Saturday (2nd Week) was better

POSTED BY: StakeTheLurk
UPDATED: Monday, October 10, 2005 20:49
VIEWED: 12346
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STAKETHELURK

Sunday, October 9, 2005 5:16 PM

The Saturday estimates are in. You can check them out at Whedonesque: http://whedonesque.com/comments/8417

Drop off for Saturday was 40%, making a 51% drop off for the weekend so far--the norm for sci-fi films. We made $2.26 million Saturday, with $1,035 per theater (No ranking yet, not all the data for other films is in). This is better news, but it’s not great. If this trend continues, we’ll make $5 million this weekend. Just what the prognostication websites have been predicting. So, we’re not a spectacular success but we’re not a huge disappointment. Keep hitting the theaters people--convince the managers to keep the BDM around for a few more weeks.

EDITED TO ADD: The rankings are in. Serenity has moved up to #7, ahead of A History of Violence, Waiting, and (shudder) Into the Blue.

REXPOP

Sunday, October 9, 2005 5:42 PM

Which means given the usual metric that a movie typically does between 2X and 3X its first 10 days take means that we are looking at a total box office of around 30-45 million domestic once the theater run finishes . This would mean that 'Serenity' covered at least its budget on domestic box office alone, which is better than most movies do. And as that's before we include international box office (which with the state of the dollar is worth more than domestic when counted against the budget).

Given that this was a always a release that would make most of its money on DVD, I would say that its probably going to make a tidy chunk of change for all involved making the prospects of a sequel good, providing there is someone at Universal willing to push a little.

One other thing that might be worth doing is dropping Sci-Fi a note thanking them for showing 'Firefly' in its correct order, and wondering if there is any plans to make more. Sci-Fi recently had a very good quarter, and is probably looking to expand its line-up, and would probably be willing to take a serious look at a show with a guaranteed audience base.

BROWNCOATMONK

Sunday, October 9, 2005 5:48 PM

We are fortunate (I believe) that the movie release schedule for this month has several notable projects being released on the 21st so that it's very likely to stay in a majority of the theaters for at least 2 more weeks. Why it wasn't in 3000+ theaters in the first place is a completely different question.

Browncoat Monk

Ain't no place I can be since I found Serenity...

EMBERS

Sunday, October 9, 2005 6:18 PM

Browncoat Monk, I think the theater owners have some say...
they get films but they have limited screens and they put in what they think will be big.

I've been hoping that great reviews, and a few sold out shows in some theaters, would encourage more theater owners to put 'Serenity' on...
but since we're lagging I'm afraid that all we can hope for now is to hold onto the screens we currently have....

some of the box office sites have us in the #8 spot for Saturday,
but this one sets us at #7 (so of course I believe THEM!):
http://www.showbizdata.com/dailybox.cfm

You know, we are the only action feature in the top ten
(well History of Violence has some action,
but can hardly be called anything but a drama)
so if theaters keep us around I think we can manage to continue to build an andience...
here's hoping!

SOUPCATCHER

Sunday, October 9, 2005 6:26 PM

Yeah, we really won't know how things stand until later on in the week. The big test will be how many theaters keep Serenity after the two week contracts are concluded.

I'm going to ramble for a bit on why I think this is a long term project rather than something that's going to be accomplished in the first month.

I tend to go in the opposite direction on opening weekend theater count, however. Just from the anecdotal theater reports over at the UB it looks like Serenity did fine, and is continuing to do fine, in certain markets (there still seem to be good crowds in Portland, for example). Others, not so much. The estimates we were getting in ticket sales were definitely not representative of the US and Canada as a whole (and there are all sorts of problems with the theater reports - difficulties in estimating theater capacity and size of crowds for example - so I'm working with very incomplete information). So for every sold out theater reported opening weekend there had to be some pretty empty theaters. Kind of as a data point based on reading posts by theater managers over at HSX it sounded like Serenity was oversaturated in the LA market.

It's all water under the bridge at this point but I'm wondering if less theaters might have been more helpful. Rather than saturating an urban market maybe just making sure that there was a good geographical distribution across the US and Canada. Then seeing how the first two weeks went and expanding where there was the most action.

