BOT Presale Tracking (September 21). Thursday Comps: The Wild Robot ($3.94M), and Joker: Folie á Deux ($6.95M).

BoxOfficeTheory Presale Tracking

Presales Data (Google Sheets Link)

BoxOfficeReport Previews

Quorum Updates:

• September 20

• September 20 Weekly Unaided Awareness

• September 18

• September 16

• September 13

• September 12 Weekly Unaided Awareness

• September 12

• September 9

Megalopolis

• ATOM Tickets (Atom Tickets is now giving out free tickets to Megalopolis. Including early IMAX screenings (September 12).

• Charlie Jatinder (For Megalopolis, I will just say they aren't the worst ever I have tracked (September 17).)

• filmpalace (It's currently ahead of Speak No Evil's T-3, which is surprisingly not awful. Pretty much all tickets that are sold are for the IMAX shows. Having a strong feeling this is going to be one of those movies that has very small growth in the final week, but let’s see (September 20). responding to Ryan C: Seeing the same over at my theaters. At T-8, it has the same amount of tickets sold as Speak No Evil's T-3 (September 18).)

• Flip (responding to VanillaSkies: Every artsy movie sells well in NYC and LA though, especially if there’s EA involved. | 25 tickets from only two shows for me. Probably something like 600k for previews (September 17).)

• Ryan C (I know Megalopolis is probably gonna open badly, but I can tell people that it's not among the worst pre-sales I've ever seen. IMAX showings are actually doing pretty damn well and I'm seeing some regular showings that have a decent amount of seats sold out. I'm sorry, but these people are gonna be surprised when they see that Megalopolis doesn't open below $5M. I can tell you it's already selling much better than The Crow at the same point (September 18).)

• TheFlatLannister ($0.53M THU Comp. Low show count is the biggest red flag for me. Exhibitors have no faith in this. No further updates since I don't expect much to change until T-0. Improvement in sales today, ever so slightly (September 17). Worst presales start I have ever tracked…Wow. Probably won't be tracking this. Completely pointless (September 16).)

• TwoMisfits (Megalopolis is giving 2 free tickets per person for free through Atom…1st come, 1st served, So, I expect a tracking bump when folks look tomorrow…although the tickets are still available, so maybe not that much of a bump… (September 18).)

Wild Robot Average Thursday Comp: $3.94M

• AniNate (If there's schools and daycares booking Wild Robot I can't imagine it being that frontloaded to Thursday. While sales overall are meh here there are a lot more for Friday and Saturday than for Thursday to this point. | I will say something that does make me unsure about TWR is its frankly anemic sales in my region so far compared to IF and Garfield in May. Given the more positive looking tracking elsewhere though I am inclined to believe it's just gonna be more late presale/walkup driven here. Guessing they probably just aren't used to buying tickets in advance so much for animated movies that come out during the school season. Cinemark also held off on giving it XD for my theaters until today, so if there is PLF preference that might've been a factor too. Certainly looks like there is at Disney Springs. | Possible school group thing (referring to Charlie Jatinder's sales patterns) but even that doesn't fully explain things like its evening Thursday preview sales at Disney Springs basically matching TFOne's in total until today. | TFOne did go ahead of TWR in Thursday sales finally at Disney Springs. 344 for the day so far right before first showtime, compared to 268 sales for Wild Robot for next Thursday. | 3978 for TFOne, 3700 for Wild Robot. Could always change with the final TC, and as it is I don't think the TC is lower enough to make a significant difference. I feel like it has the potential to be much much bigger tbh given that at some more presale heavy theaters Wild Robot is pacing close to or even ahead of TFOne in total preview sales with a week to go (September 19). At AMC Disney Springs, Wild Robot Thursday previews continue to pace ahead of TFOne in nominal sales. 242 to 235 now (September 17). Someone finally bought a Thursday preview ticket for TWR at my theater so infinite increase there. Friday sales currently at 3/4 total of TFOne. (31 to 41) (September 16). Wild Robot's presales are no slouch themselves and it'll be taking PLF from Transformers its opening weekend (looks like Cinemark theaters starting to come around to that decision too) so I have to imagine TFOne will be having a rough drop its second weekend no matter what. | I did remember I was tracking IF for a bit back in May at Canton and TWR weekend sales… do not look good compared to that movie's pace. It is kinda buried in the Cinemark website compared to where that movie was at T-13 though being the first kids movie out in a long while, so I can only hope it has more of a ramp up when transformers is out of the way and boosted by reviews/wom. | I am thinking whatever the amounts end up being, Wild Robot is gonna have a bigger true weekend than Transformers One. Its Friday and Saturday presales are consistently close in nominal numbers in a lot of the theaters I've checked, and at the AMC Disney Springs which often has the highest demand for kids films in the country, its Friday and Saturday presales are still ahead of Transformers One's; well ahead in the case of their respective wide opening Saturdays at 140 to 118 (September 14). At my theater is while there's still no Thursday preview sales, there's already more Friday sales than there are for Transformers One. Yes I'm sure the EA and fan event taking much of the immediate interest there but still, definitely feel like TWR is gonna be much more of a weekend performer wherever its Thursday previews end up at. | responding to Charlie Jatinder: That does kinda track with what I've been seeing at my theater that's usually the most presale driven in the area. Still zero sales for the Thursday previews but decent amount of Friday sales. Just one theater though so if it's pacing better elsewhere that does seem encouraging. Appears to be more upfront demand in the bigger markets (September 12).)

