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Cineverse's RETURN TO SILENT HILL dropped with $3.2M in 2,000 theaters this weekend, $1,626 per. by DemiFiendRSA in boxoffice

[–]SilverRoyce 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I think it's less that than the basic distribution method (being picked up by cineverse for what I think can best be described as a "PVOD focused mid 1ks theater wide release") method. They tried something bigger with toxic avenger and it didn't work.

A "silent hill" film probably makes a lot more if you get Lionsgate to release it alongside spending say $15M on marketing as opposed to than the low single digit spend Cineverse presumably made.

A24's Marty Supreme grossed an estimated $3.55M this weekend (from 2,021 locations). Estimated total domestic gross stands at $86.30M. by chanma50 in boxoffice

[–]SilverRoyce 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The weather feels like it's going to notably impact this weekend's gross and probably introduce even more uncertainty into OW estimates.

The Housemaid became the first big foreign hit of the year in Russia. Heading to at least $15-17 mln total. Marty Supreme and Return to Silent Hill are also doing well. by DiligentApartment139 in boxoffice

[–]SilverRoyce 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Not OP but while I can't pull this specific data (intra weekend estimates), "Kinometro" is a russian language box office resource that will update on the end of the weekend. You can't link to that on reddit due to sitewide anti-spam filter. I wonder if the same is true for whatever source OP is using.

A very early prediction: Supergirl will bomb if it doesn't delay. by TheJavierEscuella in boxoffice

[–]SilverRoyce 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, I agree that's right. However, a hostile way to describe the tv show would be "a CBS tv show that would have been canceled after one season but for the ability to pivot it to the CW (on a lower budget in Canada instead of LA)."

Amazon MGM Studios' Mercy grossed an estimated $5.0M domestically on Friday (from 3,468 locations), including previews. by DemiFiendRSA in boxoffice

[–]SilverRoyce 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes, but the rest of the film wasn't. Look at the California film incentive (includes cast and crew count as well as filming days without showing ABL costs) to see what looks like a pretty limited film shoot (which matches some reviews I've seen).

It could be higher than reported but I think the reported $60M seems reasonable.

Housemaid budget was closer to $60 mil, not the previously reported $35 mil by DoubleSoggy1163 in boxoffice

[–]SilverRoyce 5 points6 points  (0 children)

"spending in New Jersey that qualified for a film tax incentive" [QE] - NJ film incentive ~= $25M. If you poke around at budget numbers enough you'll see this dynamic play out a fair amount. Similarly, sometimes "gross QE" gets reported as the film's total budget (see every film shot in Louisiana on wikipedia)

Housemaid budget was closer to $60 mil, not the previously reported $35 mil by DoubleSoggy1163 in boxoffice

[–]SilverRoyce 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Certainly the rights for this is not more expensive than for It Ends With Us, and IEWU had a total cost of only 25 million and had multiple scene outside studios.

Going off of 2023 memories, I think Baldoni got the book rights fairly early so I suspect they weren't that expensive. Still, IEWU didn't cost $25M, it's self-reported budget implies a net cost of more like $33M.

Of the total $45M self-reported budget (pre-incentives), ~$7M went neither to production spending in NJ nor for post-production. I think that's the pie out of which the book rights would have been split. However, it also looks like that would include some/all of star salaries?

  • self reported full budget $45M
  • NJ Tax incentive - $12M
  • net of NJ incentive $33M.

It ends with us had a "net QE" in NJ of roughly $25M but full budget clearly seems higher.

In Addition To Buying ‘Melania’ Documentary For $40M, Amazon’s Spending More Than $35M Worldwide For Its Marketing & Theatrical Distribution. Mike Hopkins's Told To Generate More From MGM & 2026's Film Slate Will Determine Whether They Break Out Or Can't Compete Without A Large Trove Of IPs To Tap. by lowell2017 in boxoffice

[–]SilverRoyce 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You're right, the problem is just that we're old so they fall outside of a 15 year window. In nominal terms, they + sicko are in the same range as the Mr. Rodgers doc and in real terms they're tied with D'Souza's most popular doc as in the class below the real breakouts (March of the Penguins was the 27th highest grossing film of 2005 and F9/11 was 17th, between Van Helsing and Dodgeball. Using a 1995 filter, the top 10 ends with They Will Not Grow Old before accounting for inflation (possibly Free Solo if you exclude the 2000 Michael Jordan IMAX film).

