
No doubt. That said, I hope no one decides that the film is a disappointment (AoU style) if we get Avengers to Jurassic World numbers instead.
Click to expand...

You already know if it doesn't beat Avatar its a huge embarrassment for Disney and Star Wars fans the world over, b.
 
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