• Charlie Jatinder (Is anyone else seeing unusual sales for Wild Robot? Lemme tell you how unusual. In my tracking, it has sold 550+ tix for Friday which would have been amazing, close to KFP4. BUT… nearly 300+ of those are either random one-show sales and rest show empty at that cinema or sales at less popular cinema while the generally popular cinema has way fewer sales. e.g. this show has random 30+ sales in front rows, which generally wont get sold unless film is selling really well. other shows are at empty. or this, nearly 150 sales at one morning show of not so popular cinema, while rest of shows at same cinema have sold ZERO tix (September 19). My Wild Robot sales are weak for THU unlike most here other. FRI is very good but sales are unusual with one odd show getting most of sale in some of the locs while rest are empty (September 11).)

• filmpalace (All tickets that are sold so far are coming from Dolby Cinema showings at one of the two theaters (September 14).)

• Flip ($4.56M THU Comp. Friday presales are 2.13x of Transfomers One (September 17). It’s pacing well, but it’s almost surely not reaching 5m with how it’s currently looking (it only looks so because IO2 underinvested a decent amount + wild robot might overindex a bit) (September 15). It’s pacing well (September 14). That final trailer must’ve really helped it, I still think it will cool down but this was really strong (September 10). It’s doing ok, probably high 2s-low 3s for previews (September 9).)

• TheFlatLannister ($3.57M THU Comp. This is really good. Could be a $35M+ OW (September 11).)

• vafrow ($3.5M THU comp. It's tough to really assess impact of Tiff. For downtown theatres, definitely there's impact. Suburbs are a different story. The vast majority of people in the suburbs aren't even considering TIFF. The festival is much less the People's festival it started at. And a major studio kids movie is also pretty rare for TIFF. There's not a lot of other case studies to go off of. I would have guessed that the discussion of the film through local media coverage would have given it a bump. But I'm also not too concerned. Of all the bigger films on the calendar over the next month or so, this has the least need to open big. And my market being off from others is pretty normal. We'll see how it does down the stretch. | Mine is very tepid, with no sales in recent days, so not worth the update. But expectations on a non franchise kids film is so small, that it's hard to read too much into it when you have a small sample size like I do. But Friday and Saturday sales aren't much better. I want this to do well. But I'm not seeing enough cause for enthusiasm on my side (September 12). As a market that could conceivably could have benefited from direct word of mouth for the premiere yesterday, I saw no new sales in my area this morning (September 9).)

• Wattage (responding to Charlie Jatinder: Very early morning sales like that, to me, look like possibly multiple small class outings. Possibly from the same school or just a bunch of local schools. From my spotty memory of school trips to the theater they tended to want us packed together in small areas instead of spread out through the entire row, so the teacher could sit in the back section and be able to keep an eye on us. Class of 24, in 4 rows of 6 or some combo like that usually. If it was multiple classes they would put a bit of space so we wouldn't get too unruly in the theater. Which would explain the gaps you're seeing as well. And we usually went to the one cheapest theater in the area because it's more affordable for the school. It definitely was not the more popular theater, the only time I ever went to or saw people there actually was for class trips or summer camp trips (September 19).)

• WebSurfer (Looks like movie theater chains are acknowledging the ticket sales for The Wild Robot now (September 10).)

• YM! ($4.14M THU Comp. 0.875x of Transformers One. I took note of its T-18 which was also the same tickets sold as it has now. Though again mountains are being made out of molehills, even with less PLF than TFO and one of the biggest theaters stateside missing, the fact that this is doing on par with Transformers: One is impressive. This is very great, parroting the 3-4m previews potential for this. Could be the first post-pandemic original animation breakout (September 11).)