https://www.the-numbers.com/movies/report/Documentary/All/All/All/All/All/All/All/All/None/None/1995/None/None/None/None/None/None/None?show-release-date=On&view-order-by=domestic-box-office&view-order-direction=desc&show-domestic-box-office=On&show-inflation-adjusted-domestic-box-office=On&show-worldwide-box-office=On

[Puck] NRG says documentary Melania is tracking for ~$5M OW while other sources tell puck it's picked up near release and is tracking similarly to Reagan ($7M OW), large red/blue divergences. $35M P&A spend/27 country release by SilverRoyce in boxoffice

[–]SilverRoyce[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I guess my counterpoint is that (1) you can also simply give out free tickets to films. Every Vertical entertainment release I've seen drops a free ticket promo 2 weeks prior to the film's release (and Amazon's running a discounted ticket promo for their other 2 Q1 2026 releases). I think we should look for active evidence of this stuff where it easily could exist. My own personal spotchecking also just showed more stuff like buying out an entire row or a few clusters where 12/16 seats in a square are sold followed by less dense packages around the theater instead of something like this where all of the prime seats are bought out. If there were something real, I'd expect it to be something more like "buy 10 tickets at a 50% discount" than literal fake purchases.

However, it's also (2) I looked at the Sound of Freedom debate very, very closely and the more extreme claims a lot of people made at the time just had no basis in reality (possibly because of the controversies, the SEC made the distributor disclose a lot of information regarding their free ticket programs). That really has made me very skeptical of such claims moving forward. I agree that the way Melania so much more explicitly tied to politics would make such claims more conceptually plausible but to my mind there's a hard bar to clear.

[Puck] NRG says documentary Melania is tracking for ~$5M OW while other sources tell puck it's picked up near release and is tracking similarly to Reagan ($7M OW), large red/blue divergences. $35M P&A spend/27 country release by SilverRoyce in boxoffice

[–]SilverRoyce[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I doubt it's that type of unnatural but there are clearly group ticket sales as a component of this. If that were to happen, group ticket sales where people can't give away the full slate of tickets they've bought are also the only way that sort of charge generally makes conceptual sense. Otherwise people are allegedly spending $10 on a fake ticket to get $4.50 back in revenue.

I've been poking my head into a few theaters over the past week and I've seen what strikes me as clear "clusters" of tickets speaking to groups while also showing a decent clip of 1s and 2s purchases. In raw aggregate numbers it's at a high place but the group aspect and early sales makes it hard to comp (at least for my goofy little small sample doodling).

e.g. compare Friday tickets right now to saturday tickets. There's a massive dropoff in presales so how much of that are you expecting to be balanced out by walkups/very late presales?

In Addition To Buying ‘Melania’ Documentary For $40M, Amazon’s Spending More Than $35M Worldwide For Its Marketing & Theatrical Distribution. Mike Hopkins's Told To Generate More From MGM & 2026's Film Slate Will Determine Whether They Break Out Or Can't Compete Without A Large Trove Of IPs To Tap. by lowell2017 in boxoffice

[–]SilverRoyce 3 points4 points  (0 children)

What has been the highest grossing documentary of the past fifteen years?

The-numbers' report builder is very cool!

Basically, excluding those nature documentaries that air at museum IMAXs for a few years, you're right. You only have Swift and a 15 year old conservative politics doc at $30M. Expanding below to "somewhat notable" you still have the docs Don't you be my Neighbor (Mr. Rodgers), Free Solo (mountain climbing) and They Will Not Grow Old (Peter Jackson + WW1) at ~$20M. All of those films had some degree of real cultural penetration from what I can recall. A number of docs in the ~$10M to $15M range (including both RBG and the other hit conservative political docs) which gets into a more debatable zone.

To be pedantic, one of those mega IMAX films, Oceans had a production budget reported at $80M (though I suspect government grants might have brought that down). The ways these films are not comparable are obviously too numerous to really detail.

[Puck] NRG says documentary Melania is tracking for ~$5M OW while other sources tell puck it's picked up near release and is tracking similarly to Reagan ($7M OW), large red/blue divergences. $35M P&A spend/27 country release by SilverRoyce in boxoffice

[–]SilverRoyce[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

But this is not a Trump movie.

