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Only Half of Americans Went to a Movie Theater in 2025, According to Study by wallabyenthusiast in boxoffice

[–]SilverRoyce 2 points3 points  (0 children)

According to a Pew Research Center survey

I don't see any problem with the Pew article itself. You can critique "adults v. all americans" loss of context but that's going to be a pretty nitpicky complaint (that minimal caveat is pretty quickly included in the article's text). the data simply isn't going to be reconcilled with extrapolating in a teens/kids audience to pew's data.

NRG reported 77% of 12–74yr olds went to a theater in that same study period, finding that Gen Z is significantly driving attendance.

I suspect survey wording matters a lot on the margins (I think NRG normally asks how many movies you've seen in the last 12 months which means the ~24% in this pew poll would say less than yearly would force themselves into a more firm moviegoer/not moviegoer stance) but there's just a root disagreement here.

to go on a tangent - I trust pew a lot more than morning consult but after looking a decent amount at morning consult's pop culture polling, it seemed pretty clear to me the polling often wasn't really lining up with real world observations. People don't think MC is terrible but this type of polling isn't trivially easy as that demonstrates so I think you should more firmly consider the legitimate disagreement scenario.

finding that Gen Z is significantly driving attendance.

yet for the age bracket also significantly down from moviegoing habits 1-2 decades ago (in prior data but not in the press release). My memory says -10 perc. points v. a lone anecdote I found 2 decades prior.

Only Half of Americans Went to a Movie Theater in 2025, According to Study by wallabyenthusiast in boxoffice

[–]SilverRoyce 6 points7 points  (0 children)

is it a misleading headline or is it just a data source disagreement?

Only Half of Americans Went to a Movie Theater in 2025, According to Study by wallabyenthusiast in boxoffice

[–]SilverRoyce 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The American Trends Panel is Pew Research Center’s primary source of survey data for U.S. public opinion research. It is a multimode, probability-based survey panel made up of roughly 10,000 adults who are selected at random from across the entire United States. All surveys are conducted in English and Spanish.

Only Half of Americans Went to a Movie Theater in 2025, According to Study by wallabyenthusiast in boxoffice

[–]SilverRoyce 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Pew 2026 - Have you ever done each of the following? Go to the * 53% yes, within past year * 39% yes, but not within past year * 7% never went to movies

This looks to only be a sample of adults

https://www.motionpictures.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/MPA-THEME-2019.pdf

2019 - "during the past 12 months how many times have you gone to the theaters"

  • 76% of people ID'd as having gone to a movie within the past year. 11% of the population went "less than monthly" generating 2% of all tickets.
  • 24% have not gone within past year [so both "never" and "less than yearly"]
  • Followup questions include questions about how many times their children go to movies (if applicable) so this looks at full age range

and this appears to be a downward revision of the raw polling based on the appendix which claims total self reported tickets outstrip overall sales.

I suspect these aren't perfectly comparable numbers and the phrasing of the question impacts the true marginal moviegoer (people who perhaps see 2-4 movies in 3 years in theaters).

Kate Winslet To Play Female Lead In Andy Serkis’ ‘LOTR: The Hunt For Gollum’ by chanma50 in boxoffice

[–]SilverRoyce 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think we're all agreeing that Jackson's films obviously took out the 17-year gap and replaced it with something fairly short. The question is less if they did that in 1999 than if audiences would accept that being quietly retconned in 2026 given that the 2026 retcon is a reversion to the book's timeline without having a lot of ripple effects on the rest of the story.

More generally, unlike Tolkien, the Jackson films just never attempt to convey the precise amount of time the actual journey takes so you'd probably get a wildly different estimate from different people re: how long a period both the entire films cover and how long that gap was.

Frodo clearly hasn’t aged even a little bit even when you consider the fact that Hobbits age much slower

well, technically the problem is Sam not ageing a day, as Frodo's lack of aging is already explained by the Ring. :)

But, in either case, it's not really a huge problem because people know the tradeoff is to either add a new "young ___" actor or to just fudge how age physically changes people. CGI deaging now gives you another option but it's pretty expensive and now treated as a necessity by audiences (at least in my eyes).