One thing is clear to me is that I overestimated the size of the Browncoat community in the US and Canada. We're not quite yet a market force to be reckoned with in terms of a wide release. Buying DVDs, no problem. Selling out comics, no problem there either. Selling out pre-screenings, absolutely. Getting millions into a theater on opening weekend, not there yet. Based on exit polling of the opening weekend less than half of the people who bought tickets were fans of Firefly (which works out to somewhere south of 750k tickets). And that's not factoring in multiple viewings. Half a million might be a decent estimate. And that's not nothing. But when you figure that we need to sell millions of tickets (close to ten) for the US and Canada portion of Serenity's box office to be considered a slam-dunk, well...

What we do have on our side, however, is a quality product. Outstanding quality, actually. More than half of the audience opening weekend did not really know about Firefly and somewhere close to 88% liked the movie. The DVD sets are selling decently. More people are joining this site every day who loved the movie and wanted to find out more about this 'verse. Critics gave this movie good marks. There are articles being written about the movie in major publications on a daily basis. This has all the markings of a slow burn rather than an explosion. We really won't be able to judge the success (or non success) of the US and Canada box office until the end of November IMHO.

We were too small to make this movie a raging success overnight. There's no shame in that. But we're not alone. The movie's good, great some might say. Now it's a race between the slow building word of mouth and the market forces of movies. It's never easy .

STAKETHELURK

Sunday, October 9, 2005 6:39 PM

Quote:
We were too small to make this movie a raging success overnight. There's no shame in that. But we're not alone. The movie's good, great some might say. Now it's a race between the slow building word of mouth and the market forces of movies. It's never easy .

I agree, it's something of a race, but one in which we've got time to maneuver. We need to spread the word about the film, lend out "Firefly" DVDs, post guerrilla marketing, and just do everything we can to make sure it grows. And even after it's left theaters (hopefully a looong way away), we need to lend out "Firefly" DVDs and then tell people about the movie that's coming to DVD. Increase the Box Office, increase the DVD sales. We're still flying, so let's keep this boat in the air over the coming weeks.

BROWNTROUSERS

Sunday, October 9, 2005 7:04 PM

There is still hope!

MICHELLE

Sunday, October 9, 2005 7:31 PM

[Sorry for my bad english, guys, I'm from Russia and had no english language practice in years]

Surely, 2nd weekend numbers is not great, but it's not so bad either. Multiplier (weekend gross divided by friday gross) is 3,33 - very good! Far more better than in 1st weekend (2,6).

BTW, Serenity was pretty good in Australian box-office in previous weekend. Again, not great, but good. Look:

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/intl/australia/2005/39.htm

It started in 6th position, but only because of small number of theaters. Serenity's average gross was more than any other film. And just look at this:

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?page=intl&id=serenity.htm

I mean, $ 801,529 in threee weekend days and another $ 300 000 in two working days. It's very good.

On October 13th Serenity will jump into 240 russian theaters. I don't know how good or bad gross will be, but...

I has a web-site http://www.kino-govno.com (second best russian movie-site in terms of visitors) and believe me - EVERY SINGLE VISITOR knows that SERENITY IS AWESOME.

There are incredible amount of news (some days it was like "serenity, other movie, serenity, serenity, other movie, other movie, serenity etc"), all of the trailers, all of the sreeenshots, banners, Firefly review (I'll post Serenity review tomorrow - it's right about time) and so on. Our visitors are dying to see Serenity on big screen.

UIP-RUS managing director even presented me a Land of the Dead Jacket on recent press-screening - in gratitude for all our promotion :-)

So, we are doing our best (even impossible) and I hope Serenity will make some good money in Russia.

DAST

Sunday, October 9, 2005 7:52 PM

BoxOfficeMojo.com has Serenity at #9 with grand total of $$17,594,000

SIGGGY

Sunday, October 9, 2005 8:29 PM

Go Russia!!! The English was pretty good in your topic and all the best to the Russian run.

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