The 12 Days of Box Office - Day Two
By David Mumpower
December 23, 2015
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Yes, it’s only day two and we’re already sick of each other.
Anyway, the number one film in North America as well as everyone else in the world save for South Korea and Thailand (and presumably North Korea) was once again Star Wars: The Force Awakens. That’s likely to be true from now until the release of Kung Fu Panda 3, give or take a few days. Its Tuesday tally of $37.4 million was in fact a new record as “predicted,” edging the prior record holder, The Amazing Spider-Man, by $2.35 million.
A loyal reader pointed out that I jumped the gun in say that The Force Awakens now holds the single day record on five of seven weekdays. The correct answer is four: Friday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. It actually failed to best Jurassic World on Saturday, earning $68.3 million as opposed to the dinosaur flick’s $69.6 million. For that matter, The Avengers grossed almost $69.6 million as well. So, the producers of The Force Awakens should feel deep shame over the film’s Saturday performance. Their movie has barely even earned $325.4 million domestically. Of course I’m kidding if you’re new here. That’s a splendid average of $65 million a day. It’s an unconscious pace the likes of which we’ve never seen before. Also, thank you to the person who pointed out the mistake.
Yesterday, I mentioned the Avatar pace and how that would impact The Force Awakens. You’re going to hear about this topic in a lot of places since Avatar is the film that Star Wars 7 is chasing to become the biggest of all-time, both domestically and globally. Since North American box office is so predictable as a rule at this time of year, folks are naturally expecting the current blockbuster to perform at roughly the same pace as the one that did under the same calendar configuration in 2009.
Let’s take a step back to discuss what that means. If you’ve been through this a few times, feel free to skip down a couple of paragraphs. You already know the deal. When I mention calendar configuration, it’s important during this time of year. That’s due to the way the holidays themselves impact the overall box office behavior. Christmas Eve, New Year’s Eve, Christmas and New Year’s Day are the key dates.
When the holidays fall on the best days of the week, overall box office increases. This will transpire independent of the quality of the films in release. Conversely, a poor calendar configuration will cause the box office to deflate. Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve need to fall on weekdays to avoid box office deflation. That’s because these are anti-holidays with regards to box office. Due to travel and parties, people have less time to attend movies on these days. On the actual holidays, box office rises again.
With Christmas Eve on a Thursday, The Force Awakens has decent positioning. A I mentioned yesterday, Avatar fell only two percent on its first Tuesday. Star Wars 7 dropped a fitting seven percent. Since it’s dealing with larger numbers, it held roughly as well as Avatar overall. I realize that’s a tricky concept. Think of the situation in terms of someone paying sales tax on a hundred dollar purchase versus a hundred thousand dollar one. The sales tax is still the same percentage, but the actual cost is a thousand times as much. Dropping two percent for Avatar meant an actual change in revenue of $300,000. For The Force Awakens, a seven percent drop is $2.75 million. You can see the dramatic difference in scale that the Jedi film faces.
The logical question to ask here is, “Is seven percent a big drop independent of prior models?” My answer at the moment is no. In fact, I’m rather impressed that it’s held this well to date. The lone caveat here is that Avatar actually did better on its first Wednesday than its first Tuesday. If Star Wars 7 falls again tomorrow, that will be a decent sign that it’s starting to cool off a bit. On the other hand, if it gains some, it’s poised to do something special this weekend. Again. Note that whatever it does tomorrow, however, it’ll take a dive on Thursday since that’s Christmas Eve. Even the Force is susceptible to this particular box office anomaly, last weekend notwithstanding.
Finally, while I was joking about Sisters and Generic Chipmunk Sequel, I should point out that both films behaved as expected yesterday. During the Twelve Days of Box Office, comfortable genre titles such as comedies and children’s flicks over-perform. That’s why I’m not surprised that Chipmunk Sequel enjoyed the largest percent increase in the top ten, 37 percent. Another $4 million in the bank brings its domestic tally to $21.3 million, which is lousy for this particular franchise. It’ll look much, much better at the start of 2016, though. This is a perfect film to consider when discussing the impact of the Twelve Days of Box Office on all films good and…78 RPMs of unrelenting horror.
Sisters wasn’t quite as fortunate, but it still did quite well yesterday. Its Tuesday take of just under $2.9 million represented an increase of 14 percent from Monday. It has a running total of $19.3 million, and it too should enjoy smooth sailing for the next 10 days. If these examples aren’t convincing enough, however, note that the rest of the top 10 all enjoyed daily increases. Eight out of 10 titles actually spiked at least 13 percent. That’s the overall power of the holiday acting as the rising tide that lifts all boats.
On a site note, tomorrow’s update will be abbreviated. And you’re fine with that since internet traffic dwindles on Christmas Eve for everything that’s not named Netflix. You should check back here, though. We’ll have the final edition of Elf Off thr Shelf for this year, and you all seem to eat that stuff up.