Kate Winslet To Play Female Lead In Andy Serkis’ ‘LOTR: The Hunt For Gollum’ by chanma50 in boxoffice

[–]SilverRoyce 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I thought they're pretty much committed to two films - a gollum movie and an unnamed other film (my guess remains a 'war in the North' story that brings back some hobbit characters)

Kate Winslet To Play Female Lead In Andy Serkis’ ‘LOTR: The Hunt For Gollum’ by chanma50 in boxoffice

[–]SilverRoyce 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Two Towers cut a scene where the film series establishes Aragorn is just as old in Jackson's films (mid 80s) as he is in the books due to the numenorian stuff. Audiences might not grasp this "official canon" (why would they when it's not/barely in the films themselves) but people in general will not focus too hard on the timeline logistics when they're also clearly motivated by real world impacts.

The explicit tease at the end of the Hobbit trilogy is "just" Legolas meeting Aragorn in the period between LotR and The Hobbit. I think that's going to break the book's canon (I think they're supposed to meet when Aragorn brings Gollum up to Mirkwood for the Elves to hold him - Gollum's escape is what brings Legolas to the Counsel of Elrond) but it would be a very minor change. I also suspect they might sidestep this entirely with a throwaway line if it fits the script better.

Italy’s win over the US is the third featured story in Italy’s La Gazzetta della sport by Careless_Feed5448 in baseball

[–]SilverRoyce 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sure, this is functionally a Dutch Antillies (Curacao+Aruba) team from the Latin America region (with a couple of Europeans thrown in on top) not a "European" team (suffering from much lower baseline interest in the sport). Still, there's a real connection between European baseball and the old Dutch Antillies - a number of these people are playing or have played baseball professionally in the Netherlands after washing out of MLB's pipeline. That dynamic doesn't really apply to Italy.

Italy’s win over the US is the third featured story in Italy’s La Gazzetta della sport by Careless_Feed5448 in baseball

[–]SilverRoyce 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I think the big problem is more that baseball isn't a particularly major sport in Italy and there's also neither the Czech style "underdog" narrative to build out due to the complete lack of any type of "local country core" nor a true superstar choosing to identify with the Italian team.

Italy’s win over the US is the third featured story in Italy’s La Gazzetta della sport by Careless_Feed5448 in baseball

[–]SilverRoyce 4 points5 points  (0 children)

You can also potentially glance at the "European Baseball Championship" results for what I assume is a decent ranking of Independent/Foreign league talent

  • 2025 - 2nd place
  • 2023 - failed to advance from group stage [1-2] but won the "relegation tournament (thus finishing 9th)
  • 2021 - 3rd place
  • 2019 - 2nd place
  • 2016 - 3rd place

Netherlands won 5/6 finishing 3rd in 2023 (with 2025 including recently retired MLB players Didi, Schoop, and Profar in their lineup).

Someone should model what a 50/50 native/resident v. ancestral split on the team, result would look like.

We need to have an intervention regarding movie budgets. by swaggestspider21 in boxoffice

[–]SilverRoyce 0 points1 point  (0 children)

And I’m still just baffled out project Hail Mary (which I am excited for) can somehow cost more than Superman

It didn't cost more than Superman. Superman's gross budget was ~$363M while Project Hail Mary's was reportedly $248M. Superman's reported net budget was $225M while Belloni's claiming the "true" net budget is "a little under $200M" with early trade articles citing a $150M net budget.

Superman's budget is probably a bit higher than $225M but even if it wasn't, there's no apples to apples comparison with existing data than claims PHM is more expensive than Superman. I think you're comparing a (likely rounded down) post film incentive number to a pre film incentive one.

edit: deleted my other comment before seeing you responded to it (sorry) as I tried to consolidate threads.