Joker: Folie á Deux Average Thursday Comp excluding Flip: $6.95M

• DEADLINE (Joker: Folie à Deux in tracking looks similar to the first movie, strong with men over 25 (they showed up at 41% on part one). Unaided awareness is strongest with men over 25, followed men under 25 and women over 25. Presales are big in the cities now, I understand, which is provoking some exhibitors to forecast a $90M start (September 12).)

• AnthonyJPHer (So I tracked Joker 2 a little bit across 3 Cinemark locations and the sales are pretty weak. Didn’t even hit 50 tickets. woof. but maybe it’ll pick up. The day isn’t even over, so we’ll see (September 9).)

• Caption Action 3 (Open caption pre-sales are horrible at this point. So far have documented 52 screentimes, and of those, there's a basement-level ticket to screentime ratio of 0.17. Sales will need to really pick up closer to opening to get this to a respectable number (September 18).)

• Charlie Jatinder ($4.34M THU Comp. What makes it even worse is that 108 of that 446 is just from 1 IMAX screen, which is way higher lopsided than four out of five above (September 11).)

• filmpalace (Staying steady (September 20). Solid growth today (September 19). Steady growth these past few days (September 17).)

• Flip ($37.54M THU and $48.8M FRI comp. Very strong growth (September 21). Pace is fine, I missed yesterday but I think the Deadpool comp would’ve been ~9m. By the end of Sunday it should be over 400 tickets sold (September 20). Added more FRI comps, Trap* overindexed (looking like Joker will do the same), and Romulus had a very slow start so I want to see how Joker paces versus that .this was Trap’s first day of sales so I’d expect this number to drop. | It’s surprising how good the THU pace has been considering there hasn’t been anything like reviews dropping or new trailers/ promotions *(September 17). Still on good pace **(September 16). Deadpool grew 26.9% before the next time I checked it (T-13), Joker should look to around match that. | Still pacing well (September 15). Slower day today, yesterday was weird then. I think Deadpool comp is undershooting it a bit since that seems like a more front loaded movie (+ it had a much longer window), but on the other hand it’s also more walk up friendly. I only checked Deadpool sporadically, but in the next 5 days it grew 8.65%, which I think Joker 2 can comfortably surpass (would need to sell 26 tickets) (September 14). Strong growth. Probably a regional thing though, since Joker likely pulls in both the NYC “art house” crowd and the GA comic book fans (September 13). Sales starting to slow down, today should’ve been a bit higher though due to the ad that aired late last night during the debate (September 11). Tomorrow I’ll switch to T-x for Beetlejuice. This was a good jump, maybe helped a bit by the ad that played during the debate (but possibly the effects of that will be felt tomorrow). Show count is still lower than I would’ve liked. It’s interesting the disparity between my numbers and @TheFlatLannister’s. His T-23 Beetlejuice comp is way under 1x, whereas for me Joker 2 is already equal with where Beetlejuice was at T-11 (September 10).)

• jeffthehat (fwiw I'm seeing what everyone else is for Joker in Indiana. Sales are about half of Dune 2 at T-21. What's worse is Dune 2 was selling around 30 tickets/day at the bottom of its U-curve and Joker sold 24 tickets since yesterday (September 12).)

• JonathanMB (Just from an early cursory glance at my local multiplexes Joker is selling pretty well at premium screens for being on sale for just a few hours. And Lady Gaga just shared a "Get Tickets Now" ad on her social media a few minutes ago (83M on Twitter, 57M on Instagram), so that could help give sales a boost (September 9).)

• keysersoze123 (One interesting Metric is show count at AMC Empire 25. 1st movie had 52 show times listed on Day 1 of presales itself. I see only 14 for the sequel but it has 2 additional weeks of presales. | Not a good comp. but it will be worse than Flash Day 1 sales as well. May be that is optimal at this point along with other DCEU disasters last year like Aqua bro 2. | While its not a good comp, its Day 1 at MTC1 will be worse than Marvels. Joker 2 wont come close to 1st movie OW. | IMAX Monday shows are still limited compared to Batman early shows. That had 2 days of early shows across all PLF formats. It did 4m+ early BO. This wont be close for sure. | Joker would be bigger than Beetlejuice 2 D1 for sure. But that is a low benchmark for Joker. | Only comp would be Batman. But that movie started with uber strong sales for early shows (selling out many as soon it started) and above average to good on OD sales for Thursday. Plus release for Batman was way bigger. You could add Dune 2 comps but even that had significant early show sales. This has to be among the few "big" openers without any early shows. FYI Batman started with 65K sales for thursday and it had already sold close to 50K for early shows by then as well. If I have to make a guess Joker 2 would be lucky to hit 25K at MTC1 OD sales. Really bad IMO. | Not great. We have to wait and see but this is not a MCU level sales. That said we have to wait until end of day to see how big it is relative to other 100m openers. For now showcount itself is just ok 3479 shows at MTC1 and 2283 at MTC2 (that is lower than Beetlejuice). I started tracking during the 1st movie but I was looking at smaller sets of theaters across cities plus 1st movie had just 11 days of presales. It looked very brisk from the start back then (September 9).)

