FRIDAY 11:15 PM UPDATE: Fox insiders are telling me that Avatar will make $27.5M to $28M Friday. As for the bad weather, an exec tells me: "Storm was in the Carolinas area today/tonight and I understand that the DC area was getting hammered. I would have to say we did get hurt in that area of the country, and I am worried about the effect in the Northeast tomorrow. Even so, this movie is getting such an incredibly positive reaction that I believe the word of mouth is just viral and those that may have been prevented from seeing the movie today or tomorrow will be there eventually without fail."
FRIDAY 10 PM UPDATE: I'm told by sources that Avatar has been playing even with Star Trek all day until about 2:30 PM PT when 20th Century Fox's overall gross and location average for James Cameron's much ballyhooed technopic started pulling ahead. But 2D Star Trek had 400 more locations vs Avatar's 3,542 total domestic theatrical release, and a shorter running time vs Avatar's 160 minutes, and $7M in "pre-opening shows" vs. Avatar's $3.5M midnights in about 2,000 dates with a 3D ticket price premium. Of course, Star Trek had the benefit of decades of franchise awareness, while Avatar is a wholly new creation. Now Fox could be looking at mid- to high- $20sM for today from its 2,038 domestic 3D locations and 3,129 North American 3D screens and 179 all 3D domestic IMAX. Because the filmmakers are very concerned about the severe winter storm hitting America's East Coast and the huge negative effect it could have on the domestic box office. If there isn't significant attendance loss, then Hollywood is now estimating this pre-Xmas 3-day weekend's opening grosses at $80M -- or $27M for Friday including the midnight shows, then $30M on Saturday, and $23M on Sunday when most colleges and high schools are out Monday.
Meanwhile, Sony Pictures is relieved that all the focus by the media on Avatar this weekend means it won't attract much attention for the underperformance of its Did You Hear About The Morgans? Starring Sarah Jessica Parker and Hugh Grant in what Rotten Tomatoes scored only 10% positive reviews -- i.e. it's unwatchable -- the so-called comedy will be lucky to open to $7.5M this weekend (not the $10M even the studio hoped for). It opened 4th Friday with just $2.5M from 2,758 runs. "Not what we wanted, but it will hang in throughout the holidays," a hopeful Sony exec told me.
FRIDAY 9:30 AM: 'Twas the weekend before Christmas, but I refused to wax poetic about whether James Cameron's long awaited, much discussed, big budget technopic would be a gigantic hit, big hit, or modest hit until I saw some actual numbers. That's because 20th Century Fox's Avatar finally opened in theaters last night in North America and 106 countries overseas after years of fan curiosity, followed by recent months of negative buzz, followed by the past two weeks of mostly strong reviews (82% positive on Rotten Tomatoes). No one is predicting disaster for the film. Especially not after I can reveal what Steven Spielberg said after screening it on the Fox lot: "The last time I came out of a movie feeling that way it was the first time I saw Star Wars."
Rival studios reported to me this morning that midnight U.S. and Canada grosses were around $3 million with the 3D ticket premium. Then 20th Century Fox announced its official midnight screening gross of $3,537,000, including the 3D ticket price premium, from approximately 2000 theatres.
*UPDATE: I also just heard that internationally, Avatar is huge in Australia with $4.8 million from Thursday and Friday combined, and running double what 2012 which did not have a 3D premium did there, or $2.3 million. (By contrast, New Moon opened to $7.8M.) In Germany, Avatar debuted to $1.7 million, compared to 2012's $1.4M. (New Moon did $2.2M.) In Korea, Avatar opened to $1.4, behind 2012's $1.9M. (New Moon made only $800K.) But in the UK, opening day was hit by snow so grosses are running behind.*
*2ND UPDATE: Meanwhile, a giant snowstorm is expected on the America's East Coast, with 20 inches predicted for Washington DC.*
I've learned that today's matinees are running about 10% better than this summer's Star Trek. But with 3D films, matinees are normally higher because a larger portion of the business is done via presales. Then again, Fox is warning that the weekend before Christmas can be dicey for moviegoing because everyone is more focused on shopping and partying. And weather is already a factor. But movies which open the weekend before Christmas tend to do better multiples than normal from opening box office to lifetime. While in the summer tentpoles tend to have lifetime grosses of 3 to 3.5 times opening weekend. Whereas movies that open the weekend before Christmas can do 4, 5 or even 6 times the opening weekend. So if Avatar were to do $75M to $85M this weekend, it could still get to a $300M-$400M lifetime total which is what the movie's negative cost is thought to be.
Right now, Hollywood has refined its original unfocused $60M-$75M prediction upwards to $85 million for the 3-day domestic weekend -- better than the all-time December opening of I Am Legend at $77,211,321 but only because of Avatar's 3D ticket price premium.*
Remember, this is the biggest 3D release in movie history, spurred by the excitement surrounding Cameron's creation of the Fusion Camera System technology for photo-realistic computer-generated characters through motion capture animation. He wrote the script for Avatar back in the mid-1990s when he and Stan Winston co-founded Digital Domain. But when he took the screenplay to their special effects lab, Cameron was told it was just not possible to make the film with the current technology. So he sat on the project for more than a decade until there could be "several thousand 3-D screens" capable of showing the film.
This opening weekend, Avatar is playing in 3,542 total theaters domestic (including 2,038 3D locations and 3,129 3D screens and 179 all 3D IMAX), and into 17,222 screens overseas (including a total 3D and 3D Imax screens of 5,360, and a total IMAX 3D screens of 81).
Now, that's a wide 2D release but by no means the widest. And yet last night there weren't the usual reports pouring in to me of long lines and sold-out theaters after midnight, except for the IMAX 3D venues. Instead, Internet chatter and anecdotal accounts indicate moviehouses showing Avatar were not playing to packed houses -- at least not yet.
Tracking, too, had been mixed for the film. While there was big awareness and wannasee among males of all ages, girls and women weren't there at all. In fact, rival studios kept pointing out to me tht upcoming Sherlock Holmes was tracking better than Avatar in all quadrants.
Nevertheless, Fox is expecting Avatar to have legs domestically well into January. In any case, it's expected to outperform internationally (not unlike 2012 did earlier this holiday season.) As for those dopey media comparisons to James Cameron's legendary Titanic legs? Apples and oranges.
Courtesy : - http://www.deadline.com
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