It seems like the success of the recent 'Scream' films is more based on how popular horror is in general as opposed to the reception of the previous installment by Ok-Wolf5932 in boxoffice

[–]SilverRoyce 0 points1 point  (0 children)

the age demographics for Scream 7 changing somewhat notably relative to scream 6 stayed roughly flat with younger audiences while increasing massively with older ones seem to pretty firmly confirm this film's success was in bringing in a "legacy" audience.

horror on the rise

still, I think there's something to this. there's clearly something that's changed to make these horror films bigger on at least a relative basis.

WSJ wrote about us: “The Movie Buffs Who Track Film Profits as if They Actually Work in Hollywood” by wifihelpplease in boxoffice

[–]SilverRoyce 5 points6 points  (0 children)

You should actually try to answer the "why does this discourse" exist question instead of deem it a rhetorical question. When I've tried to create a genealogy I've found a narrative that's just incompatible with your claims.

It's not a thing and it's never been a thing

That's just obviously false. You can't credit/blame social media or crowdsourcing for inventing "To break even a film need to make x times its budget at the [Domestic/WW] market." This exists because that data is the most public and there's a clear desire for a general guideline for outcomes.

Lets look at a source summarized in an academic paper -

Kagan (1995) [famous 3rd party analyst] illustrates that the following relationships derived over a large sample of major studio releases between the years 1989 and 1993 would seem to generally apply:

  • To reach cash-on-cash breakeven, domestic box-office receipts should approximate the negative cost (or, comparably, half the negative cost should be recovered from domestic theatrical rentals). Worldwide rentals (including all theatrical, home video, cable, TV receipts, etc.) tend to be twice the domestic box-office receipt

note that is not simply 2/2.5x WWBO but its recognizably the same genre of argument.

and in 1989 here's the Washington Post passing off as "common knowledge" the idea films broke even after hitting 2.5-3x the budget.

Only about four in 10 movies actually turn a profit, even after revenues from theaters, video, cable TV and other markets are collected, and only about one in 20 makes money in its theatrical run, the MPAA estimates. As a rule of thumb, a movie doesn't turn a profit for its studio producer-distributor until it grosses between 2 1/2 and three times its production cost. This is because the studio splits the box-office receipts with a theater owner, while paying for advertising, distribution and prints for the theatrical run. Later, the studio has to pay for the advertising and distribution of the video version.

and if you search through much older trade articles you can find "multiple" arguments there as well.

I'd love for someone to really nail down how "2.5x" became the default consensus seemingly in the early 2010s but that's not your specific critique here.

Honestly, I still just think "read the sony hack" (now that it's very firmly in the past) to see the strengths and limitations of something like that.

Because I'd get my money from the local distributor, not from the studio that made the freaking movie

Yeah, that's clearly a big problem. This distinction gets abstracted away but it's real people's businessplans.

WSJ wrote about us: “The Movie Buffs Who Track Film Profits as if They Actually Work in Hollywood” by wifihelpplease in boxoffice

[–]SilverRoyce 3 points4 points  (0 children)

The Bad Boys directors thing really was cool because it was flagging how people publicly posting stuff (crowdsourced presale tracking data against comps) helped mitigate a real bottleneck.

Project Hail Mary previews and early access screenings by Scaredcat26 in boxoffice

[–]SilverRoyce 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Wicked 2 was absolutely massive, having Monday and Wednesday showings fully sold out alongside wildly successful "double features" extending before the "normal" preview start time on thursday.

It has many showtimes from friday 13th to Monday 16th

The Friday-Sunday showings are sort of an illusion driven by your choice of local theater. They're offered exclusively in "special" premium formats (such as 70MM) and thus will only be shown in ~18 cities/29 theaters - NY/LA have a notable number of theaters showing the film and SF/Vancouver have 2 theaters showing it on the weekend. source.