• RichWS (Checked the three big theaters closest to me here in Rhode Island (including the Providence IMAX) and Thursday/Friday are ROUGH. IMAX has sold 7 tickets total for the three Thursday shows. At least the 7:15 Friday show is doing okay (September 9).)

• Ryan C (It's good that the pace isn't just staying static from last week when tickets when on sale, but I don't think this is strong enough to not be concerned if this is headed for a low opening. Almost all of the EA showings are sold out (I wouldn't be surprised if 100% capacity is reached within the next week), but the Thursday showings are still lagging. Showings that should be sold out or at least really close to selling out just aren't. Like I said last week, the hope is that this doesn't play like a traditional fan-driven comic-book movie and has stronger walk-up business as we get closer to the release date. We shouldn't rule that out, but this is gonna have to work real hard within the next two-and-a-half weeks to make up for a weak pre-sales start (Sep. 16).)

• TalismanRing (So far not so good. | I didn't track Joker out this far (I only started the Monday the week before it opened): Joker's first 11 days out it had higher pre-sales of comparable CBM (Venom 2 and Shang-Chi), by it's last week was even more front loaded in terms of pre-sales (September 10).)

• TheFlatLannister ($6.33M THU Florida Comp. No major change on Thursday presales (September 19). Flash had stronger presales than what Joker 2 is currently seeing. Flash actually had okay/good presales up til the final week where it collapsed. EA was also really strong if I remember correctly. | Anyways presales I currently have aren’t showing an acceleration or a collapse. It’s just flat right now (September 15). Even if it had some crazy late acceleration (no indication of that so far as all the big time ramp ups for this year already had strong early presales), it would still likely miss $10M previews, therefore missing $70M+ OW (September 14). This is a Flash/The Marvels 2.0 imo. Summer 2024 films did have really great late business but those were relatively well received out of the gate. | Good recovery yesterday, bad day today (September 12). A $70M+ opening would require $10M+ previews, maybe even more. Not seeing anything close to that based on various data from various trackers (September 12). $5.98M Orlando THU Comp. Ehhh things could be worse I guess. Still a massive failure so far. Could be a $45M-$55M opening from what i'm seeing… (September 11). Less than 3/4 of The Marvels is insanity. Just big yikes. Show count also really low in Orlando. | They suck. Nothing is set in stone, but yeah can't see a way to $100M, because that would need over $15M in previews. Not even seeing double digits right now. | ROOF BIG YIKES. Definitely not anywhere close to a $100M opener as things look right now. Not even sure if this is a $60M type of OW. Will almost certainly decrease from Joker 2019 OW (September 10).)

• Tinalera (Didnt get any of the Mon or Wed Preview days. 19 days out kind of hard to say how things are going. There really hasnt been much promotion (that Ive seen around this area, others may vary). Kind of quiet really (September 15).)

• vafrow ($0.6M EA and $6.8M THU Comp. Growth rate continues to be solid. It settled around 5% a day earlier in the week, but moving up to 10% already (September 20. This has maintained a steady pace all week, on the higher end of my expectations. It has increased against comps (September 18). MCU is usually the prototypical front loaded property for advance sales, so lagging The Marvels at this stage isn't the end of the world. Its probably not going to catch up on mine, but it can close the gap. | Growth is staying in a nice healthy range. The comps I do have at this stage started earlier, so were closer to the bottom of the U at the time, while Joker still has first week momentum. Still, it's not bad. Note, as I saw a few people here and elsewhere try to extrapolate this. This isn't a huge acceleration or anything. It's just good, decent growth after a very slow start (September 15). Slight progress. Not bad, when I feared it could spiral. The EA shows still show a lot of strength, which is probably hurting demand on previews (September 14). The problem is that the Dune 2 comp seems almost unfair. It overperformed in Canada, particularly because of the imax screens. | I miscalculated the days to release, so I've adjusted to reflect that it's T-21, and switched over the comps. The films it's comping decently too all had later starts though, so it looks pretty bad. The Marvels coming on line doesn't help. It's worth pointing out that The Marvels likely overindexed here due to demographics. Beetlejuice coming down with the shift to T minus is interesting. I'll likely keep it as a comp, as it's essentially what Joker needs ($9.8M comp currently) to keep pace with to stay on track for the $70M opening circulated by the trades (September 13). I kept D level comps, since a lot of them don't kick in again until around T-15, some a bit sooner. I figure I'll not update to the weekend, where I'll have a different mix of options. I threw Beetlejuice into the average. It's not distorting as badly, and once I shift to T minus, it'll actually be a useful comp. Overall, this was a decent day. Some movement in the right direction, but nothing drastic (September 12).)