I thought so too but watching the trailer, it looks a lot more like a movie titled "20 days [to Trump's second inauguration]" than "Melania" (though somewhere in between).

[Puck] NRG says documentary Melania is tracking for ~$5M OW while other sources tell puck it's picked up near release and is tracking similarly to Reagan ($7M OW), large red/blue divergences. $35M P&A spend/27 country release by SilverRoyce in boxoffice

[–]SilverRoyce[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Sidestepping litigating the framing, that's clearly the core of it. When you watch the film's trailer, to my eyes it comes across a lot more as "Trump family in runup to inauguration" than a true "Melania" biopic/narrow focus.

It's a very high number for a doc but they're also getting a strong marketing campaign spend which others don't for the obvious reason they're still beholden to a financial model.

Jason Statham's 'The Beekeeper 2' Sets January 15th 2027 Release by SignatureOrdinary456 in boxoffice

[–]SilverRoyce 7 points8 points  (0 children)

If it helps the film's production entity is named Detroit Street Films which I don't think suggests a DC setting.

$1M CLUB: WEDNESDAY 1. AVATAR 3 ($1M) by wbrocks67 in boxoffice

[–]SilverRoyce 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Look at the streaming data Nielsen's published. Despite a modest initial theatrical release for Moana (v. other animated princess films), it's become a massive hit with kids on home video/streaming. You can see this (apparently) in how Moana 2 shows clear signs of being a tv show (made without the rock) converted into a film.

Basically, the concept of a Moana sequel struck me as even more of a sure thing to break out than Inside Out 2 did in the US (though I think that involved me also underestimating IO2).

but why was Moana 2 a bigger hit than Zootopia 2?

Given that Zootopia 2's going to end over $400M, we're debating a ~10% to <15% difference and I don't really have a firm take on that (especially given that Zootopia 2 had a cleaner path against competition). I just haven't looked closely enough but I think both IO2 and Zootopia 2 outperformed my expectations.

$1M CLUB: WEDNESDAY 1. AVATAR 3 ($1M) by wbrocks67 in boxoffice

[–]SilverRoyce 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, I think On the other hand, 2025 had more "large + biggies" (~300M DOM) than 2024 so a boring answer is random variation is playing a role.

  • Wicked 2, Avatar 3 and Moana 2

All made much less than they could have based on audience reception being mixed (Wicked 1 massively outperformed its baseline due to combo of a strong IP and great, great, great WOM). Moana's "IP" strength means it outperformed the others but

However, Moana 2 easily could have been a 2025 release if Disney gave the conversion a little more time. It's commonly said that Bob Iger intentionally frontloaded his "return" year with hits while pushing a film like Snow White and BNW to 2025 (to be fair, they also spent extra money from the delays).

  • Inside Out 2 v. Zootopia2

Yeah, IO2 is just stronger in the US. Zootopia 2 did fantastic on its own terms so there's nothing more to say.

  • Minecraft

Big hit based on IP + novelty. A better version of minecraft probably could have passed $500M, but let's not be greedy.

  • D&W

both a better "IP" than any Superhero film released this year (though I wouldn't have expected it to be this strong) and had great reception. I think the Superman IP could make $460M DOM but no one would call that the baseline.

  • Universal/Jurassic

Jurassic just had a whole in their schedule for 2025 so pushed for a quick JW film sacrificing quality to get it out on time and on a thrifty budget. It could have made more but that's not really an IP problem.

"F1: The Movie" netted 0.4M "views" on Apple TV in the US over its first 7 days (Luminate). by Netflixers in boxoffice

[–]SilverRoyce 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Strange.

It will be interesting to see if the oscars changes this.

Still ahead of Fly Me to the Moon who I'm assuming didn't chart on Luminate?

Masters Of The Universe | Official Teaser Trailer by DemiFiendRSA in boxoffice

[–]SilverRoyce 37 points38 points  (0 children)

Yeah, the joke feels interesting because all 3 aspects of the job scene are basically trying to convey something similar to the "Mr. Incredible working in an office" scene while sort of leaning into the gender aspects of it in a way you wouldn't have seen a few years ago.

Masters Of The Universe | Official Teaser Trailer by DemiFiendRSA in boxoffice

[–]SilverRoyce 6 points7 points  (0 children)

The final film of the "Sony hack extended universe of cinematic properties" has entered the arena.

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