Daily Box Office Analysis
By David Mumpower
June 17, 2015
BoxOfficeProphets.com
During the most initial batch of Daily Box Office columns last summer, the number one film in the country was The Fault in Our Stars. During its first Monday in release, it earned $5.1 million, which represented 29 percent of the entire top ten for that day. Yes, the entire top ten accumulated just under $17.6 million on that fateful day of June 9, 2014. The next day’s total enjoyed a slight uptick to $19.3 million, which was fairly solid relative to the average weekday totals last June.
I think you see where I’m going with this.
A little film called Jurassic World debuted last Friday, and it narrowly defeated the competition to become the most popular movie in North America. And China. And basically anywhere else that either speaks English or has access to subtitle technology. The most Spielberg-ian movie ever made by someone not named Steven Spielberg became the largest opener of all-time both domestically and globally. As longtime BOP contributor Dan Krovich is wont to say, “Animals Eating Humans Equals $$$$$.”
Before we get to the analysis, let’s perform a bit of clean-up for our new readers. First of all, hi! My name’s David and I’ll be your Sherpa for daily numbers analysis a couple of times each week during the most important period on the calendar for movie distributors.
For those of you who have been reading the site since its inception in 2001, accept BOP’s gratitude for your loyalty. Feel free to skip ahead two paragraphs, blanketed with the knowledge that we love you dearly. For everyone else, the rules of the summer box office campaign are fairly simple. Despite the box office boost from the season, bombs are still going to bomb. Yes, they will be boosted a bit by the consumer’s ability to see films more easily, but a rejected movie generally remains rejected.
Meanwhile, the movies that usually receive the largest spike in daily box office revenue are family films due to the influx of youths at matinee exhibitions. For this reason, family films that may not do well on opening weekend can still wind up being quite profitable. If you were wondering why there have been three movies in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid franchise, you now have your explanation.
There is also an established pattern of behavior for all titles in release. Monday will be a solid day of box office, particularly for titles that experienced weekend sellouts. Tuesday box office generally exceeds Monday for all but the heavily front-loaded releases. The explanation is that there are discount deals performed across North America to entice consumers to catch a movie on what was historically the worst day of the week for the industry. Wednesday will see a slight drop from Tuesday, while Thursday is almost always the worst weekday for everything in release. These are the basics of summer box office behavior. Every week and every day within those weeks will experience a bit of fluctuation, though. Rules are made to be broken, as recent events have demonstrated quite emphatically.
On a seemingly unrelated note, Jurassic World’s first Monday was fairly decent. By decent, I mean that it earned $25.3 million. Yes, that’s more than the entire top 10 earned at this time last year. In fact, I would argue it’s a record if the facts technically don’t support the statement. The dinosaur chomper garnered $25.3 million on Monday, which is the third best Monday ever. That statement comes with a huge asterisk, though. The top two previous Mondays were both holiday-inflated. One was $26.8 million for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull – stop thinking about the unintentionally hilarious refrigerator scene and focus on what I’m saying – that occurred on Memorial Day. The other was Spider-Man 2’s $27.7 million, which came on July 5th. So, Jurassic Park grossing $25.3 million on a random Monday is much more impressive as a box office feat.
That brings us to yesterday, when the reasonable expectation was for the film to slow down a bit, even though Tuesday is the biggest box office day of the week. After all, films earning revenue totals this large can experience solid daily declines while still performing majestically. Keeping this in mind, Jurassic World fell 4% (and a million dollars) to $24.3 million. That’s the third biggest Tuesday ever yet I would once again argue it’s a record. The only two better Tuesday performers, Transformers at $27.9 million and The Amazing Spider-Man at $35 million, both earned their revenue on July 3rd. So, holiday inflation again blurs the issue. Also, both of those films were enjoying their first full days in theaters, which gave them opening day rush from fanboys. Jurassic World was on its fifth full day in theaters, making its box office tally exponentially stronger.
In other words, I can make an argument that every single day of Jurassic World’s run thus far has broken some major box office record. Its pace is so torrid that reaching $300 million in a week is not entirely out of the question. It currently stands at $258.5 million with two days to go, meaning it needs to average $20.8 million on Wednesday and Thursday to accomplish that unprecedented feat. As a reminder, The Avengers did it in nine days, so Jurassic World is going to break the record of fastest to $300 million. The only question is whether it’s in seven days or eight. As an aside, this is the one domestic record that I believe Star Wars 7 has a real chance at breaking. Its late December opening weekend will prevent it from breaking the three-day record.
Finally, there's one other note I'd like to make about the weekday performance of Jurassic World to place it in perspective. On August 5th last year, Guardians of the Galaxy grossed $11.9 million. That was the single best revenue total for any Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday for the entire summer. Jurassic World has more than doubled that number. Twice. In two days.
As for the rest of the top ten, well, I’ll get to each of them at some point. Since the other nine films have combined revenue of $7.8 million, wasting any space on them today is the equivalent of making you sit through five opening acts to watch the Rolling Stones play. There’s only one story in the box office world right now, and it’s about a dinosaur theme park.