• YM! ($10.32M THU Comp. Though the non-CBM comparisons are solid, it does seem to be underperforming for a CBM here pretty badly with the bulk of the sales coming from Majestic. Especially one with a clear fanbase and the first doing very well in presales. The best it can hope is that it perform not like a fan driven franchise and climbs enough for a 65m OW but for now, thinking 7m previews for an OW within the 50m range (September 11).)

Piece by Piece

• vafrow (Piece by Piece is up for sale on MTC4, but there's only two locations showing it in all of the Greater Toronto Area, and neither are in my radius. I don't think this has huge commercial appeal or anything, but what's the point of this if it isn't getting a moderate release (September 18).)

Saturday Night

• misterpepp (The NY/LA tickets went on sale today. Nationwide expansion tix still go on sale the same aforementioned date (September 23) (September 11).)

Terrifier 3

• CompoundTheGains (What do people make of Terrifier 3 pre-sales? Universal Cinema AMC at CityWalk Hollywood with 248 tickets sold opening weekend. AMC Burbank 16 with 218 tickets sold opening weekend. AMC’s in CA for first showing only of Thursday night: Norwalk—over 60 tickets sold, Montclair and Ontario both over 50, Orange, Fullerton, City of Industry all over 40 tickets sold for first opening showing. Edinburg Texas AMC with over 60 tickets sold in first Thursday showing. Lake Buena Vista Florida AMC close to 70 tickets sold for first Thursday showing. Methuen MA AMC 50+ tickets first showing Thursday. Danvers MA over 40 tickets. You find these numbers scattered throughout the country and still being over 3 weeks from opening (September 18).)

Smile 2

• Boxofficerules (Smile 2 tickets are up for sale at my local (September 12).)

Domestic Calendar Dates (last updated September 8):

SEPTEMBER

• (Sep. 21) Opening Day [Super-Man: The Christopher Reeve Story]

• (Sep. 23) Presales Start [Saturday Night + The Apprentice]

• (Sep. 26) THU Previews [Azrael + Bagman + Lee + Megalopolis + The Wild Robot + My Old Ass]

• (Sep. 27) AMC Fan Fave Re-Release [Pacific Rim]

• (Sep. 30) Presales Start [Smile 2]

• (Sep. 30) Opening Day [MON: Old Guy]

• (Sep. 30) Early Access [Joker: Folie à Deux: 7pm IMAX Fan First Premieres]

OCTOBER

• (Oct. 1) Presales Start [Venom: The Last Dance]

• (Oct. 2) Early Access [Piece by Piece (Dolby Cinema)]

• (Oct. 3) Thursday Previews [Joker: Folie á Deux + Monster Summer + White Bird: A Wonder Story]

• (Oct. 4) AMC Fan Fave Re-Release [Furious 7]

• (Oct. 10) Thursday Previews [Devara Part 1 + The Apprentice + My Hero Academia the Movie: You’re Next + Piece by Piece + Saturday Night + Terrifier 3]

• (Oct. 11) Opening Day [Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas Re-Release]

• (Oct. 11) AMC Fan Fave Re-Release [Coco]

• (Oct. 17) Thursday Previews [Goodrich + Smile 2]

• (Oct. 18) Opening Day [Hocus Pocus]

• (Oct. 24) Thursday Previews [Venom: The Last Dance]

Presale Tracking Posts:

August 27

August 29

August 31

September 3

September 11

September 14

September 16

September 18

Note: I have removed most tracking data that has not been updated for 2 weeks. I think there is value in keeping data for a week or two but at a certain point they start to lose their value and should not be treated the same as more recent tracking data.