What’s good, what’s good? It’s been a while, but you’ve got to be crazy if you thought I wasn’t going to write a forecast for Avatar. Seriously, this is judgment day for anyone who thinks they can accurately predict a film’s box office trajectory. I don’t believe I’ve ever followed a movie with such a wide range of box office possibilities. After the release of the first Avatar trailer in August, a flood of skeptics dismissed the notion that the film’s use of advanced 3D and “E-Motion Capture” technology would revolutionize cinema. To be honest, the visuals of Pandora, the photo-fluorescent planet on which Avatar is set, just didn’t look all that impressive, and the story seemed pretty hackneyed. Industry insiders scorned Fox for producing such a recklessly expensive project, and, at the time, it seemed that Avatar’s goofy blue aliens were destined to share the throne of “biggest flops ever” with Kevin Costner and his Water World.
Needless to say, things have changed in the past four months. The story still seems (and still is according to most critics) rather blasé, but the tide has turned regarding Avatar’s special effects. It’s “the most beautiful film I’ve seen in years,” boasted David Denby, lead critic for The New Yorker, as he and I discussed the film over dinner. While attending a “Women against Gender-Discriminating Urinals” rally, I swear I overheard Manohla Dargis scream “it’s the end of our movie-going life as we know it!” Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t… be whatever that may, I think anyone who’s anyone has finally acknowledged, within the last week, Avatar’s enormous box office potential.
That said, let me remind you of the rules I play by… I don’t look at any other box-office forecasts, blogs, etc. I don’t check out the prices movies are trading for on HSX (although you really should check out this site, it’s kind of interesting). I only use rentrak box office essentials (thank you focus features for never changing the password too drastically) to compile databases, get screen counts, etc. Alright, let’s do this.
Opening in 3,453 theatres, Jimmy Cameron’s “Avatar” is going to generate a lot of revenue, but it’s tough to say just how much cash it will bring in this weekend. The people at Fox marketed the hell out of this movie, which, logically, should help to expand its appeal, but there is such a thing as over-marketing, and if any movie’s guilty of it, it’s Avatar. I admit I was pretty excited when I saw the first TV spot for Avatar. I glowed in admiration after seeing even the 100th spot. Yet, after Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana attempted to dramatically mesh their storyline with Monday Night Football last week, during which Alex Smith and Kurt Warner were pitted against each other as rival extra-terrestrial species, I was irritated. When I’m watching football, I don’t want to think about Kurt Warner as a giant blue indigenous cat-man, and I don’t think it’s very nice to portray him in such a light. From what I’ve noticed, people are tired of hearing about Avatar—they’re tired of watching the commercials that only advertise its technical genius—mostly because they don’t know what Avatar is actually about. While Avatar has successfully marketed its name and its special effects, it has certainly failed in advertising itself as a movie, complete with characters and a plot line we care about. Fox has forgotten that people go to the movies primarily because they’re interested in the story. It’s never good when everybody in the world has heard of Avatar, but I’m the only person who can tell you the story. Nevertheless, Avatar is going to cash in because it is, apparently, a pretty decent movie, and word-of-mouth will turn it into a spectacle that everyone will have to see.
I created a database that includes every action/sci-fi/fantasy/adventure/animated movie released in December and that has grossed at least 100M (domestic cume) since 1990 and found some pretty interesting results. First of all, no December movie has ever opened north of 77M in its first weekend-- I Am Legend holds this record. LOTR: Return of the King opened to 72.6M this very weekend six years ago which, if adjusted for inflation, would equal about 85.3M today, but that’s as high as December opening weekends climb. Even if LOTR had opened to 85.3M, it would only rank 24th on the list of all time largest opening weekends. The average adjusted (for inflation) opening weekend of the December movies I compiled is just 46.7M, excluding outliers (films on the list that opened in limited release). So far, the data tells us that December movies generally don’t have large opening weekend numbers, even when the hype for some of them, such as the Lord of the Rings, has been huge. When I looked at their average total domestic grosses though, I found a far different story. Adjusted for inflation by individual year, the twenty films on the list averaged an astounding 257M total domestic gross. Just the average take of these films would rank 49th on the list of all-time domestic box office grosses!
The real story behind December’s box office numbers can be found when you divide the average adjusted domestic gross of the twenty films on the list by the average adjusted opening weekend gross {257,000,000/46,700,000}=5.5--> the multiplier. On average, tent pole December movies end up grossing 5.5X their opening weekend gross, which is a ridiculously large number for effects-heavy, high up-front demand films. Compare the average multiplier of 5.5X to 3.6X, the average multiplier for any film that grossed more than 100M this summer, and you learn a lot about how big budget movies play out in the month of December. They may start out slow, but they finish strong as they witness small weekly declines compared to summer action movies. Avatar will, no doubt, follow a similar trajectory.
If you’re expecting Avatar to break the opening weekend box office record, don’t. It’s just not going to happen in December, when people are busy traveling and preparing for Christmas. Also, don’t expect it to come close to New Moon’s opening weekend gross of 142M last month—Sam Worthington ain’t no unnaturally ripped 17-yearold. That’s not to say it won’t break any records, though. One record that Avatar could possibly break is the biggest 2nd or 3rd weekend gross. Currently, The Dark Knight holds the 2nd weekend record with 75M, and Spider-Man 1 holds the 3rd weekend record with 45M. I wouldn’t be surprised if Avatar broke the 2nd weekend record, but I do expect it to beat out Spider-Man 1 for the 3rd weekend spot. Word of mouth will spread quickly after Avatar is released tonight, and I expect it to hold out extremely well in the weeks to come.
In terms of opening weekend gross, the biggest allies Avatar has is its 3D and IMAX formats. 3D and IMAX screenings are more expensive than 2D screenings, and the extra revenue generated by the alternate format premium is counted towards a movie’s box office gross. Avatar is opening in over 2,400 3D sites, along with another 100+ IMAX theaters. No movie has ever opened in more 3D theaters, which bodes well for its potential domestic take. I looked at every movie that has ever grossed more than 100M in 3D and/or IMAX formats and found that their average opening weekend gross is 61.9M, a 32% increase from 46.7M, the average opening weekend gross for the month of December’s past action/adventure films.
When it comes down to it, this is one of the most difficult predictions I’ve had to make. I expect Avatar to climb to the top spot on the list of biggest December openings with a Fri-Sun take of around 100M and a 2nd weekend gross of 65M+. Get used to hearing about it, not that you haven’t already, because Avatar is going to be around for a while as it, in my opinion, will experience the smallest second weekend decline ever for a movie that opened north of 100M. Will it change movies forever? Probably not, but it will change special effects. Will it win 11 Oscars like Cameron’s last film? Doubt it. Will it break box office records? Yes, just not the ones people care about. Will Fox make a profit off of it? Without a freakin’ doubt.