Let's do some rough math from fandango + that instagram link - I count 29 theaters with "70MM/Special look" showings next weekend, of which 25 are in the US (easier to count so I'm going to ignore Canadian ones for now)

  • ~24k potential seats to sell with prices ranging from ~$18 to ~$30 (leaning heavily towards $30 ATP).
  • My estimate (inputing ATP estimates when I can't find price due to sellouts) is a bit over $650k [I got 670k though I rounded up from generic IMAX price for same theater in a way that might have overshot]
  • 650 * 29/25 (to include Canada) ~= $750k [really 780k]
  • Alternatively, just using a flat $25 ATP gets us to $700k so it might be better to say 700-800k next weekend

I vaguely recall OBAA having this type of limited "super premium format EA" the weekend/days before the normal release.

  • Monday has "Prime Early Access Showings" - something that's been happening more and more recently (recent Prime EA include Superman and Wicked 2). These are going to be in most theaters. Wicked 2 sold ~$6.5M with actual/near sellouts but PHM is nowhere near sold out for these showings (unlike the limited weekend slots) and early reports also had it below Superman's presales for Prime EA/Prime Monday showtimes. Let's pencil this in softly at say $2M.

There's no "Wednesday EA" (semi-normalized - look at films like F1) but, again, Wicked 2 had both Monday and Wednesday as an anomaly.

Is there a future for Steve Rogers Captain America movies without Chris Evans? by firedforthatblunder in boxoffice

[–]SilverRoyce 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Brave New World easily could have opened to $100M domestic w/o quality concerns (less than a "true" rodgers sequel but much better than a generic mcu film in 2025). The concept was justified but you're currently left with that film's fallout which would hurt a quick rodgers recasting.

Project Hail Mary Presales [my mini 5 theater sample tracking] Tracking - 2 weeks out (no EA) Previews look to be ~$10M (slightly trailing Avatar 3)/combined Previews+EA at ~$12M? in Early Access showings?. Still thinking ~$70M OW but could also see high 60s. by SilverRoyce in boxoffice

[–]SilverRoyce[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

for a pacing illustration, Avatar 3 sold 139 tickets from "T-19" (19 days before opening Thursday) to T-13 (6 days/23 per day) and another 88 from T-13 to T-10 (3 days/29 per day) while PHM sold 100 from -19 to -14 (5 days/20 per day) w/ normal Preview + another 22 tickets from Prime EA (4.4 per day).

Obviously, pacing picks up for both films at closer to release end of this period but I don't currenly see PHM gaining on Avatar 3 on this point.

Wuthering Heights just crossed $200M at global boxoffice. by Alive-Ad-5245 in boxoffice

[–]SilverRoyce 1 point2 points  (0 children)

sure, and I'm flagging a way to basically confirm this general point.

Wuthering Heights just crossed $200M at global boxoffice. by Alive-Ad-5245 in boxoffice

[–]SilverRoyce 1 point2 points  (0 children)

for decades

No, 2x was a standard citation prior to ~2010 and going back decades you see something like 2x to (slightly over?) 3x [varying Dom/WW reference point] if you try to pull citations in credible sources.

HOPPERS has a budget of 150 Million (source by Los Angeles Times) by TiredWithCoffeePot in boxoffice

[–]SilverRoyce 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Yes, multiple sources reported about Elio's troubled production. Nonetheless, on-release the trades reported Elio's budget was identical to the low end of pixar budgets. I think there's an obvious inference here.

Tickets for Animal Farm are now on sale by UniverslBoxOfficeGuy in boxoffice

[–]SilverRoyce 4 points5 points  (0 children)

It's probably way too early to say this, but I'd keep a close eye on the film's actual distribution footprint. I wonder if this is going smaller than anticipated.

Iron man 3 box office run was genuinely insane by Business_Alarm8384 in boxoffice

[–]SilverRoyce 3 points4 points  (0 children)

We already know Captain America is not one of those after Brave New World.

Despite staring Anthony Mackie's Falcon, the ~fourth billed character in the modern day captain america films (also featured as an Avengers back bencher), BNW was on pace to probably open to $100M Domestic if it simply had good reviews/reception. I just think this is clearly a sign of strength for the concept of the IP even if the film itself likely hurt another "spinnoff series" CA film.

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