Box Office Round Up – May 6 – May 8, 2016

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Get behind the numbers of the last weekend’s box office! This week, in a nod to nihilism, Chris Neumer looks into why nothing actually means anything. Captain America: Civil War’s social media presence was roughly half as large as Batman vs. Superman’s and yet it did substantially better at the box office. What the hell is going on?

by Chris Neumer

When Jurassic World came out last year, most pundits were predicting that it would open to something in the vicinity of $125 million. It then opened and did almost a hundred million dollars more than that amount, amassing a whopping $209 million. As the pundits explained in Deadline, there was such a small sample size for movies grossing $110 million or more their opening weekend that no one quite knew what they looked like.

All and all, the article read like great comedy. The box office pundits and the firms that get paid to predict these types of things were back-pedaling like no tomorrow. So great was their desire to not be seen as charlatans that they were willing to do anything, up to and including, pointing out all of their business models’ flaws to get out of being deemed very, very irrelevant and replaceable. (It was fantastic to read that the firms don’t poll families or children under 12 as part of their efforts to secure the most data possible about who is going to see certain movies).

In a greater sense though, this is a pattern that I’ve started to see more and more. It’s not usually as obvious as it was with the aftermath of Jurassic World’s then best-in-history opening (the title now belongs to Star Wars: The Force Awakens), but it’s definitely present.

It follows this path. On Thursday, the tracking firms release their estimates, often accompanied by numbers that, if nothing else, sound good. “It was posting 43% unaided awareness in women between the ages of 18-25!”*

* And while ‘unaided awareness’ is an actual term and concept that is reported, I have zero idea what it actually means. The same holds true for whatever numbers/concepts these firms call ‘tracking figures’ and reference their polled subjects as having ‘over-indexed’.  Sadly, that last sentence is grammatically correct.

On Sunday, when the weekend estimates come out, and its shown that the box office analysts were wildly off with their estimates, a flurry of explanations for why they couldn’t have been expected to see this unique outlier situation hits the Hollywood trades. A flurry of explanations, mind you, that only serves to show readers why the whole concept of box office analysis is mostly smoke and mirrors.

And, in case you’re wondering, Captain America: Civil War opened this past weekend and box office analysts missed on it wildly. The consensus was that Captain America: Civil War would make something in the range of $215 million. Entertainment Weekly was the only outlet I saw that didn’t predict that Captain America: Civil War would break Jurassic World’s opening weekend record; it stated that Captain America: Civil War would only pull in $200 million.

Brad Brevet of BoxOfficeMojo.com wrote, “a weekend over $200 million is easy to forecast and even as much as $215 million isn’t at all unreasonable. What will be interesting is to see if a Marvel film can reach even higher than that.

Brevet’s words nicely sum up the way that almost everyone was looking at Captain America: Civil War. Come Sunday though, the weekend estimates showed that it had only grossed $181 million.

I need to take a minute here and acknowledge that, while $181 million is a huge sum of money and something that Disney is probably pretty happy with, it is not remotely close to the $215 million that the majority of analysts were predicting.

In his article, Brevet states that it’s ‘easy’ to predict a $200+ million weekend because Captain America: Civil War had better reviews than The Avengers: Age of Ultron (Age of Ultron), was breaking records for strong advanced ticket sales (it was Fandango’s #1 pre-selling superhero movie of all time) and was going to be playing on substantially more IMAX, Premium Large Format (PLF) and 3D screens than did Age of Ultron.

And then, as if on cue, Captain America: Civil War finished more than $10 million behind Age of Ultron.

Earlier this year, Batman vs. Superman generated a number of different stories because of the absolute smackdown it laid down on Deadpool, Captain America: Civil War and the upcoming X-Men film on social media.

According to Variety: Among the slew of comic book films set for release in 2016, including new “Captain America” and “X-Men“ adaptations, early social and digital tracking places “Suicide Squad” and “Batman v Superman” 500% stronger than competitors based on standing at the same point pre-release. “Batman v Superman” is currently the #1 film by volume, followed by “Suicide Squad” and “Deadpool”.

Batman vs. Superman also had the fifth highest Social Media Universe (SMU) in history at the time of its release (Social Media Universe is a number created by box office analysts to that roughly translates to the combined number of followers and likes a movie’s stars and page have, combined with its number of trailer views. Roughly). With an SMU of 727.2 million, Batman vs. Superman well out-paced Captain America: Civil War’s SMU (454.3 million) and Jurassic World’s (304 million).

And then, as if on cue, Batman vs. Superman hit theaters and did multiple tens of millions less than Captain America: Civil War and Jurassic World, despite its other-worldly SMU.

This is absolutely fascinating to me because it means that, you know, SMU doesn’t actually mean anything. If your film has more than double the SMU of Jurassic World… but ends its opening weekend some $50 million behind Jurassic World, I think it’s time to investigate how important that SMU actually is.

I’ve often wondered about the point of celebrities having large twitter followings if it doesn’t actually translate to anything. For example, Justin Timberlake is the actor (and I should probably put ‘actor’ in quotes) with the most Twitter followers. He has almost 55 million followers. His last movie, 2013’s Runner Runner, only grossed $19 million at the domestic box office. For a time, Ashton Kutcher was the most followed human on Twitter and that didn’t translate at all to his films’ box offices; it seemingly only afforded him lots of press about how he was the most followed human on Twitter.

In short, whether a film is good or bad, has a huge amount of social media presence or none at all, or sells more advanced tickets than any other film in history, none of it actually seems to have any kind of sustainable or recreatable impact on its box office. And that is down right bizarre.